A parcel of public-opinion polls sprung on us in quick succession provide moments to remind us polls are essentially a mug’s game.

Their credibility is always in flux, are really just a snapshot in time, and not worth the risk of betting any long-run money.

They are often entertaining, yes, but they’re not foundational.

As former U.S, President Barack Obama said in evaluating his own position when it came to polls, “If the critics are right that I’ve made all my decisions based on polls, then I must not be very good at reading them.”

And then there is this from the late American humourist and newspaper columnist, Erma Bombeck, who said: “I haven’t trusted polls since I read 62% of women had affairs during their lunch hour. I’ve never met a women in my life who would give up lunch for sex.”

So there is that, too.

One of four polls just released by Forum Research indicates that two out of every three Canadians disapprove of U.S. President Donald Trump, which is likely right up there with the approval rating of the Zika virus, or the Toronto Maple Leafs wanting to trade rookie sensation Auston Matthews for five bucks and a fourth-round draft pick.

Such disapproval is wholly expected, of course.

Canadians, by and large, look down from their principled perch at Donald Trump, their progressiveness worn proudly on their liberal sleeves, and believe from their own set of high-minded values that our American cousins who elected Trump were clinically insane.

There is no other explanation.

America had simply gone berserk.

Meanwhile, here in the Great White North, the popularity of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is finally taking a hit, but it comes from the quieter crowd who took a chance on him when the Conservatives were tripping over their dog whistles during the 2015 election campaign — “barbaric cultural practices” et cetera — and now feel betrayed by leader more concerned with his international image than anything of domestic concern.

Trudeauland is starting to crumble, but few want to look.

They don’t want their political savior to be flawed, so the best recourse is to stick one’s head in the sand and pretend all is well.

Besides, if an election were held today, he’d still get a majority, although with lesser adoration.

Another Forum poll has the Trudeau government’s Islamophobia motion — M-103 — in dire need for more work, with 71% of Canadians believing in varying ways that the focus on one religion in particular should be removed because hatred of other religions is not exactly on the wane.

Jew-trashing, in fact, is returning to days not seen since I exposed Toronto’s Ernst Zundel back in the Seventies as being a neo-Nazi and Holocaust denier disguised as a benign representative of a concocted entity known as Concerned Parents of German Descent, all which led to his eventual deportation from Canada to a jail that was awaiting him in das Vaterland of Germany.

The reason for this sudden rise in the anger level? The coming of Donald Trump and the accompanying alt-right, of course.

As if it were that simple. As if it has nothing to do with the political elites disenfranchising great swaths of society and burdening them with taxes, debts and deficits, sinking health care, unaffordable utilities, and paycheque-to-paycheque existences.

As if it has nothing to do with the millennial generation feeling they will be worse off than their parents, and that today’s politicians have already tossed them to the wayside.

Anger rarely looks for rational outlets. It goes for the easiest jugular, even it is wrong and repulsive in sober reflection.

markbonokoski@gmail.com