According to major polls, including Gallup, President Trump’s popularity has hovered at the 40% line. Little has changed since his electoral college victory, and Americans remain intensely divided in their political views. Regarding those who oppose him, it is easy to categorize them into various groups of people who are critical of the POTUS’s policies and his personality. What’s more interesting, I think, is to try to categorize those folks who support him. I’ve labeled four groups here.

Group one is the Action Faction. This group loves the bluster-the threats, the taunts, the flamboyance, the shocking orange hair, and the easy-to-understand vocabulary. Many of the Faction love professional wrestling and see the POTUS as champion in the ring. They might imagine Donald the Dominator body slamming Weak Joe Biden or putting handcuffs on Crooked Hillary and sending her off to jail. They want action, and with Trump, they get it!

The next group I’ll refer to as The Tell-it-Like-it-iz Tribe. They consider themselves realists and dismiss those with different ideas as idiots. You are with them or against them. There is good and bad, white and black, worthy people and moochers, home team and invaders. Despisers of political correctness, they enjoy crude and crass humorists like Roseanne Barr. The tribe is aware of the Constitution, and especially like the idea of the Second Amendment. If you get them in a serious mode, they will refer to the Founding Fathers in a reverent tone, regarding them as God-like figures. (I wonder if they believe the FF’s had heads twice as large as ours, and that they had powers of prescience which allowed them, in their dreams, to envision the future — the internet, satellite surveillance, and the AK 47s and nuclear arms which we have the absolute right to bear!)

A third group in support of the President are Bottom-Liners. These are like-minded business people who see profit as the complete measuring stick for success in life. Such a mentality precludes the possibility of anything else having real significance. They conflate running the government with running a business, which requires shrewdness. They share Trump’s disregard for the Fine Arts, and they believe popular art should be invested based exclusively on its potential for profit. They are pure capitalists, and their sense of humanity is anchored in the notion that some people win, some lose.

Then there are the Lesser-of-Evils (to which most of my Republican friends belong). They don’t like the POTUS much, but see the alternative as a liberal, socialist assault on their core values. They are tired of witnessing America’s rapid multi-cultural sea change and the Democratic policies that facilitate it, especially policies that reward mental and physical laziness.

Finally there are the Power Elites. Politicians, corporate executives, lobbyists, and high-level Wall Street investors conspire in the dark government/business towers. If forced to express a philosophy, they would come forward with something very Machiavellian (or perhaps, more contemporarily, “Putin-ian”): common people are stupid and brutish, unable to govern themselves in an orderly manner. Therefore, the smart people must trick them into thinking a particular way, whether or not there is any truth to it. To maintain power, it is better to lie to people than to have to torture or kill them.

Despite the diversity of these supporting casts, there are two common threads that stitch together the Trump cloak. First, all his supporters see politics as a dishonest state of affairs. They have come to accept that as a fact, and therefore would rather see someone who is a flat out untruthful, even tongue-and-cheek about it, than someone who fakes empathy.

Second is a denial of environmental science. To some less perceptive folk, the idea of an ozone layer is beyond imagination. They do not question what happens to a gallon of gas after it’s been burned (let alone when billions of gallons are burned). They can’t grasp the concept of earth’s molecular atmospheric layers. They don’t understand what an ecosystem is, or how devastating the irresponsible use of chemicals can be. Yet there are the others — those who would be “inconvenienced” by having to change their ways — who could easily understand but refuse to listen to the dire messages coming from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Dishonesty, ignorance, and intolerance are the earmarks of the Trump presidency. We have entered an era of severe moral and social disfunction. He is a bad actor, and an even worse human being. I look forward to when he is back on silly TV shows where his fan base can watch him take on all comers and, unlike the real world which he affects so dangerously, no one really gets hurt. And as for the next President, I don’t care if you are Democrat or Republican. I just want you to be a good and decent leader as we try to heal from this calamity.

Pete Howard is a Dunkirk resident, writer, musician and teacher. FOCAL Point strives to make insightful social commentary through the integration of Facts, Observations, Compassion, Awareness and Logic.