Letter to A Family Member, April 17, 2017
By Lucy M. Warner

Message body
APRIL 17, 2017

Thank you for your letter. I do want to explain to you, also. Forgive me, I can be neurotic, but I have, in fact, always felt that you didn't like me, just tolerated me as quietly as possible, but I can see it is probably because you are by nature very reserved, more so than I am. I did think you were saying to me that I shouldn't be so political and outspoken in my blog and Facebook. First, your voice is soft and my hearing is borderline in the right ear, so I was straining to hear you. I heard part of what you said, which I THOUGHT was something like "the amount of negative discussion (in the family and on the Internet) was causing the political climate in the country to be worse than it would be without it." I don't know what your personal political views are, but if you read this you will understand why I keep on blogging, and perhaps why I am explaining myself to you. I see you are honestly interested in me, and I want to let you know why I do so strongly feel that American citizens should look closely at the national and world situation, and VOTE even if we do feel we aren't totally up to date on all issues. I personally believe in voting my heart as well as my most logical thoughts. Achieving personal grandeur without caring is just simple conceit – peacock feathers on a crow’s tail.

I do, also have to disagree with the viewpoint that “conservative” ideas -- as they exist today in our intellectually and spiritually degraded society -- are just as virtuous and as good for the country as are liberal and progressive thought. I am distressed that we are in another such stressful time in the US as the Vietnam War days; the atmosphere really is particularly angry and frightening, but my reasons for pitching in my own two cents are these.

First, an unopposed bully is a triumphant bully, especially if he's a really big bruiser! I know Jesus said to be totally pacifist, but I just can't, and I don't even believe it to be a good idea. I have always remembered that Jesus himself took a bullwhip and drove the merchants out of the temple. He didn't kill anybody, but he certainly did make a point! I don't want to see bloodshed, heaven forbid, but Bernie's peaceful revolution would put us on the path to the great nation we can be.

More than at any time period since Richard Nixon’s presidency, with his controlling moves, which are, in the opinion of myself and many others, absolutely against the spirit and the law of a free democracy; we find ourselves opposing the rough use of monetary power against the citizens. It really is very much like what happened in Germany as Hitler was taking over. That's why the "Fascist" and "Nazi" words are being used so freely about him now.

Nazism isn't just about government control and abuse, as Trump seems to think, it's about a total lack of concern for humans and their basic needs, one of which is safety within our own home and hometown. They are an appropriate use of language, unpleasant though they may be, to express the situation. That same old Ultrarightist philosophy is taking over again. Like poison ivy, it never fully went away. The roots are still alive. I do think this scary upsurge now is mainly because our working class whites are doing worse and worse financially, and they are ANGRY. They want some Browns, Asians, Blacks and Hispanics to blame it on. That's why they keep railing against "Political Correctness." I particularly hate that phrase, because what they are talking about is really politeness and common decency. I have very rarely used it, personally, and when I do, I put it in quotation marks. That’s my revenge against the “conservative” turn of mind, which I also refuse to acknowledge as being a good description of the Far Right views. What they are is Radical.

We are much too similar now to that period before WWII, and those same horrors have become more frequent again, rather than being just occasional happenings to be buried on the back page of the papers. The KKK is marching again, Gays are being treated badly, "pointy headed intellectuals" are scorned. Most of those whites had neither the money nor the inclination to go to college for a four year degree, and didn't want to get into tens of thousands of dollars of debt, so I sympathize with them, but beating up on others because of it is unacceptable. (That's why we need to initiate Bernie's plan of four years of FREE COLLEGE at state institutions, healthcare including mental health care for all unconditionally, oh yes, and a moderate but adequate guaranteed income for those with a personal worth of under a figure like $75,000 with three children.)

I also strongly advocate lifelong self-education, which means reading regularly and widely, more than Sports Illustrated and automotive magazines. The Bible is good, and important, but the information of the world as found in academic subjects, especially as they apply to daily life is equally so. I feel strongly that voters should be readers, and philosophers, to the degree that we are capable of becoming. Above all, we should cause, by gentle but persistent means, the fostering of what used to be called “learning” to grow in our children’s minds. If we do that, they will read voluntarily, and half of the social problems we have in this country will be well on their way to being solved.

