Explaining the Trump Phenomenon

[TheOldSchool]

Never started a CDZ thread before. I post this thread with 100% sincerity. I found this article just now using StumbleUpon. It's written by a writer on a site that usually only cares about comedy, but it attempts to explain the rural appeal of Trump to people from urban areas, by an author who was raised in a rural area. I was pretty moved by it.

Since it's the CDZ, I will bitch and whine to mods if you troll my virgin CDZ thread . I'm actually interested in reading honest responses.

Here it is (don't get pissed about the title if you're a Trump supporter, it's intended to catch liberals eyes. The rest is genuine.):

How Half Of America Lost Its F**king Mind

 

[SYTFE]

My psychic powers tell me that you're going to get some very high quality responses in this thread.

 

[TheOldSchool]

My psychic powers tell me that you're going to get some very high quality responses in this thread.

Did you read the article?

 

[Dale Smith]

Never started a CDZ thread before. I post this thread with 100% sincerity. I found this article just now using StumbleUpon. It's written by a writer on a site that usually only cares about comedy, but it attempts to explain the rural appeal of Trump to people from urban areas, by an author who was raised in a rural area. I was pretty moved by it.

Since it's the CDZ, I will bitch and whine to mods if you troll my virgin CDZ thread . Assholes . I'm actually interested in reading honest responses.

Here it is (don't get pissed about the title if you're a Trump supporter, it's intended to catch liberals eyes. The rest is genuine.):

How Half Of America Lost Its F**king Mind

Rural America has been under attack by the authors of Agenda 21 and the Club Of Rome (which is an offshoot of the U.N of wealthy communist global elites that wanted to kill the middle class using the blueprint written by those that wrote the Iron Mountain Report) since the apex of the middle class was achieved in 1971. Do you know why Trump resonates with so many? It's because under these incredibly unfair trade agreements, jobs have been leaving this country to the point that America has become nothing but a service economy where we produce nothing but arms and military equipment for those that fight proxy wars for the multi-national corporations that USA.INC has a majority shareholder stake in.

We are all debt slaves and we own nothing that can't be confiscated because we do not have allodial rights to property. They started using the building of roads to kill small towns by bypassing them in order to squeeze them into surrendering their property and moving to larger cities. It's a very gradual plan to make rural communities a thing of the past where the BLM and multi-national corporations can basically starve them into selling cheap. It sickens me to see what is happening to this country but I certainly understand the tactics and the motives and it has nothing to do with race or political parties. It is the uninformed and purse swingers that try to spin it that way.,

 

[cnelsen]

That is a well-written, interesting, and insightful article that gets everything right except the main point. It is not a country vs city thing, or even a rich vs poor thing. The very poorest, most rural areas are found in places like Mississippi and Brownsville, TX, and they are overwhelmingly behind Clinton.

Increasingly, as diversity (i.e., not you, white boy) is our strength:

 

[320 Years of History]

You know, Mr. Wong seems like a decent writer, but his article, considering that it comes to me as the first I'm aware of him, I'm disinclined to take him seriously. Why? Quite simply, I don't know for sure that the man seriously believes all what he wrote in that blog post. Reading his remarks, rant is more what I think it now, I felt like I was on a rollercoaster built of emotional climbs followed by rational drops. Paragraph after paragraph I felt like, "Yeah, okay. I'll buy that. Keep going," and sure as God made little green apples, there'd immediately thereafter come the "What the f*ck? Oh, hell, no!" moment. The point being that the man's observations struck me a being "on point," but the conclusions and inferences he draws from them seem little but a "hot mess."

Let me illustrate what I mean with a theme Wong raises in the middle of the post.

Wong's post attempts to present (among other things) the economic schisms dividing nation as one of rich/city-dwellers versus poor/pastoral peoples. But it's not that at all; it's about behaving in an economically rational way or not. Wong writes:

"Hard work is better than dependence on government....These are people [rural Americans] who come from a long line of folks who took pride in looking after themselves. Where I'm from, you weren't a real man unless you could repair a car, patch a roof, hunt your own meat, and defend your home from an intruder. It was a source of shame to be dependent on anyone -- especially the government. You mowed your own lawn and fixed your own pipes when they leaked, you hauled your own firewood in your own pickup truck.​

Yes, absolutely. I'm indifferent about whether one does that in a city or in rural America. I fully buy into the idea of working hard, being self sufficient, taking control of one's life, doing what one needs to do when it needs doing.

