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I feel that a part of this is the sheer non-presence and lack of authenticity behind most modern politicians. Contrast him to any other conservative politician in the last two decades and it isn't exactly hard to understand why he does so much better in this regard. The fact that he is actually the best vehicle for that inchoate rage and sense of resentment that has taken over so much of America adds to that as well - there's no way that his base would accept another empty suit who gives off the impression that he will immediately betray them once he gets into power.
Where's the US manufacturing sector? Do you live in some kind of alternative universe where there's no fentanyl/opioid epidemic? I think that there's actually a serious case to be made that a lot of the people in Trump's base are noticeably poorer than they were before, and the exact policies that Trump has made clear his opposition to were responsible. You're the first person I've encountered who claimed that the economic problems his base have been talking about just don't exist.
I feel like this is extremely uncharitable - this is the mirror image of the argument that Trump haters are simply immature people who hate their fathers, and that sense of childhood grievance is what actually informs their opposition to him. Deep down people who don't like Trump know that he's right and correct, but because they can't get over their daddy issues they just can't accept an authority figure who can tell them no.
Is there some yokel in a trailerpark somewhere who looked up from the crackpipe to vote for Trump due to some university educated SJW looking down on him? Sure, that dude probably exists somewhere, but you're doing yourself a disservice when you base your view of the world on people like that.
Their own leaders who they continue to support? No, the policies that have destroyed these communities were passed with bipartisan agreement. I think that the Republican leaders prior to Trump were corrupt ghouls who pursued policies responsible for untold suffering in order to enrich themselves and profit from the public purse, but it isn't like the left had anything better to offer. Many people in the Trump base actually voted for Obama because they believed in the message of change - and then they saw what they actually got (policies identical to another 8 years of Bush).
I honestly don't know how much this can be fixed - the big mistake was in growing China into the industrial and manufacturing powerhouse it is now, and it isn't like Trump could just hit the "undo" button on policies which lead to China having 232 times the shipbuilding capacity of the US. The promise of Trump is that he at the very least would be trying to improve things as opposed to just taking a nice cut from the people making the problem worse.
I don't think that he's lying, but I'm perfectly willing to just go and ask him the next time he opens up for questions. He actually spent quite a while living in the areas he's talking about, and he's old enough that he actually has childhood memories of the 60s. He was actually there! While I'm open to the claim that you have a better understanding of the situation than he does, I'd want some actual evidence rather than just waving your hand in the direction of the evidence (especially seeing as how your opinion is conflicting with someone who was there at the time).
Not at all - if you're familiar with the rest of Greer's work, the actual reason (I think) he gives for this would be the combination of vast fossil fuel reserves, WW2 destroying the US' competition and the proceeds of empire all feeding back in to the prosperity enjoyed by America during those years. He's not advocating for some kind of GLORIVOS RETVRN, and he even explicitly makes the point elsewhere that he's not suggesting going back to the social values of those years.
Trump famously didn't give a shit about abortion and gave answers which embarrassed his base on the topic. Other republicans also don't give a shit about immigration (they make a lot of noise about it to get elected, but they don't actually do anything to solve the problem because too many of them financially profit from the illegal immigration situation). The strongest point you make there is talking about things that were "at odds with the reality of policy under the Trump administration", but the general belief in his base was that he was hamstrung by a Republican establishment that hated him as well as a deep state that was actively fighting against him at every turn. There's a decent amount of truth to those claims as well, enough that these people can maintain their faith in him.
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