INDEPENDENCE DAY has taken a different feeling this year for many Americans, and recent polls have revealed just how much the presidency of Donald Trump has eroded the extreme pride we collectively feel about our country and our democracy.
According to the latest Gallup poll released last Monday, July 2, fewer U.S. adults are extremely proud to be an American since the height of patriotism after the attack on U.S. soil in 9/11. Only 47 percent said they feel that way about being American, and this was down from a majority 51 percent last year.
According to Newsweek, the surge was at 70 percent in 2003, and the numbers went down when U.S. went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, Gallup polling history would show a majority of Americans remained extremely proud to be American all through the Bush and Obama years, until Trump came along.
Corollary to this finding was the result of a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll released last Fall that revealed the share of Americans saying they are NOT proud of democracy in this country is increasing. Thirty six percent of Americans described their sentiments as such, which is double the number found in the 2014 General Social Survey, when 18 percent said they were not proud of our democracy, and four times as high as the 2002 polling results.
Americans were not the only ones with eroding pride in the United States. A June 2017 Pew Research Center revealed that the rest of the world’s opinion of the U.S. has also declined since Trump became president. A Newsweek report citing Pew Research stated that, “both confidence in the U.S. president and views of the U.S. had declined in just a few months since Trump entered the White House.”
IS THIS MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN?
* * *
Gel Santos Relos is the anchor of TFC’s “Balitang America.” Views and opinions expressed by the author in this column are solely those of the author and not of Asian Journal and ABS-CBN-TFC. For comments, go to www.TheFil-AmPerspective.com, https://www.facebook.com/Gel.Santos.Relos