Right after that, however, he proceeds to contrast country folk with city apartment dwellers whom he describes as "waiting for the landlord any time something breaks, knowing if things get too bad they can just pick up and move. When you don't own anything, it's all somebody else's problem." Well, I have news for Wong: apartment dwellers everywhere wait for the landlord to come fix things that break. Whether one lives in the city, suburbs, exurbs or countryside, moving when things get too bad is the sensible, rational thing to do.

Do folks need literally to see the "tornado of change" spinning toward them 500 yards distant before moving crosses their mind? Yet the attitudes I hear expressed by folks living in what Wong calls "Trump country" suggest that even if that "tornado" were bearing down on them, they wouldn't friggin' move. They just want to jump in a ditch and hope the "tornado" doesn't whirl directly over them, or that "cow" doesn't fall out of the darn thing and land right on them, or "2x4" doesn't slam into them. WTF? Who does that? Where is the sense in that?

I understand that one may want to, in one's hamlet that's 30 miles from a town that's in turn 50 miles from a suburb that's still 20 miles from a city, work hard, be self-sufficient, and so on. But if one is either unwilling or unable to there do so and thrive, then the time for being there and trying to do has passed and staying and griping about the fact that times have changed is not going to makes one's situation better.

People here think I perhaps don't "get it," but they are mistaken. I was raised in the city, not a big city by any means (population ~500K), but the city nonetheless. We went to the country for a couple weeks several times a year. It was wonderful. It was quiet. It was charming. The people were nice and friendly and polite. Nobody got shot. Maybe some folks did drugs; I wouldn't have known. I grew up, but the pull of "small town America" remained, and so when I'd become able to do so, I bought a place at the shore, then I got one in the mountains. I love them both dearly, but I don't live there and I didn't move there. I didn't because there's nothing for me to do there that will allow me to earn a living. By the same token, my cousins who were raised in rural America, whom I see at family gatherings we all adore and that happen in the middle of nowhere, left rural America for the very same reason I didn't move into it. They can't make a decent living there any more than I can.

In my family, we say, "you can't get blood from a turnip." We all like turnips, but when one needs blood, a turnip is of no value. It's simply a matter of rationally considering the situation at hand and making a choice based on what it is rather than what one wishes it were. Doing that isn't a matter of being provincial or cosmopolitan. It's a matter merely of being sensible, rational and realistic.​

Keep all that in mind as you read the next section. If the irrationality underpinning what Wong writes hasn't yet struck you, it should after reading what comes next.

Wong writes:

See, rural jobs used to be based around one big local business -- a factory, a coal mine, etc. When it dies, the town dies. Where I grew up, it was an oil refinery closing that did us in. I was raised in the hollowed-out shell of what the town had once been. The roof of our high school leaked when it rained. Cities can make up for the loss of manufacturing jobs with service jobs --small towns cannot. That model doesn't work below a certain population density.​

Remember above, Wong wrote about self-sufficiency. Well, just how much of that trait is seen in one's depending on the manufacturer's business decisions for one's own sufficiency? Nothing makes "crying the blues while waiting for the landlord to repair one's leaky roof" different in ethos than "crying the blues while waiting for the manufacturer to come back." In both situations, one is not depending on oneself, one is depending on someone else, someone who owns something, be it the factory owner or the apartment building owner. That should not come as a surprise to anyone. The U.S. is a capitalist democracy and that means that owning a piece of a factor of production is the way to thrive. It's never not been that way in America.

Wong hit the nail on the head writing, "When you don't own anything, it's all somebody else's problem." Well that's precisely what I'm hearing from "Trump country": it's the city people's fault; it's the liberals' fault; it's the capitalists'/industrialists' fault. It's somebody's fault other than their own. The factory moved out, but just whose fault is it that when it did, the folks in "Trump country" who used to work there didn't move out too. Why did they stay? That's of course a rhetorical question because whatever reason they had for staying, there's still nobody else to blame for the fact that they did stay. (Yes, of course, there're exceptions, but neither I nor Wong are talking about the exceptions.)

