What the Trump supporters, at their best, have been trying to tell the smart, rich, coastal types, is that we are living in that nation that we were promised, and it doesn’t suck; we don’t suck.
The Dems were expecting a landslide win for their boy Joe Biden, and they didn't get it. They still don't know why. Since election day, we've been treated to trash missives about the supposed problem with the fact that half of the nation that voted for Trump, many of them for the second time, and a whole hell of a lot of them for the first.
Nikole Hannah-Jones wants us to know that non-black minorities are racist and clueless and just don't get it. In trying to explain away why many minority voters bled red rather than going blue as expected, Hannah-Jones said "we're heading towards a destiny where there is no racial majority, the lack of understanding of history and the how race works in this country is going to be an increasing journalistic liability."
Being an "increasing journalistic liability" is something Nikole Hannah-Jones knows a lot about.
Tom Nichols wrote in a piece for The Atlantic that Trump voters "chose Trump because they thought he was 'just like them'" and they "turned out to be right."
"Now, by picking him again," he wrote, "those voters are showing that they are just like him: angry, spoiled, racially resentful, aggrieved, and willing to die rather than ever admit that they were wrong."
"Willing to die," Nichols wrote. And he probably actually believes that his fellow citizens are as deranged as he is.
Nichols has no idea what he's talking about. And he mirrors Hannah-Jones in continuing to call out these people as the racist, hateful ones.
Molly Ball wrote in Time that under Trump's leadership the nation has become one "unpersuaded by kumbaya calls for unity and compassion, determined instead to burrow ever deeper into mutual antagonism."
And yet, none of these thoughtful, compassionate writers who want so badly to point blame at Trump and their fellow Americans have any clue as to why Trump would remain popular, why people would give him voice or find solace in his leadership.
Do Hannah-Jones, Nichols, and Ball not ever wander out into the great rest of our nation to see the multitudes of non-urban mixed-race couples, mixed-race toddlers at barbecues, LBGT+ goth and heavy metal teens with full tattooed sleeves and abundant piercings? Do they not see that these people who people our nation are sharing the same space, far from the universities and newsrooms where journalists and pundits have learned and peddled their trades?
What the Trump supporters, at their best, have been trying to tell the smart, rich, coastal types, is that we are living in that nation that we were promised, and it doesn't suck; we don't suck. That there are still concerns, and they are visible, but they are also addressable and winnable—and not through derision and shame but through a unity of individuals working their hardest to lead lives of meaning, with respect and care for their fellow citizens.
We are not a racist, hate-fueled nation. We are not solipsistic, selfish, miserable, petulant people. Instead we are Americans– we all of us, and we love this country. The division that has been sowed comes more from the Democratic left, which has been intent on resistance and disunity since the big, bad, orange man took office.
For four years we have been treated to tirades about how miserable and horrible those who voted for Trump are, how they are treasonous, heathenish betrayers, white supremacists, destroyers. It has simply not been proven true.
These journalistic liabilities, like Hannah-Jones, Nicholls, Ball and their many, seething brethren, would do well to remove the blinders from their eyes and see the true nation, one that is based more in individual rights than group think, one that is not ashamed of who they are, their skin colour, or where they came from. The elite classes harbour their own shame, and they are wrong to foist it on the rest of us.
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