‘It’s these damn bunch of crybaby *racial slurs* ruining our country’

Mod­er­ate lib­er­al jour­nal­ists be like:

‘Trump sup­port­er George stared out the win­dow of his row house in small town red state, a card­board cut out of Trump stands in the cor­ner. “It’s these damn bunch of cry­ba­by *racial slur* and *racial slur* and *racial slur* ru­in­ing our coun­try.” Life has been hard for George out in Trump coun­try, in re­cent years he’s lost his wife, son, broth­er, un­cle, cousin, fa­ther, and sec­ond wife to opi­ates. Since the steel mill closed in the ac­tu­al 1970s, se­ri­ous­ly most of these closed 40 years ago now, he’s strug­gled to keep reg­u­lar em­ploy­ment even with the fed­er­al­ly-fund­ed free job re­train­ing pro­grams avail­able to him. He cur­rent­ly lives off wel­fare. “I don’t see the irony of com­plain­ing about mi­nori­ties who don’t work leach­ing off the gov­ern­ment,” he says to me. He likes Trump’s idea of the Wall. I gloss over George’s racism be­cause it doesn’t fit my nar­ra­tive about the no­ble dis­en­fran­chised White blue col­lar worker.

‘Across town, I speak with Nan­cy at her trail­er, Fox News is play­ing in the back­ground. She used to have a good union job but af­ter re­peat­ed­ly vot­ing for Re­pub­li­cans that dis­man­tled the union sys­tem, she now works part time at Wal­mart for marked­ly less than a liv­ing wage, a thing she also votes against. “Trump tells it like it is,” says Nan­cy. Things have been hard for Nan­cy out in Trump coun­try. She’s had to sup­port her­self and her hus­band since he lost his job when the lo­cal coal mine closed af­ter it stopped yield­ing min­er­als an ac­tu­al 20 years ago. He died from opi­ates last year. I asked her about the sex­u­al abuse charges against Trump. “Fake news” she re­sponds with­out look­ing away from the tele­vi­sion. Nan­cy is a pitiable rube who is prone to the same emo­tion­al ma­nip­u­la­tion from the me­dia I’m us­ing with my readers.

‘I dri­ve across the di­lap­i­dat­ed town de­scrib­ing the board­ed up build­ings in ex­act­ing de­tail, be­cause pover­ty tourism is emo­tion­al­ly com­pelling, to speak with the only peo­ple whose de­mo­graph­ics re­flect the ac­tu­al ma­jor­i­ty of Trump sup­port­ers. Tom and his wife Barb are up­per mid­dle class white peo­ple and sur­prise! They vot­ed for Hillary be­cause only poor peo­ple are stu­pid enough to vote for Trump. I don’t get the irony that I hold the same be­lief that rich peo­ple are in­trin­si­cal­ly bet­ter than poor peo­ple as the Trump sup­port­ers I’m pro­fil­ing. “We tried to get them to vote for Hillary,” he says, “but they are just too poor to get it.” Barb agrees, re­mark­ing, “Maybe if they made the me­di­an in­come of $72,000 of Trump sup­port­ers ver­sus the $39,000 of Hillary sup­port­ers, they would have vot­ed for Hillary.”

‘My time in small town red state was eye open­ing. As I re­flect­ed on the lives of these peo­ple from my $6,000 a month con­do in Lib­er­al San Fran­cis­co, I re­al­ized de­spite all tan­gi­ble ev­i­dence to the con­trary, the poors are what is ru­in­ing this coun­try and we need to re­al­ly un­der­stand that to progress.’
 
 

—na­tal­ie michelle

Flom­mist Na­tal­ie Michelle does­n’t have a bio. She just rants. Copy­right © 2017 Na­tal­ie Michelle. Pho­to: Lewis W. Hine, Work­er set­ting eyes in sleep­ing dolls, Paragon Rub­ber Com­pa­ny and Amer­i­can Char­ac­ter Doll, East­hamp­ton, Mass., De­cem­ber 1936. © In­ter­na­tion­al Cen­ter of Pho­tog­ra­phy, gift of the Na­tion­al Archives, Wash­ing­ton, DC, 1975, source.

MOR D’ARTÍCULOS  MOR FLOMM !

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