And to what end pray, tell? That the rest of us who "read the writing on the wall" can listen to them blaming everyone but themselves for the fact they refused to leave their bucolically charming village where there's no work and they haven't bought a farm or a mine, or whatever? Well, frankly, though I have sympathy for those folks finding themselves as they are, I'm tired of hearing their constant carrying on, most especially so because those folks, like Trump, persist in blaming someone else for what's not going the way they wish. Not everything in my life has gone my way either, but I don't blame someone else for it being so.

Wong's right writing that when a large manufacturer departs a rural area that exists almost entirely because the factory was there, the locality is thrust into depression. The first question that makes any sense to ask if one dwells in the countryside, particularly one where the factory is gone is, "What model does work at lower population densities and what must 'I' do to make that model work for me?" Well, the answer is there is a model that works once the factory is gone. That model is called "own something that allows you to produce something that others, be they near or far, want to and will buy from 'you'" If one determines one cannot or will not do that in the countryside, remaining in the countryside is not such a good idea. And here' the thing: the time to have asked oneself that question and rigorously endeavored to answer it objectively is not now, some years after the factory is gone, but rather when it first became apparent the factory owner planned to vacate the town.​

And therein is the problem. I hear "Trump country" talking about self-sufficiency and "being a man," and so on, yet when it comes (came) time for them to exhibit precisely that trait, they didn't do it. They had a "good job." Did they start planning for the change that was coming when the factory's production volumes began to decline? No. Did they do so when the factory management announced its egress? No. That's a very different circumstance than that of someone who never had a "good job" in the first place. Neither were the folks in "Trump country" screwed over because the factory snuck out of town on the DL.

So, no, what we're seeing isn't "country folks vs. city folks." It's seeing what opportunity exists or doesn't, what opportunity is coming is not coming, and dealing with it. Birds sense cold weather coming, so they fly south. Chess players see they have a "bad bishop" or that they can "pin" the opponent's piece, so they act accordingly. People see that it's about to rain, so they find shelter. Always is the "writing on the wall" no matter how great or small be the topic. It's a matter of bothering to pay attention to it, and when one does not, it's not anyone else's fault.

 

[Toronado3800]

Trump supporters largely are not idiots. They do root for vague ideals from a vaguely remembered past. Big government threw farmers (and the railroad I worked for) plenty of welfare in the 19th century using the Army to commit genociede and giving away the conquored lands and all.

After the equilibrium was reached when the spoils dried up the New Deal saved us from a Socialist Revolution the WWII eliminated the competition for 30 years creating a very difficult to reclaim "glory days"

If we could get a candidate like Donald without the hate but with the humor he would own this election.

 

[MarathonMike]

"If we could get a candidate like Donald without the hate but with the humor he would own this election."

The media can portray anything or anyone any way that it wants to. Trump does not hate, and he is not a Racist. He is for America. If you are a foreigner or a foreign interest you will not be the priority, like you have been under the Liberals. That has been distorted into hate and Racism since the media works for the Clinton campaign.

 

[yiostheoy]

Never started a CDZ thread before. I post this thread with 100% sincerity. I found this article just now using StumbleUpon. It's written by a writer on a site that usually only cares about comedy, but it attempts to explain the rural appeal of Trump to people from urban areas, by an author who was raised in a rural area. I was pretty moved by it.

Since it's the CDZ, I will bitch and whine to mods if you troll my virgin CDZ thread . I'm actually interested in reading honest responses.

Here it is (don't get pissed about the title if you're a Trump supporter, it's intended to catch liberals eyes. The rest is genuine.):

How Half Of America Lost Its F**king Mind

It is a rather funny essay.

In pure political terms however, Trump is a TV star and all of this TV audience has come out to vote for him.

That is what hijacked the GOP.

The GOP was the weaker of the 2 major parties and therefore it was easier for Trump to hijack it, which he did.

Trump has a few good ideas: (1) slow down immigration; (2) allow people their gun rights; (3) slap tariffs on China.

Trump however has really bad composure and delivery. He is a simpleton rich frat boy and although his Trump Towers idea was bold and became successful, his other ideas for investments were rash and ill advised.

He suffers from a huge flaw of not being able to take or follow advice so he would be a very bad chief executive.

All big business CEO's have proved to be ill equipped to be leaders of states and the Nation.

