By Glynn Wilson –

WASHINGTON, D.C. — On the eve of the Independence Day celebration in the nation’s capital and around the country on the Fourth of July, patriotic American pride and national morale are showing record lows, according to public opinion research, largely based on the disgraceful performance of the occupant of the White House and in spite of President Donald Trump’s campaign slogan to “Make America Great Again,” a new Gallup poll shows.

“Record-low American patriotism is the latest casualty of the sharply polarized political climate in the U.S. today,” Gallup concludes in its analysis of the numbers. “For the second time in 19 years, fewer than half of U.S. adults say they are extremely proud to be Americans. The decline reflects plummeting pride among Democrats since Trump took office…

“Absent a significant national event that might rally all Americans around the flag, given Democrats’ entrenched views of the president,” Gallup continues, “these historically low readings on American pride are likely to continue until Trump is no longer in office.”

As Americans prepare to celebrate the Fourth of July holiday, their pride in the U.S. has hit its lowest point since Gallup first asked questions to measure this. Fewer than half of those polled, 45 percent, said they were “extremely” proud to be Americans, marking the second consecutive year that this reading is below the majority level, according to Gallup.

Of course Democrats continue to lag far behind Republicans in expressing extreme pride in the U.S., since only 22 percent of Democrats say they have extreme pride in America, the lowest in Gallup’s 19 years of asking these questions. That’s cut in half from what it was in the months before Trump took office.

The highest readings on the measure, 69 percent and 70 percent, were between 2002 and 2004, after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, when the American public expressed high levels of patriotism and rallied around the U.S. government. Yet, since the start of George W. Bush’s second presidential term in 2005, fewer than 60 percent of Americans have expressed extreme pride in being American.

“The latest overall declines in patriotism are largely driven by Democrats, whose self-reported pride has historically been lower and has fluctuated more than Republicans’,” Gallup says.

While 76 percent of Republicans say they remain proud of their country, the number is 10 points below the high recorded in 2003, when Americans rallied behind the president and the government in the wake of the attacks on U.S. soil on September 11, 2001 and before it was revealed by the press that the war in Iraq was based on bad intelligence about weapons of mass destruction on the ground in Iraq.

Even when Barack Obama was in office, the extreme pride of Republicans’ never fell below 68 percent.

Independents have historically been less proud of the U.S. than Republicans, and that’s even more true now. Only 41 percent of self-identified political independents express extreme pride, again the lowest number since Gallup has been measuring the trend.

In new questions in this year’s June poll, Gallup asked Americans how they felt about government.

While 91 percent of Americans said they felt proud of the nation’s scientific achievements, 89 percent said they were proud of the U.S. military, 85 percent expressed pride in American culture and the arts, only 75 percent said the same thing about the country’s economic achievements and 73 percent named sporting achievements. Another 72 percent said they were proud of achievements in racial and ethnic diversity and religion, although it’s not clear what Gallup and the respondents were talking about there.

On the other hand, only 37 percent of Americans said they were proud of the country’s health and welfare system, and only 32 percent said they were proud of the political system.

Of course there were large disparities by party affiliation. Only 42 percent of Republicans and 25 percent of Democrats said there were reasons to be proud of the government and the political system.

It is doubtful that Trump’s planned “salute” to the American military will change any attitudes, since the event will most likely only be supported by his faithful political base and protests and boycotts are being planned by everyone else.

On July 2, with two days to go before the Fourth of July, the largest national park campground in the D.C. area remained largely empty, even though it had been packing out on the weekends all spring and summer until this week.