The President has successfully hardwired his base to view any one who opposes his any of his actions as against not just him, but the country.
Trump has personalized this relationship with the far-right, but he isn’t the first. Republicans have generated a very schizophrenic attitude around the government that demands both unquestioning loyalty and perpetual mistrust. If one questions one of his faithful to reach below the loud and boisterous surface this contradiction is everywhere in their belief system.
They see America as the greatest country in the world and will go to battle with any detractors, but stand at the ready to overthrow it by force should it actually attempt to provide some benefit to anyone. They simply don’t see the provision of rights and benefits as the job of the government, but something that must be fought for tooth and nail every minute by true “patriots”. Never mind that those patriots hate every single thing the government does that isn’t associated with military force against “non-patriots”. They love all of the words and symbols, but hate what they actually stand for.
This level of sociopathy on such a large scale didn’t come about by accident. It has been steadily and unwaveringly moved into the mainstream of conservatism for decades, and it is having exactly the impact it was designed to have. The elites in government, in both parties, now shovel massive amounts of public money to the money launderers of the MIC and even our foreign allies without the slightest question. At the same time, they are not expected to supply the citizens with any of the benefits of being a society that almost every other nation in the world enjoys just as a right of being human.
Can’t afford $$millions to pay for your cancer treatment? You should have made better choices in life. Can’t afford to live under a real roof on your minimum wage job? You should have gotten an education. Got an education but it doesn’t benefit you in your wages and is now costing you more than your rent? Well, you should have just figured that out and made adjustments. There is never a circumstance where any less than the full achievement of the American dream is justified, regardless of how difficult, or impossible, that may be. Just suffer with great national pride, but never expect your government to add to your quality of life because that isn’t what “real” governments do.
I’m pretty sure that when JFK said “Ask not what your country can do for you” that he had something entirely different in mind from the present mental disorder that is modern American conservatism. I can’t think of another nation that is as radically patriotic and distrustful of its fundamental social order at the same time. I think it displays a level of ignorance that the rest of the world should be on constant alert for.