On November 8th we will all get to see how badly he has hurt the GOP.

If Hillary wins everything -- White House, Senate, and House Of Reps -- then Trump will have proved to be the worst thing for the GOP since Nixon.

 

[rdean]

So much truth is ignored by whoever wrote that article. Republicans have been the party of the rich for decades. Think Koch and others if their ilk. So why is the GOP so overly supported by the base? Because the base is racist. The GOP base is filled with KKK, Aryan Nation, Alt Right and others of that kind. As long as the GOP leadership hated Obama, the GOP base thinks the GOP elite is on their side.

 

[2aguy]

Trump is easy. The republicans said that if only they had the house and the Senate they could defeat democrats......the Tea Party and other conservatives went out and gave them huge, huge landslide elections that did just that....then they said...if only we had the Presidency.......and then they put up Romney....and even though they had majorities in both houses..which they said they would use to stop obama and obamacare..they didn't.....and they even backed amnesty for illegals.....

So....this time around, those who were establishment republicans, who had ignored the people who voted them into office, were taught a lesson...Republicans are not democrats...you can't lie to us and then expect us to just keep voting you power...the democrats....have woman who has lied and lied and betrayed them over and over again....and blacks who vote democrat 95% .......receive nothing for their support of democrats....but democrats don't care....they keep voting to give power to democrats but get nothing in return...

And each election ....even a squeaky clean guy like Romney...was savaged by the democrats and their democrat press........it has become so routine that Republicans are no longer going to allow it to happen......

And since republicans refuse to fight back, who prefer to get sand kicked in their face and not acknowledge it....were not wanted this cycle.......Actual republicans wanted a fighter....and that is why Trump won the primary with the largest vote totals for republicans.....he is a fighter and refused to roll over at the first dirty look from democrats...

It is really that simple.......

 

[2aguy]

So much truth is ignored by whoever wrote that article. Republicans have been the party of the rich for decades. Think Koch and others if their ilk. So why is the GOP so overly supported by the base? Because the base is racist. The GOP base is filled with KKK, Aryan Nation, Alt Right and others of that kind. As long as the GOP leadership hated Obama, the GOP base thinks the GOP elite is on their side.

Wrong....the base does not care about race....the only racist party in this country is the democrat party...which is obsessed with race...la raza, hispanic racist group, black lies matter, black racist group, obama..sat in an openly and proudly racist churh for 20 years.....bill clinton, his good freind and political mentor was j. william fulbright, a signer of the southern manifesto, clinton gave him the Presidential medal of freedom.....

Republicans do not obsess about race...they could not care less...the democrats...just listen to them...they are racism 24/7 always have been always will be....

 

[320 Years of History]

Other things Wong wrote that I find unacceptable, assuming the man was serious and/or factually accurate. (Direct quotes from the article open each bullet point and are italicized.)

• We country folk are programmed to hate the prissy elites.
  
  I don't know that he's right or wrong. I know that if one recognized having been thus programmed to hate, one should act to reprogram oneself and one should act to not pass on one's hateful attitudes, the programming, to one's children and rebuke one's friends and peers when they express hate. But of course, to do that, one must recognize that one has been so imbued, then recognize that there's something wrong with having been taught to hate, then care enough about it to alter it, and, lastly, actually act to alter it.
  
  
• I'm from a "blue" state -- Illinois -- but the state isn't blue. Freaking Chicago is blue.
  
  Yes, but people, not land, cast votes. I don't even know why Wong went down that road. It's among the most absurd ideas I've seen expressed, and I'm shocked that someone who seems to have some sense even broached it. Yes, if 151 folks living in a 300-person Illinois county somewhere are Republican, yes, the county is "red." So what! Our system is "one 'man,' one vote," not "one hectare, one hundred votes."
  
  
• Every TV show is about LA or New York, maybe with some Chicago or Baltimore thrown in. When they did make a show about us, we were jokes -- either wide-eyed, naive fluffballs (Parks And Recreation, and before that, Newhart) or filthy murderous mutants (True Detective, and before that, Deliverance).
  
  Sure there are such shows, but I guess he forgot about Andy Griffith, The Waltons, Little House on the Prairie, or even Falcon Crest, which was set in wine country, hardly an urban environment, and the characters were certainly not portrayed as "wide-eyed, naive fluffballs."
  
