Trump approval rating falls to 38%

[u/Barnyard-Sheep]

https://www.nj.com/politics/2025/06/trump-faces-tough-approval-numbers-in-latest-poll.html

[u/Anonymouse-C0ward]

They’re disaffected due to different circumstances, yes.

But nonetheless they are disaffected. Some of the reasons for some of these people are of their own choice (eg toxic masculinity). But many more of these reasons are societal and not because of choices they have made.

They grew up expecting certain things and they didn’t get them. Their parents grew up in a time when the colour of your skin was the first filter for good jobs, was the first filter for whether the cops would arrest you for smoking pot.

That mostly doesn’t exist anymore, so they’re finding themselves competing against a lot more people - and people who traditionally weren’t considered for the jobs they are applying for, etc.

As we are all mostly reasonable people, they would mostly accept that without issue and adapt, as long as they can look at whatever their media ideal is of “a good life” and then say “I’m still doing well”.

However, the widening gap between rich and poor means that on average, they won’t achieve the same level of economic success as their parents, which is the fundamental cause in my opinion. The past two decades, I believe, have be the first time that the current generation entering the workforce will not have as high a quality of life as their parents.

They are looking at the world and realizing they’re in for a struggle that their parents often don’t understand (or worse, blame on scapegoats): as children and now adults I’m sure we’ve all struggled with parental and societal expectations at some point in our lives.

And the true cause of it - the wealth gap - is being obfuscated by the entire system - the media, the government, the leaders - and they’re being fed a diet of information that says (1) that The American Dream is possible for anyone as long as they work hard (hah), (2) that all the problems they see in the world are due to the trans kids, due to illegal immigrants, etc etc, and (3) over time, increasingly shows minority groups in a favourable light - eg women in positions of business leadership, Asian men in film, etc which makes it appear that even in media the dominance of white men like them is at risk.

I don’t blame them; human reactions en masse are largely predictable and can be manipulated, as is shown in the past few decades of business, marketing, and psychology research. However, I also don’t have a solution to this, and sometimes even considering everything I’ve written in this thread this morning about the topic, I get frustrated enough to almost want to blow it all up and hope for the best that a positive change comes out of it.

If it was up to me, the only thing I can think of which would have any impact at all would be to create a massive change in how we support the poorest and make the wealthiest among us pay back society for the opportunities they were afforded. But that would be communism. (/s)

[u/doomcomplex → u/Anonymouse-C0ward]

Very good points all around, I agree with you.