As for the callous mistreatment of the weaker people around us just because we can get away with it and, oh yes, we enjoy their pain, I totally detest that, wherever it exists. No amount of social stress among the majority group excuses that in my view. Even poor and minority people need to turn away from those things. Just because we are angry doesn’t give us a genuine right to kill or otherwise abuse anyone. In democracies, we have constructed a way to wage our wars with laws and words; and if we feel angry and want to vent it, go to a good mental health counselor. That’s half of their purpose. Most people who see psychologists aren’t exactly insane. We just need help to become healthier.

On a similar subject, the recent ethnic incidents on the airlines are of the same sort. I personally believe that if a WHITE MALE doctor had wanted the flight crew to go ask some other ticket holders to give up THEIR seats on that United Airlines flight, a little over a month ago, the flight crew would have respectfully tried that route, and very likely found a volunteer. Why pick a Chinese man who had the gall to claim to be a doctor who was due at the clinic the next morning, and insist the HE must be the one to give up his seat? They claimed that he was "belligerent," but I personally don't blame him. Not only was he probably fed up with such treatment, but he had a place where he needed to be. He is not a "Chink," but a Chinese American medical doctor in his late 60s, and should have been respected. Also, as my sister pointed out the other day, if the airline had offered $2,000 rather than $800 to somebody else to give up their seat, it might have worked. No need to give him a concussion and then pull him off the plane by his legs. The way this incident hit every news outlet in the world within hours taught United Airlines a lesson, however, and they have vowed several improvements, such as saving a few seats for airline personnel who need to board the plane, DO NOT OVERBOOK, and do not SELL a ticket which you as a business are “unable” to honor. Money is money for everyone, not just for “the big boys.”

Less than a year ago there was another all too similar airline incident in which a BLACK FEMALE physician was on a plane, and when the flight crew asked for a doctor to help a passenger, she went up and offered her services. They told her to go sit down and continued to ask for a doctor. (Really!) I believe in that case they did finally move aside and let her treat him -- the pilot intervened, I think -- but the skin color and gender prejudices almost prevented her from doing that. Things like that do make me furious. That isn't the best America that we can be. I phrase it that way because America isn’t just the name of our country, but “us” as a population, me and thee. Changing our inner attitudes will be the best thing we can do. Just because we have had a good country doesn't mean we should complacently stop fighting the good fight! It's clear now that the “good” country can disappear in one election.

So, as Hitler's people set up a required informant program among the ordinary German citizens to capture Jews in hiding, who must do it or face consequences, there is at this time a group of Rightist thinkers in the US who are doing things like “trolling” people on the Internet over their expressed moderate and progressive views. My instinct is to say that they can’t hurt me, but it is producing a dangerous violence in the atmosphere that really does frighten me. It looks very much like a new political party that has popped up overnight like a mushroom, among the more moderate people in the US, to rally for an unlikely political hero. I had been aware of the “militias,” etc. who were out on the periphery of “civilization,” in the US countryside. They were mainly isolated, often rural, very religious more than ethical, poor and undereducated, so I like others tended to discount them. Calling them Rednecks may be fun at the time, but like all abuse, it makes the victim of that treatment very, very angry. Now they’re organized around groups like the NRA, the KKK, the White Supremacists of all types, and they are linked up together on the Internet. My group are also on the Net, and grouped around our causes. I want to “defeat the enemy,” also, but not by physical force. My goal is to see Progressive Social Ideas come to the fore and gain strength. “The Net” is the place where it’s happening. That’s why I blog. To misquote that famous philosopher, “I am, therefore I write.”

Look up the term "kristallnacht" on Google for one of the beginning events leading to the rampage against Jews in Germany. I was born on the heels of WWII, so I just can't feel that we, as decent Americans, shouldn't fight back while we still can, and fight strongly -- as Bernie said the day after election night, 2016, that he will work with them when he can, but when he can't he will "oppose them mightily." That sounds like a quotation from the Old Testament, doesn’t it? He really is a very clever and strong man, and decent as well. I want him for president in 2020, if not before. The way Trump's Russian problems are going, who knows?

