More polling results, these from a Wall Street Journal/University of Chicago survey (unrated by 538). And the results are near shocking.
In 1998, when the Journal first asked if patriotism and religion were "very important" to respondents, 70% said patriotism was, and 62% said religion. Today, only 38% of respondents said patriotism was very important to them, and 39% said religion.
It seems the U.S. is well on its way to European faith, for which Americans can thank Trumpian evangelical Christians, the Platonic Ideal of hypocritical callousness. As for patriotism, see below, remarks on Trump and U.S. degeneration.
This particular result is less shocking than it is easily discernible: "Tolerance for others, deemed very important by 80% of Americans as recently as four years ago, has fallen to 58% since then."
My explanation for that finding would be the following. Four years ago, only the vast anti-Trump crowd had good reason to be intolerant: Trumpers, put simply, are intolerable. Now, with the far-leftist-radical-socialist-Marxist Joe Biden in the White House, the Trumpers are more irrationally intolerant than ever toward sane, sensible, sober Americans. And so the nation has undergone a dramatic upswing in overall intolerance.
The pollster, Bill McInturff, tried to make sense of the numbers, telling the Journal that "perhaps the toll of our political division, Covid and the lowest economic confidence in decades is having a startling effect on our core values."
The Journal adds that since its first polling of traditional American values, "A number of events have shaken and in some ways fractured the nation...; among them the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the financial crisis of 2008 and subsequent economic downturn and the rise" of Trump.
I would place the weightiest emphasis on Americans' misunderstanding, or misperception, of the economy — it's doing much better than the public appreciates — and the utter rot that Trump has introduced into political life. His continuing, pervasive presence on the national stage is as embarrassing to conscientious Americans as it is degrading before the world.
My assertion about Trump's toxic influence on the nation's psyche is more than opinion. It's a statistical truism. Observes the Journal: "The share who said other countries are better than the U.S. rose to 27%, up from 19% when the same question was asked in 2016."
Should Trump make back it back to the White House, that current percentage will rise to at least 50%.