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.
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