Jews, of course, have been hounded and often killed throughout Europe and most of the world, due to the simple fact that they aren't Christian and have strongly held onto their own traditional ethnic identity and religion, like the Native Americans, Amish, Quakers, etc. Hebrew culture, which is truly ancient and definitely Eastern in its' influence, is not “evil,” as Jews have been portrayed over and over across Europe. Like the Islamic groups of today, it is still alive and well, and I admire all those people greatly for their courage to withstand the pure crap that they have had to endure from Christians, especially modern-day Protestants. True they do look "different." Rabbis of some highly religious Jewish sects wear long "earlocks," to honor the command not to cut their hair (in Islam the men always have to keep their beards) which has a certain beauty, but Westerners like us just don't understand it. There is a great movie of the 1970s or so, called "The Chosen," which you might like to see for that particular belief and culture. The young man and his Rabbi father were particularly well played.

My college roommate and good friend was a more modern Jew, and looked just like everybody else, except for being very pretty with one of those "good" well-rounded bodies. She also, like Bernie Sanders, was not a religious Jew. She was pragmatic, logical, very smart and very "presentable." Still my husband's friend, a fellow grad student, came up to us as we were going to meet him in the cafeteria. He went up to her first, however, before she had quite reached us, and said something to her which I assumed must have been an anti-Semitic slur of some kind from the way she reacted (I didn't hear it). She just stared at him hard with a frozen face for a second and turned on her heel and walked away. I left my husband and his friend, no longer mine, and sat at another table with her. My husband’s friend glared at me and said, "I don't like Jews." I said, "I doubt if they like you very much either", and also stalked away. I have known some half a dozen Jewish people and black people as well, and I like them fine. They're smart, educated, open, no more dishonest than are WASPs; and unlike all too many Christians, despite the stories told about them, they are not "classist." I do hate having to compete with uppity people for a little simple recognition and respect, but my good luck is that I'm a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. I can blend. I haven't had to put up with as much guff as those groups do on a daily basis.

Some of the more conservative Jewish groups especially, do simply refuse to do things like leave their skullcaps (yarmulkes) at home (ignorant Fascists like to call them "beanies" in order to be especially disrespectful to Jews). Many modern American Jews don't wear the hat (some are less "religious" than others) and they make friends outside their own group more than the more conservative Jews do. There's so much conformity in this culture of all kinds that doing anything out of the ordinary can make us the butt of jokes and worse. That's what I really DO NOT LIKE about America. I would like for all of us to read more and watch football less. Narrow mindedness and cruelty are encouraged by many, or at any rate those who are being bullied are not defended. That may be due to timidity much of the time, but I think it is all too often a tacit agreement with the abuser.

Bullying, scapegoating, etc. are accepted by many as “inevitable,” or even “normal,” by the traditional majority, but it is still evil because the result of it is evil, and it should be fought. I agree it's inevitable to a certain degree, but I refuse to go along with it without a fight, and if all citizens would speak up whenever they see it happening, things would improve. We would become more sensitive and compassionate as a whole group. That's why police departments are straightening their officers out a little bit more now in their professional policing behavior, because things of a disagreeable nature have been happening when they don’t. First, the dreaded BLM will come in large numbers and chant on the pavement outside their departments; and since the press shined a spotlight on Ferguson, MO, the rule of law is stepping in a bit, too, and correcting legally entrenched injustices. Chicago and some other cities are setting up plans to train and discipline their officers better, interact positively with black communities in a more general way, and are firing those who prove themselves to be sadists or just simply stupid instead of good, honest peace keepers. To me, the "kneejerk" racial bigotry that we in the majority can fall back on is unrealistic as a way of judging others, and downright silly. Even more annoying, it inhibits my PERSONAL right to make friends with people I really do like to be around, some of whom are not white and Christian. The days of criminalizing miscegenation are gone.

