No I WILL NOT understand, worry about or believe Trump voters about anything!!
Why I am so sick of the "worrying about the Trump voter, heartland people" meme? So the decent "midwest, heartland people" according to media are JUST SO HURT by the nasty elitists on the coasts. Boo hoo. We BULLY them, they imply. HA! Did they ever watch even five minutes of a Trump rally in the heartland?? They should because they apparently do not get the concept of who is doing the bullying!
Most of my life, media has, from the NEWS to television shows like The Waltons to Little House on the Prairie to so many of the westerns of the 1950’s and 1960‘s, portrayed the "heartland" as these noble people who worked so much harder than the immigrant families like my family; that it was their (protestant) Christian religious fervor and decency that was protecting the “invisible people “, like me, a child of immigrants; or people of color escaping the slave states, or Chinese railroad labor. In other shows, I was filled with images of immigrants like my family being mobsters; black people being lazy, reefer smoking, not so bright or criminals; Mexicans as either simple minded farmers or bandidos; and women as happy as a lark when they had that rich husband who worked while they wore their pearls and heels, happily baking cookies for after school.
I was a latch key kid before the word was popular, my mother and most of the women in our row toiled for low pay in textile mills, and our fathers were blue collar workers, on the rise thanks to unions. Still our block had its share of abusive drunks, racists, and sexists, even tho’ many of them had fresh memories of the racism used against them, their parents/grandparents over the first half of the 20th century. But mostly they were good hardworking people on the east coast.
I was a teen when I began to shake off the memes pushed by television with the help of MAD magazine, The Twilight Zone and books like To Kill a Mockingbird or The Source or Exodus. Even though my parents had little education they were readers, especially my dad who was the one suggesting reads to me. In books I could learn history I was NEVER taught about how horribly Native Americans were treated by white settlers; how many ethnic people were told they were not worthy because of their (catholic or Jewish) religion and swarthy skin, began to come to light when I sought out the information. After my mother died way too young at age 55, through my grieving I began to seek out even more about where she was born, about her ancestors in Sicily, often portrayed as nothing but criminals in the USA. This led me to more reading about all cultures.
In my mid twenties I moved to southwest (CO) where many of my new neighbors, colleagues and friends were transplants like me, but they mostly came in from KS, NE, IA, IN, OH and WI where to many I was one of those “east coast liberals”, a label I got when our teachers’ union went on strike the second year I was there and I became one of many outspoken leaders. Met a few native Coloradans too. A few of them proudly bragged about owning acres of land their great great grandparents acquired during the land grabs of the Homestead Act. Some of them told me about how in their towns in the 1950s, dating catholics was as bad as dating “coloreds”. A few casually used the derisive “wop” to me when saying how their parents did not trust “Eye-talians” cause of the Mafia and all that. Sigh! Of course my ancestors only came to the USA in the generation before me, as babies. We were not big landowners. Some of my new friends whose heritage is Mexican American told me their ancestors had lived in parts of CO forever, when it was actually a part of Mexico but no longer owned their land. I began to wonder why some thought they were superior for being land owners when basically their ancestors had free reign from the government to take it from the Native Americans or Mexicans by any means, with their help.
So what’s my beef here? One more thought, if you will, before I answer. I am currently reading “The Only Woman in the Room”, a book based on the life of Hedy Lamarr. While it is somewhat biographical, it is classified as historical fiction. It is the story of her marriage, one her parents thought would protect them from the political turmoil swirling around them, as a young Jewish woman (Hedy Kiesler in Austria in the 1930s) to an Austrian Arms dealer, before she escaped from him and the Nazis to America to become a movie star and inventor. In one scene in the book she and her husband are entertaining Benito Mussolini. The Italian leader makes an anti-Semitic remark (her husband was not Jewish and her ethnicity is hidden from the Austrian public). This shocked her as she had been led to believe Mussolini was not so anti Semitic as Hitler. According to many, he was not until it was convenient, as in the potential alliance between Italy and Germany. In the fictional scene, Mussolini says: “Culture is, of course, the best vehicle to inculcate the people with fascist ideology, which is the best for all countries.” THIS struck a familiar chord. I could not find proof of this exact quote but much of what I researched showed is a good summary sentence of Mussolini’s beliefs.Jews in Fascist Italy
Trump’s entire rally politics is about two things: HIMSELF and the white supremacy culture that cheers him, and I believe he and his enablers are pushing us to FASCISM. It seems to work best, though not exclusively in much of the heartland. The so called “elitists” of the coasts have our own share of racists, white supremacy, but what we also have is cities filled with diversity. The diversity is not new but ever changing as to what new cultures settle in our cities. Yes some of those cities are in the midwest: cities like Chicago; or smaller cities like South Bend, IN or Lansing MI, or Cedar Rapids IA. So why do I still hear about the insecurity of the white people in the midwest from democratic leaders/candidates as if there is some plot somewhere that is being planned by “coastal elites” to ignore and insult and destroy those apparently very fragile people. I have forced myself to watch some of Trump’s rallies from the midwest. They are filled with white bullies, cheering every insult hurled by pos potus at immigrants, at women, at democrats. This is not just cheering on the politics. It is cheering on the dehumanizing of immigrants; the attacks on the poor, on women, on people of color, on anyone not believing in the nasty dear leader’s perceived enemies. Yet, like last night with Mayer Pete, or other times with Biden, or Klobuchar, and other democratic leaders saying/implying that “Trump voters of the heartland feel bullied.” WHAAAAATTTTT ???
So my answer! I am sick and tired of democrats, any of them, telling the rest of us we need to reach out to the racists, the sexists, the white supremacists who put this monster and his enablers into office. I don’t think we can change them any more than decent people were able to change the enthusiastic Nazis of the 1930s who wanted, needed scapegoats. Dammit, stop giving them a pass. A huge majority of us have “economic insecurity” and have lost the better paying jobs but we do NOT blame immigrants, or people of color or women in the work force. We know it because of the corporate greed and the republican party starting back with Nixon, going on steroids with Reagan that worked hard to destroy unions; destroy democratic governance by allowing big money and big business to buy congress, mostly R but too many dems. Some of us have been trying to explain this to those so called Reagan dems, union types who went Reagan and republican even AFTER he destroyed the unions and resurrected the robber barons. I do not want to hear Amy Klobuchar or Pete Buttigieg or Joe Biden or Beto or ANYONE talking to me about “across the aisle” bullsh*t. President Obama bent over backwards crossing the aisle, reaching out to the nasty racist bullies who met the night of his first inauguration with Luntz to PLEDGE to destroy his presidency. And it did not change them or their hearts or their plans. Greed, power and party over country has been the anthem of the right since Watergate and for some since FDR’s New Deal. They are using culture in the same way Mussolini did and we need to not pander to that.
So I am done with any politician who tells me that those Trump voters matter; that I should understand them; cajole them; pander to them. NO THANKS. My time and money will be given to candidates for GOTV, making sure people get their votes counted and stopping the bigots from having a voice.
PS: Last night, I had my first real glimpse of hope in a politician, watching Chris Hayes’ one hour town hall with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I am seventy-three. She is twenty-nine and I would follow, work for that young woman’s candidacy in a heartbeat, if she was old enough to run. Then my second glimpse of hope came from Rachel Maddow’s interview with Adam Schiff. We do have a slew of progressive politicians who do not feel the need to pander to the myth of the poor heartland Trump voters. Those are the ones we need, I NEED, to support.