  
  
  
  
  There are tons of TV shows about folks in non-big city places; however, I suppose Wong never watched or heard of them. They're not even all or mostly shows from "way back when"....to name a few more:
  • Fargo -- I haven't seen this show, so I don't know if it depicts its characters as naive?
  • Wayward Pines -- I have seen this show. It's got a mix of naive characters and urbane ones, but it's nonetheless set in the middle of absolutely nowhere.
  • Vampire Diaries -- Okay, the main characters are mostly vampires, and yes, they kill people, but that they do isn't the focus of the show.
  • Salem -- Salem, Mass was not a bustling metropolis in the 1600s and some 400 years later, it still isn't.
  • Heart of Dixie
  • Glee - Mount Prospect, IL; population ~55K.

You know, the other shows Wong has conveniently forgotten exist are the one's that present city folks as just as much a bunch of "deplorables," nutjobs and "deers in the headlights" as are the country folks portrayed as such, and there's a long history of that. Who can forget "Lucy and Ricky Ricardo?" In the present day, one need only look to the Housewives series of shows...Beverly Hills, Orange County, Atlanta, New York. The most refreshing thing about those so-called reality shows is that they are produced as soap operas acted out by folks who seem to act like they aren't acting, for were it so that folks actually comport themselves as those people are shown to behave, humanity may as well hang it up right now.​

• What I did hear was several million comments about how if you ever ventured into the city, winding up in the "wrong neighborhood" meant you'd get dragged from your car, raped, and burned alive.
  
  Well, nothing could be farther from the truth, even if that does at any time happen. Blood-soaked local newscasts during the 1980s made it seem as if murder were D.C.'s and Philadelphia’s #1 product -- and the City of Brotherly Love, where homicides peaked at 503 in 1990, was hardly alone in being seen by Americans as fundamentally unsafe. It was the underlying message of nearly every TV cop show and film thriller made through the 1980s and ’90s: The city is dangerous, and you’re lucky to get out alive.
  
  But even with crime down, surely it’s still safer to live in the quiet countryside than it is in the city? It turns out that’s not true. According to a new study published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine, large cities in the U.S. are significantly safer than rural areas. The risk of injury death -- which counts both violent crime and accidents -- is more than 20% higher in the countryside than it is in large urban areas. “Perceptions have long existed that cities were innately more dangerous than areas outside of cities, but our study shows this is not the case,” writes the lead author, Dr. Sage R. Myers of the University of Pennsylvania and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia in a statement. Far from being violent death traps, a large city might just about be the safest place to live in the U.S.
  
  Now it’s true that the risk of homicide is greater in big cities than it is in the countryside. But the study, which analyzed 1,295,919 deaths from injury between 1999 and 2006, found the rate of dying from an unintentional injury is over 15 times higher than that of homicide for the population as a whole. Whether you live in rural areas or the city, you’re much less likely to die from a gunshot wound -- either from someone else or self-inflicted -- than one is in a simple accident. Especially car crashes, which make up the bulk of unintentional injury deaths -- motor-vehicle-injury-related deaths occurred at a rate that is more than 1.4 times higher than the next leading cause of death.
  
  
• If you'd asked me at the time, I'd have said the fear and hatred wasn't of people with brown skin, but of that specific tribe they have in Chicago -- you know, the guys with the weird slang, music and clothes, the dope fiends who murder everyone they see. It was all part of the bizarro nature of the cities, as perceived from afar -- a combination of hyper-aggressive savages and frivolous white elites. Their ways are strange. And it wasn't like pop culture was trying to talk me out of it....In the small towns, this often gets expressed as 'They don't share our values!'
  
  Well, the reality is that "they" do share "your" values, just not all of them. I don't see a problem with that. Odds are, however, that individuals in both groups have more in common than they do not. Of course, one can only discover that if one bothers to find out by interacting with folks who are different from oneself. One won't know how much one has in common with folks who seemingly have "strange ways" if one concludes before having met many of those folks, if one concludes based on TV news, fictionalized pop culture personas crafted to sell something, or anecdotal "wisdom."
  