Let's face it, however, it still is not really SAFE for Jews to allow themselves to be too open among many Christians to this day. They have been killed for no good reason and in shocking numbers, over and over down through the last 2,000 years, and slandered with phrases like "the Jews eat babies," and "the Jews killed Jesus." The ignorance and heartlessness of people like that appalls me. It's true that like the Islamic people, some religious Jews do things in public like praying with a rocking movement which doesn't look like at all like Christian prayer, and very likely does frighten some WASPS to a degree. A news article about a year ago, showing a photo scene in a northern city (maybe Chicago) in which twenty or so Islamic men were on the sidewalk outside their mosque kneeling with heads touching the cement, shown from a balcony above them. It, I’m sure, can be an overwhelming sight for those of us who are totally unused to seeing that, but I’ve seen it several other times in news shots taken in Middle Eastern countries. When the “call to prayer,” is sung, all Muslims in the area immediately orient themselves toward Mecca and start to pray. It does not, however, make me feel like persecuting them.

Similarly, two conservative rabbis around a year ago were thrown off an airplane, like this Chinese doctor last week, for praying in that way. We are definitely in a new political and social period, when the far right has become radicalized and much more active, largely due to the cruel and abusive behavior of our modern day White Supremacists and White Nationalists, who in some cases recently have been in the news for openly and loudly advocating a "White Christian" nation in the USA. I don't believe that will fly here, and I certainly am going to fight it, but is scares me anyway. I notice our good SC Republican Senator Lindsey Graham has spoken out against Trump on several occasions, as have many others. Not all Republicans are Fascist. At least two judges have blocked his moves -- like banning Muslims from coming to America -- that caused such a stir, and he did it almost as soon as he was elected. He was just “on a roll,” I guess. If he would follow accepted patterns more, it wouldn't be quite as bad for him, nor for the country. His desire to behave like a dictator doesn’t impress good people, after all.

Too many of those people and others who call themselves "conservative" and "Christian" have taken their places behind Donald Trump; and are responsible for electing him, even though they almost certainly don't really believe in pure Nazism. They wouldn’t want to work in a concentration camp, or personally kill anyone. They just don't want to have to sit near or talk to a Black, Hispanic or Islamic person. They're garden variety racists who probably wouldn't actually want to see a policy of incarcerating or killing hundreds of thousands of any group of people. However, many of the younger ones, especially if they didn't study their history enough to understand it, probably don't even know much about that Nazi period of time. Of course, some of us "Bernie Progressives" refused to vote for Hillary over the DNC affair, and some more conservative people simply hate her personally; after all she did quip "I don't bake cookies," which is the other half of the problem, with the result that the unspeakable happened. I did vote for her. I have been most concerned, though, about the number of people in this country who don't actually like Trump, but who aren't politically aware enough to know that withholding their votes from Hillary would, by default, give Trump the presidency. We need a democratic nation to be made up of AWARE citizens, not people who just aren’t interested enough to care.

Not only has Trump gone out of his way to bring out the hateful crowd that is ALWAYS lurking in the shadows in any human society -- it's a psychiatric disorder, I fully believe, but it's literally contagious, and it's "going around" these days – but they have proven themselves to be not “the enemy,” but “us.” Yes, that is a quotation from that great cartoon sage, Pogo the possum. It's what happened in Germany in 1939, and it is back again to haunt us. Hitler didn't “force” the Germans to support him at first, but persuaded them; though after he got himself elected to office, he enacted a military crackdown on the country, and then proceeded to make an almost successful attempt to take over the world on the justification that good Germans needed “elbow room.” Just as in Russia, possibly even today, nobody at all was allowed to oppose the "Fearless Leader." (For that quotation go to the Bullwinkle the Moose cartoons.) Putin, unfortunately, is accused here in 2017 of murdering a number of his political enemies, just as in the good old days.

Those highly educated and intelligent people, such as Albert Einstein -- who made it out of Germany just in time -- were killed whether or not they were Jewish, if they refused to go along with the Nazi agenda. Einstein, of course was Jewish, but other non-Jewish scholars, etc. were executed. Certain artists were condemned for making “degenerate” art. Many people were killed because they had physical disabilities, for instance. That makes them “inferior” breeding stock. Some were lucky. They were only castrated. Hitler was literally breeding those whom he considered to be the "pure" Aryan individuals, whom he touted as being vastly superior to everyone else -- tall, blonde, blue eyed, athletic, etc. Many such highly educated people as scientists, teachers, philosophers, the religious of all unconventional types, let's face it, are truly "dangerous" to a repressive group like the Nazis; they see the evil, they don't condone it, and they rebel.

