It’s Time to Admit the Truth About Trump Supporters

Photo by Devin Berko on Unsplash

“You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it. And unfortunately, there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.” — Hillary Clinton

America, it is time we publicly admit what we all know and talk about privately.

Trump supporters are ignorant, hateful, and a drain on our society. It is exhausting to engage them in reasoned dialogue about politics and any national concern. They believe their “feelings” about a topic are as valid as facts.

As a starting point, we should acknowledge these folks lack the education and mental horsepower that allow the rest of us to reject the same bullshit they accept as fact.

It isn’t just one or two who are deluded. It’s a huge percentage. Here are only a handful of examples showing the sheer size of the problem:

- 40% of Trump voters insist that he won the national popular vote against Hillary Clinton.

- 25% of Trump voters do not think that California’s votes should be allowed to count.

- 73% of Trump voters think that George Soros is paying protesters.

- 14% of Trump supporters think Hillary Clinton is connected to a child sex ring run out of a Washington DC pizza parlor. — Public Policy Polling

My purpose is not to start an argument, but to ask the question, what can we do about it?

Like our Soros’ checks, we are not supposed to admit out loud that we find Trump supporters intellectually lacking. I know I will get brigaded and find poorly written hate comments on my Medium account. The rules of the game dictate that we must be the bigger person and respect their wild rantings as merely a difference of political opinion. Because they are fellow Americans, we tolerate their ravings — however ill-informed, stupid, or dangerous.

But we know these people simply do not have the intellectual capacity to pull themselves from the warm embrace of Trump as a god-king.

“Trump supporters take a lot of pride in their ignorance, wearing it as almost a badge of honor and…