  Thinking about what I just wrote, I am immediately reminded of one of the rallying cries from Trump supporters, that of how often the media, re: Trump, focuses on what's shocking and different, how often it portrays what's wrong with Trump and his character. Those supporters, particularly the ones in rural "Trump country," see that and decry it as unfair, yet, they fail to consider that their own understanding of city folks has been acquired by the very same media that they feel unfairly focuses on Trump's most ridiculous remarks and deeds rather than "the issues," which presumably refers to the substance and whatever laudable there be about Trump. Quite simply, it doesn't even cross their minds that maybe, just maybe their perceptions about city folks are what they are due to the media doing to those city folks the same thing as it does to Trump.
  
  Truly, I have yet to hear so much as one "Trump country" person (be they city or rural dwellers) acknowledge that their own "world view" of city folks may be mistakenly arrived at as a result of exactly the media penchant to focus on the negative about "whatever." I have not heard so much as one "Trump country" person remark that Trump or the "liberal media" is even half right and half wrong; all I've heard is binary utterances. Well, quite simply, I know that the world and everything about it pertaining to humans is far more often gray than it is black and white. Until I start hearing Trump and his supporters accede that, I'm going to keep thinking them proles and prats.
  
  
• Terror victims scream in the street next to their own severed limbs, and the response from the elites is to cry about how men should be allowed to use women's restrooms and how it's cruel to keep chickens in cages. Madness
  
  Come the hell on, man! Yes, that's mad, which is precisely why nobody who's actually trying to defeat terrorism has proposed that a mitigation for terrorism be to let men use ladies' rooms or allow chickens to run free. At that point in the post is when I knew there was no point in taking Wong seriously. Nobody who writes as eloquently as Wong does would, in any prose meant to be taken seriously, use a hyperbolic metaphor like that. It's so far from the reality of the response to terrorism that the man can no longer be taken as anything but unctuous.
  
  
• Don't message me saying all those things I listed are wrong. I know they're wrong. Or rather, I think they're wrong, because I now live in a blue county and work for a blue industry. I know the Good Old Days of the past were built on slavery and segregation, I know that entire categories of humanity experienced religion only as a boot on their neck. I know that those "traditional families" involved millions of women trapped in kitchens and bad marriages. I know gays lived in fear and abortions were back-alley affairs.
  
  I know the changes were for the best. Try telling that to anybody who lives in Trump country. They're getting the shit kicked out of them.
  
  And because they are "getting the sh*t kicked out of them," I'm supposed to cotton to their ascribing to visions and rallying cries that entreat for our nation to return to those "Good old Days?" No! Not happening! Hell "effing" no, not happening!
  
  If "you" know it's wrong, then why not reject it all the same? Instead of pining for the "Good Old Days" and trying to revert our nation to them, why not present solution ideas that specifically rectify the problems we have today using contemporary approaches rather than doing so by restoring the wrongs "you" know are wrong and that we faced in yesteryear? Why not work to make tomorrow and next year better than today or yesteryear? I suspect income inequality, for example, wasn't a big problem in the stone age, but I don't want us to deliberately aim to revert to a stone age existence as the solution for income inequality.
  
  
• In a city, you can plausibly aspire to start a band, or become an actor, or get a medical degree. You can actually have dreams. In a small town, there may be no venues for performing arts aside from country music bars and churches. There may only be two doctors in town -- aspiring to that job means waiting for one of them to retire or die.
  
  One can in a small town have the dream. One can go to school and work toward achieving those dreams. One may not be able to return to the small town from whence one came if one wants to live that dream. Is that a compromise from what one may have originally envisioned? It may very well be. Well, I got news for you, we all make compromises. I'd like to live on a sprawling plot of land like the one in the Falcon Crest photo above, and in the countryside, I could. But I can't do that and have 12 restaurants, a dry cleaner, two grocery stores, a social club, a church, and a good school within walking distance and also have within 15 minutes drive an international airport, world class art museums with varied and frequently rotating exhibitions, first rate performing arts productions, and that's to say nothing of a job that compensates me to my satisfaction and that I thoroughly love doing.
  