I do hope we won't see that kind of oppression being allowed to grow among us here, especially to the degree that it did in Germany in WWII. Wikipedia probably has a good timeline on what happened then and a good discussion that you might want to check out if you happen to be interested. I really love Wikipedia articles for being thorough and to the point. It is also almost always written in plain English rather than legalese, etc. There are very few subjects that I haven't been able to find on Google if I search a few minutes, and I consult it often for explanatory and background information.

The Trump crowd does include a large number of far right "anti-everybody else" people, especially those Black, Hispanic and Islamic people, but the Jews also; a synagogue and a Jewish graveyard were defaced within the last six months or so with swastikas and crude insults. It began to escalate as soon as Trump was elected, and in the run-up to the election. I hadn't heard of anything like that in this country against Jews before he came along -- Blacks, yes – too many otherwise kind and decent people in this country are calling that kind of thing “freedom of speech,” but clearly it is hate speech/crime instead. It’s “fighting words,” which are specifically forbidden in the Constitution. Trump has repeatedly given those people political cover and encouragement, so they have even done things like give Nazi salutes to both Trump and at least one of his openly Fascist followers ("Milo Yiannopolous) who gives rousing proNazi and pro-Trump speeches, and the crowd just eats it up with a spoon! That stiff armed “salute” to Trump appeared in a news video within the last two weeks, so it’s still alive and well in this country. I personally believe that inciting criminal behavior should be a crime, as much as the deed itself. That level of personal “freedom” is dangerous to the society that allows it. I hope our more “conservative” members find that out before they tear apart what has been built here.

Steve Bannon, Trump's "advisor" until the last month or so, is a rabble rouser on the Internet for the Fascist, White Supremacist, and White Nationalist milieu in the US and abroad, now being called the Alt-Right. Breitbart is Bannon's home website. His good friend and lie spinner is Alex Jones. He makes up the conspiracy theories that those Alt-Right people like so much -- and then Bannon has the gall to call CNN, NBC, CBS, NPR, BBC etc. "Fake News." Take a look at the true fake news sites Breitbart, Infowars, Stormfront, etc. to see what really chills my blood, and makes me very concerned about the grave danger to our country posed by our decent folk’s failing to speak out against the predatory forces, or even simply voting for another candidate (such as poor Hillary) in order to block him from getting into office. I voted for her, though I had to hold my nose to do it!

Unfortunately, Trump was elected, and he is daily removing the "safety net" for the poor (that means my subsidized housing) and a number of other things that lots of Americans depend on and love. Being "proud of America" means to me valuing the good societal things like public schooling for all, the right for us as citizens to openly be what we are (gay, less than white, Spanish speaking, etc., etc.), more than I do our military exploits. That's what "Making America Great" means to me.

The truth is that though my sister and I love each other, we are very different politically. She came from a whole different "America" than I did, because of the way this country changed from the late 1930s to the mid 1940s, and especially during the 1950s when things started to get better -- such as the ending of the Great Depression. My date of birth is 1945, so I grew up with more frequent news footage of Hitler raving in front of crowds holding their arms up and shouting "Heil Hitler", the horror of the atomic bomb, and belligerent crowds of white people confronting blacks, with or without a hood over their faces. I was so young that I absorbed it for what it is, rather than having my patriotism, faith in authority, traditionalism and classism up before my eyes as a shield against the truth, and reacted negatively to it. I will never forget a local news photograph from the early ‘60s. It focused on a line of half a dozen frightened, but steadfast, black men who were facing off against about as many police officers, each with a snarling German Shepherd on a leash. The Civil Rights era had begun.

The South in particular is still a breeding ground for those things. Within the last 15 to 20 years both of those Southern culture-based restaurants, Bojangles and Cracker Barrel, were in the news for refusing service to Blacks. It makes me feel ashamed, because Southerners are my people. I still fight it, as a result, even though our county has improved greatly. Also, I no longer eat at Bojangles or Cracker Barrel, if they are even in existence today. Though the bad sort of Southerners haven’t actually changed their stripes, their actions are being punished and they have mainly retreated into their domiciles. The good news is, we don't see “Whites Only” signs on restaurant doors, bathrooms, and water fountains anymore. Black people can stay in motels and hotels. Nothing but a strong hand by the Federal government and millions of civil rights marchers could have brought that about. Trying to change people like the KKK, and now these overtly Nazilike followers of Donald Trump, by the use of rational and compassionate discussion alone, just doesn't work. It’s like the “good cop and bad cop” duo in police interrogations. The good cop tries to convince, and the bad cop tries to scare the suspect to his core. Sadly, it works in all too many cases, since only a certain percentage of those rousted by police for the crime of the moment are actually guilty. They almost always are, however, poor and of a minority group.

