Young Trumpists...

A recent article in the New York Times was titled DONALD TRUMP IS MAKING AMERICA MEANER by Nicholas Kristof.

In the article Kristof talks about how our young people feel they can abandon politically correct behavior and practice their racism, bigotry, xenophobia, etc. in an open manner because ostensibly, Trump gave them permission or at least validated that type of behavior as normal and OK and actually appropriate for this time in our nation’s history.

My question is if that type of behavior lies just below the skin in many of our young adults and is basically intrinsic to their being, where does it come from?

The usual answer is basically that it is learned and learning comes from parents, family and/or peer group/ community.

I have noticed that these same people had their bigotry kept in check by a growing attitude of tolerance or shall we call it political correctness (PC) prevalent in our country; it is not cool to be a bigot so they hide their bigotry.

In my own personal experience, I have seen people (mostly guys) express some inappropriate comment to me but quickly laugh it off when they see that I am not of their ilk. Trump also laughs his comments off when the nation is stunned by their inappropriateness.

As I mentioned before people can tell by your reactions if you are or are not, part of their ilk. The word “ILK” just means group, class, kind, sort, etc.

Young people tend to gravitate to like-minded individuals or groups and in some cases individuals may not share the group’s beliefs at first, but are persuaded to share them by wanting to be included in the group hence the adage that young people are very impressionable and can easily be turned one way or another.

There have been a number of books written about the people who support Trump and the books make it a point to weed out of the group those intelligent “normal” people that support Trump as a means of changing the environment in Congress or in politics in general; they want to blow up the current system and start from scratch and they think Trump can do just that.

The group that remains is generally called white, uneducated, blue collar, European descent but not necessarily poor. I think this is the group that produces the children who are copies of themselves and now feel emboldened to practice their racism and bigotry out in the open.

I will be looking at why this group exists and why they behave like they do in my next blog as I am learning on a daily basis about this Trumpism phenomenon as is the rest of the country.

By the way, this Trump group that I am talking about includes friends and family.