  So I compromised. I don't have sprawling acres and rolling hills as my backyard and front yard. Some of my peers love visiting me and enjoy all the conveniences that are literally seconds away, but they live some 50 miles outside D.C. on lands vast enough to host their own steeplechase. That works for them, but the drive to the city or even the airport would drive me nuts. It's the same those small town folks with their dreams and aspirations must ask themselves. Is it more important to them to be a doctor in their small town or is it more important to be a doctor? Or actor, or whatever. If all one wants can be had in a small town, by all means live there. I would live in one were all I wanted to be had in one. But if it's not all there, one has to make a choice about what matters most or more and what matters least or less. But don't try to guilt others into a malaise because of the compromise one chose for oneself.
  
  
• Blacks burn police cars, and those liberal elites say it's not their fault because they're poor.
  
  I'm going to ignore for now the generalization about blacks....Having been to some 45 years worth of social events with so-called liberal elites, I can assure you that's not what most of them say. What they say is, "It's not their fault because neither the system nor any individual has shown them how to get ahead via any other means." I suspect one could say the same thing about small town folks who don't see any reasonable (and legal) path toward achieving their dreams.
  
  Now, I'll deal with the generalization....Were Wong to have written "poor urban blacks" rather than just blacks, he'd have been closer to being accurate; however, the defining factor is not that they are urban aor black, but rather that those folks are poor. In their poverty, they likely have far more in common with their rural counterparts that they do with the well off blacks who live in other parts of the same cities. There's a reason for that. You see, when one is born into poverty, most often, it's because one's parents too are poor. The thing about being poor is that folks who are haven't yet discovered how to be not poor. Having not figured that out, they can't pass that lesson on to their kids. The cycle continues.
  
  If poor folks are to break the cycle, they need to obtain something that cannot be taken from them and that they can use to keep from being poor no matter where they find themselves, even if they leave the U.S. Well, in the U.S. there's only one thing like that and that poor folks have access to: education. Bringing a factory back isn't like that; it's nothing but a bandage. The factory can leave again or it can use capital instead of labor. It is for this reason, combined with the results I've observed from my own mentoring activities, that I strongly support the Clinton/Sanders proposal of fee college/trade school.
  
  
• "But Trump is objectively a piece of shit!" you say. "He insults people, he objectifies women, and cheats whenever possible! And he's not an everyman; he's a smarmy, arrogant billionaire!"
  
  Wait, are you talking about Donald Trump, or this guy:
  
  
  
  
  
  You've never rooted for somebody like that?
  
  Well, no. Not anyone who's not also a fictional character and who yet behaves like one. Swashbucklers like "Tony Stark" are entertaining. Heck, Trump is entertaining. But "Tony Stark," "Ironman," is a comic book character. I don't want an entertaining President. I don't want a comic book President. I want someone who's serious and whom I can take seriously. And Donald J. Trump, though I thought in 2014 I would be able to take him seriously, I just cannot. Or perhaps it'd be better to say that if I do take him seriously, I'm afraid of the consequences for what I've seen of Trump ever since he announced his candidacy is too much "comic book" and not nearly enough character.

 

[320 Years of History]

"If we could get a candidate like Donald without the hate but with the humor he would own this election."

The media can portray anything or anyone any way that it wants to. Trump does not hate, and he is not a Racist. He is for America. If you are a foreigner or a foreign interest you will not be the priority, like you have been under the Liberals. That has been distorted into hate and Racism since the media works for the Clinton campaign.

You think that. Others think that. Some may not even care if it's so or not. I, however, cannot tell with any sufficient degree of certainty that Trump does not hate and that he is not a racist. That I cannot tell is a problem, a big one. Mind you, though, my thinking the man's a racist, were he to show somehow that he's truly not, would be one step, one of many he needs to take, in the right direction. It'd be a start, but a start is not enough to earn my vote, most especially when the start is being made by a 70 year old instead of a 17 or seven year old.

 

[2aguy]

"If we could get a candidate like Donald without the hate but with the humor he would own this election."

The media can portray anything or anyone any way that it wants to. Trump does not hate, and he is not a Racist. He is for America. If you are a foreigner or a foreign interest you will not be the priority, like you have been under the Liberals. That has been distorted into hate and Racism since the media works for the Clinton campaign.