I do think that teaching those benign ideas like toleration, respect, honesty, scientific thought, and a wide range of information in general -- broadly and constantly, until the end of time -- could produce a genuinely more virtuous and gentle population, but “conservative” forces have tried to stop that, because they think it to be "indoctrination." I have a feeling they also think that the Rapture is coming any day now, so “WHO CARES,” right? Well, maybe teaching those things is a form of persuasion, but it's persuasion in the right direction!

There are people these days who actually claim that the Nazi Holocaust never happened. To prove it to themselves, they should look at the photos and horrific videos from concentration camps where the American soldiers visited after Hitler was defeated. In the news documentary, I saw from the end of WWII, Jewish people, who were clearly starved, were staring at the soldiers and newsmen from behind a chain link fence. Some, thank goodness, appeared encouraged and happy to see the Allied army, but others simply looked dead both mentally and emotionally. There are more ways than one to kill.

For a fuller view of what's going on in the US, which has me so deeply concerned, go to Huffington Post, "POLITICS, 03/05/2016 06:24 pm ET | Updated Mar 05, 2016." That shows footage of a Donald Trump Rally. It really is “getting way too scary” here in the USA. Go to this site below, read the article, and look at the pictures and videos. It’s extremely well-written, as usual, and an eye opener for those who slept through the last election cycle.

“This Donald Trump Rally Looks Like A Scene From Nazi Germany. It is getting way too scary.” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-right-hand-salute_us_56db50d8e4b03a405678e27a, By Janie Velencia.

I am telling you all this because it is why those of us who are, yes, always interested in politics and always Progressive or Liberal, are frankly frightened now. My sister believes that "everything will work out," that “good citizens don’t make waves,” and that our oppositional writings such as this blog are "extreme" and somehow more damaging than Trump is; but that is exactly why Trump was elected. Those who could have stopped him didn’t. We have become complacent in this country and I'm afraid it may really be our downfall. All this business of Russia helping him get elected also should be a loud alarm bell to all of us. Should we really trust Vladimir Putin? Putting a lot of cream in this particular cup of coffee isn't going to make it taste any better.

Too many in this country thought the 2016 election was just "politics as usual," and it wasn't. Too many Bernie followers refused to vote for Hillary even against Trump, which was a very foolish mistake, and was the very opposite of what Bernie asked us to do. I, too, have come to dislike her, but I voted for her anyway, given the alternative. Some of the Bernie voters even called him a "sellout" for asking us to vote for Hillary. I say, "Better the devil you know than the devil you don't know," as the saying goes. I do agree with Trump on one or two things, and one is that Hillary really is "crooked," but she isn't Fascist and an arouser of racial hatred as he is.

So, we passive, comfortable Americans need to stand up and join the fight, if we hope to have anything of value left in this society. Goodnight, and may The Higher Power bless you.



http://www.politico.com/story/2016/01/trump-supporters-big-tent-217481
2016
Donald Trump’s big tent
The GOP should stop fooling itself. Trump is reaching more than just undereducated, angry white men.
By Scott Bland
01/08/16 06:35 AM EST

Photograph -- Every one of 10 recent Iowa, New Hampshire, and national polls of Republicans shows Trump with more male support than female support. | Getty

Republicans explain away their unwelcome poll-leader by dismissing his supporters as a loud but narrow network of angry white men and celebrity chasers.

It’s not true. A POLITICO review of private and public polling data and interviews with GOP pollsters shows a coalition that certainly begins with conservative, blue-collar men now extends to pro-choice Republicans, independents and even registered Democrats unnerved, primarily, by illegal immigration.

