Who Is the Silent Majority?

The Great Silent Majority.

Richard Nixon (1913-1994). Speech. 1969

“Silent majority” is an unspecific large majority in a group or a country who do not express their opinion publicly.

“Silent majority” is a term made famous in 1969 by President Richard Nixon when he asked for public support for ending the Vietnam War.

“Silent majority” is perceived by progressives to be a not-so-subtle reference to conservative white people - evangelicals, Tea Party members, and Republicans - particularly in the South and Midwest – who disagree with liberal policies but who are either too stupid or too inarticulate to say so.

"Silent majority" is thought of by conservatives as people on their side of the political ledger who have
make up their base but who not gone to the polls in sufficient numbers to win national Presidential elections.

“Silent majority” is a term frequently evoked by Donald Trump as a group of people who want “to make America great again.” In a recent tweet prior to a gathering of 20,000 people in Alabama Trump tweeted “ We’re going to have a wild time in Alabama tonight! Finally, the silent majority is back.”

Or does the “silent majority” consist of Americans, 61% of whom say the country is headed in the wrong direction, because of a sluggish economy, lack of quality jobs, decline in middle class incomes, an unpopular health law, and disarray, defeats, and lack of strategy in U.S. foreign policy.

Members of the “silent majority” may be most concentrated in the rural American South where poverty , poor education , access to quality health care, and joblessness is most evident and pervasive.

In the rural South, Paul Theroux, comments in his book The Deep South, “the whites feel like a despised minority – different, defeated, misunderstood, meddled with, pushed around, cheated.”

It is in the South, where the most manufacturing jobs have been shipped to China, Mexico, and India. In the South, people feel that rich U.S. capitalists don’t care for them, and that the U.S. government spends more abroad than to destitute Southerners and adds to joblessness through EPA rules that close coal mines and drive up energy costs. And in the South, people feel paranoid and prejudiced against because of their belief in traditional moral values, marriage between man and women, fundamental Christian religions, heterosexual relationships rather than free-flowing secularism where opposite values prevail

Finally, many Southerners feel have been outvoted, outmaneuvered, put-propagandized, and out-organized .
It is to these Southerners and others of like believers, which may include the majority in the Middle Class, that Donald Trump has directed his tweets and his speeches about bringing workers back, sending illegal immigrants, back, about striking winning “deals” with foreign governments, and touting the Bible as his favorite book, with the Art of the Deal as a close second, not necessarily in that order.