Indeed, the uncomfortable truth, for the pundits and fellow Republicans who turned their noses up at Trump, is that his appeal has spread over seven months so far beyond a rabble-rousing, anti-establishment rump to encompass the very elements of the American electorate the GOP has been eager to reach. And while it’s no majority, it’s a bigger group than anything the rest of the fragmented Republican field has galvanized.

“His coalition is not all angry working white males,” said Adrian Gray, a Republican pollster. “It’s all stripes. It’s a pretty big coalition. And among other demographics where he’s doing worse, he’s still leading or in the top two.”

Certainly, non-college-educated men have formed his base. Every one of 10 recent Iowa, New Hampshire, and national polls of Republicans shows Trump with more male support than female support and significantly more support from non-college graduates than those with degrees.

Trump’s robust performance with this group, however, has deflected attention from the breadth of his coalition. Though Trump has less support with women and educated men, he’s still at or near the top of the GOP field in those categories. And, exposing the depth of the GOP establishment’s misunderstanding of Trump’s support network, his coalition includes far-right conservatives as well as people who hardly register on Republican radar.

Donald Trump: I would love to run against Bernie

RELATED: 2016, Trump disrupts Sanders’ stronghold, By Ben Schreckinger

Trump’s supporters skewed significantly against the GOP grain on abortion, for instance, in an internal poll of Iowa caucus-goers conducted for a rival presidential contender last summer. Respondents who identified themselves as “pro-choice” were three times more likely than “pro-life” voters to support Trump, according to a Republican strategist with knowledge of the survey.

One large dataset shows Trump excelling above all with voters who call themselves Republicans even though they aren’t officially registered as Republicans.

Civis Analytics, a Democratic data firm founded by veterans of President Barack Obama’s campaigns, built a model based on over 11,000 phone interviews with self-identified Republicans in 2015, part of a wider polling project. The data, first reported by The New York Times, shows Trump getting the support of 29 percent of registered Republicans but 36 percent of registered independents and 43 percent of registered Democrats, who in some states can still participate in GOP primaries.

The Civis data projects Trump’s support by congressional district, showing that Trump is especially strong in the rare pockets of the country where Obama performed worse while winning the 2008 presidential election than John Kerry did while losing in 2004, according to a POLITICO analysis.

In the Civis’ model, Trump runs ahead of his 33-percent national average in 30 of the 40 districts where Kerry matched or exceeded Obama’s performance, even though Obama ran about 5 points ahead of Kerry nationally.

Those districts are largely contained in a band running through Appalachia, from Pennsylvania to Tennessee, and then across the Deep South to Arkansas and Oklahoma. Once Democratic strongholds, voters there have sloughed off the party in recent decades — a trend that accelerated rapidly under Obama. Now, Trump is giving a voice to some of their protectionist concerns about immigration and trade.

“Essentially, the old base of the Democratic Party, non-college whites in the Midwest and Appalachia, have been cut loose and are floating like an iceberg in the middle of the electorate,” said one Republican strategist supporting another presidential candidate. “And they’ve glommed onto the Republicans because it’s a two-party system. But they have no affection for the Republican Party as an institution.”

Now, they form a key piece of the Trump puzzle.

The pro-Trump crowd’s varied background is matched by equally diverse reasons for supporting him. But even though it has faded in intensity as an issue since Trump burst on the political scene this summer with an incendiary announcement speech, immigration is still driving a core base of voters into Trump’s camp.

Photograph -- 160106_donald_trump_voters_3_gty_1160.jpg, A supporter of Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump wears a pin at a rally at Pennichuck Middle School on Dec. 28, 2015 in Nashua, New Hampshire. | Getty

In WBUR’s most recent poll of the New Hampshire primary, Trump’s favorability numbers jumped from 46 percent overall to 62 percent among those who said that illegal immigration posed a “major threat” to “you and people you know.” While 27 percent of all respondents said they plan to vote for Trump in New Hampshire’s February primary, his support rose to 35 percent among the GOP voters most concerned about immigration.

In Iowa, where Cruz has caught or even surpassed Trump in many recent Republican caucus polls, Trump still maintained a double-digit lead over Cruz among “immigration voters” in the most recent Quinnipiac University survey there. Among everyone in the poll, though, the two were essentially tied (28 percent for Cruz to 27 percent for Trump).

“There’s a segment of the population, white working middle-aged men, that has felt three big changes in America — globalization, technology, and demographics — that are changing everything we do on a daily basis,” said Gray. “In a lot of ways, this group has felt left behind by each of those.”

But “even people above the median income feel insecure, sometimes financially insecure because of these changes,” Gray continued. “That’s what builds the coalition beyond low-income and downscale.”

Trump also runs particularly well with people looking for a “strong leader.” While Cruz dominated among Quinnipiac poll respondents in Iowa who wanted a candidate who “shares your values,” Trump got 40 percent of those looking for a strong leader. Fox News’ most recent Iowa poll showed Trump getting 39 percent of those voters, too.

Photograph -- 160106_donald_trump_voters_4_gty_1160.jpg, Supporters of Donald Trump wait to hear him speak at the Mississippi Coast Coliseum on Jan. 2 in Biloxi, Mississippi. | Getty Images

Focus groups of GOP voters help explain how and why. One such exercise, conducted by Data Targeting, a GOP consulting firm in Florida, recently interviewed a uniformly downcast group of Republicans about the direction of the country and its government. Two gave replies of “stagnant” when asked to describe it. Other replies included “mess,” “weak,” and “bought.”

The focus group illustrated how some typical political responses to government dysfunction have lost currency, opening a door into the presidential campaign that Trump barged through. When one participant said, “Democrats and Republicans need to work together,” another immediately replied, “That’s my worst nightmare!” “They’re all puppets,” another participant chimed in.

“Nearly every candidate running on the Republican side has made an effort to present themselves as not of Washington,” said Jim Hobart, a Republican pollster. “No one has a more credible message on that than Donald Trump. When he says it, it’s really true. It’s tough to out-anti-Washington Donald Trump.”

This makes for an uncomfortable truth for the GOP. But there’s enough discomfort to go around. For Trump’s camp, it’s unclear just how many of his supporters will actually cast a ballot for him — or anyone else — when caucuses and primaries finally begin next month.

Almost uniformly, GOP political professionals have discounted Trump’s chances of turning the full measure of his support into actual primary and caucus votes, and later delegates to the Republican National Convention. Public polls, they argue, are vastly oversampling nonvoters caught up in the mania surrounding Trump, distorting the picture of a more traditional Republican electorate that does not back him as heavily.

“It’s one thing to have support from people in all these different groups,” said Mark Stephenson, a Republican data and analytics expert who was the chief data officer on Scott Walker’s presidential campaign. “It really is another thing to turn them into a Trump voter, or especially a Trump caucus-goer, on election night.”


Photograph -- 20160107_steve_king_1_GTY_1160.jpg
RELATED: Conservative groups bash Cruz's choice for Iowa co-chair, By Eliza Collins


Trump’s most natural supporters are some of the people most disillusioned with politics. In the run-up to the 2014 elections, the Pew Research Center asked a broad group of Americans to rate their financial security on a sliding scale. As whites fall from the highest levels of financial security to the lowest levels, their support for Republican candidates plummeted from 51 percent to 21 percent. (Democrats’ support stayed constant around one-third.)

The remainder shifted almost fully into the “other/not sure” category, rather than moving into the Democratic column. Nearly all said they did not plan to vote that year. Trump’s candidacy may have activated a group of them, but converting them into voters remains difficult.

Meanwhile, the Civis Analytics data showing Trump at his strongest with registered voters who are not registered Republicans won’t be a barrier in every state primary, but it is a real obstacle nevertheless, starting in the first caucus state of Iowa. Only a small number of first-time participants usually join every four years, though Trump’s campaign is aiming to drive a generation of first-time caucus-goers and GOP primary voters into the process starting this February.

In a recent survey conducted for a different presidential campaign, Trump still ran ahead of Ted Cruz in Iowa — but only among voters who both could caucus in 2016 and have never actually shown up to one before. Past Republican caucus-goers, on the other hand, gave Cruz a solid first-place finish. One reason Trump’s polling lead in New Hampshire has proven more durable is that the state has an open primary system, instead of Iowa’s closed (and complicated) caucus.

Trump has been overcoming supposedly insurmountable obstacles since his presidential campaign began. But now that he has amassed these supporters, converting them from Trump fans into Trump voters may be the biggest one yet.