You think that. Others think that. Some may not even care if it's so or not. I, however, cannot tell with any sufficient degree of certainty that Trump does not hate and that he is not a racist. That I cannot tell is a problem, a big one. Mind you, though, my thinking the man's a racist, were he to show somehow that he's truly not, would be one step, one of many he needs to take, in the right direction. It'd be a start, but a start is not enough to earn my vote, most especially when the start is being made by a 70 year old instead of a 17 or seven year old.

Really........all these years in public and he is only accused of being a racist when he runs for office as a democrat....boy, you sure are smart.....

 

[rdean]

Never started a CDZ thread before. I post this thread with 100% sincerity. I found this article just now using StumbleUpon. It's written by a writer on a site that usually only cares about comedy, but it attempts to explain the rural appeal of Trump to people from urban areas, by an author who was raised in a rural area. I was pretty moved by it.

Since it's the CDZ, I will bitch and whine to mods if you troll my virgin CDZ thread . I'm actually interested in reading honest responses.

Here it is (don't get pissed about the title if you're a Trump supporter, it's intended to catch liberals eyes. The rest is genuine.):

How Half Of America Lost Its F**king Mind

It is a rather funny essay.

In pure political terms however, Trump is a TV star and all of this TV audience has come out to vote for him.

That is what hijacked the GOP.

The GOP was the weaker of the 2 major parties and therefore it was easier for Trump to hijack it, which he did.

Trump has a few good ideas: (1) slow down immigration; (2) allow people their gun rights; (3) slap tariffs on China.

Trump however has really bad composure and delivery. He is a simpleton rich frat boy and although his Trump Towers idea was bold and became successful, his other ideas for investments were rash and ill advised.

He suffers from a huge flaw of not being able to take or follow advice so he would be a very bad chief executive.

All big business CEO's have proved to be ill equipped to be leaders of states and the Nation.

On November 8th we will all get to see how badly he has hurt the GOP.

If Hillary wins everything -- White House, Senate, and House Of Reps -- then Trump will have proved to be the worst thing for the GOP since Nixon.

This is the problem:

Trump has a few good ideas: (1) slow down immigration; (2) allow people their gun rights; (3) slap tariffs on China.


Slow down Immigration - we already know that more Mexicans are going back to Mexico than are coming here. That is a negative increase. Beyond "slowing down".

Allow people their gun rights - only a moron thinks that gun rights are being taken away. Thoughtful people feel that if someone is to dangerous to be allowed on a plane, then they are to dangerous to own a gun. Common sense. That's all it is.

Tariffs on China? Only a simpleton would think that's a solution.

Complex problems offer complex solutions.

I remember when Bobby Jindal signed legislation that gave felons, bank robbers and rapists the right to own guns.

Louisiana law floods courts with pro-gun cases

On March 21, an Orleans Parish judge ruled that, under the new amendment, the statute forbidding felons from possessing firearms is unconstitutional. The case is headed to the state Supreme Court.

--------------------------------

The ignorance is the right wing and their constant surprise at unintended consequences.

 

[320 Years of History]

Trump however has really bad composure and delivery. He is a simpleton rich frat boy and although his Trump Towers idea was bold and became successful, his other ideas for investments were rash and ill advised.

He suffers from a huge flaw of not being able to take or follow advice so he would be a very bad chief executive.

All big business CEO's have proved to be ill equipped to be leaders of states and the Nation.

Truly, I think many moderns simply haven't examined history closely enough. I bid them take a closer look at Herbert Hoover who at one point employed some 175K people.

• Herbert Hoover: Life Before the Presidency
  
• Herbert Hoover's Tragic Presidency

 

[rdean]

Trump supporters largely are not idiots. They do root for vague ideals from a vaguely remembered past. Big government threw farmers (and the railroad I worked for) plenty of welfare in the 19th century using the Army to commit genociede and giving away the conquored lands and all.

After the equilibrium was reached when the spoils dried up the New Deal saved us from a Socialist Revolution the WWII eliminated the competition for 30 years creating a very difficult to reclaim "glory days"

If we could get a candidate like Donald without the hate but with the humor he would own this election.

Not with his ignorant policies and terrible background.

 

[SYTFE]

My psychic powers tell me that you're going to get some very high quality responses in this thread.

Did you read the article?

I did, just now. I'm gonna think about it a bit. It was interesting, but somehow slightly insulting to rural Americans in a way.

He also contradicts himself with the intro, if we've been conditioned that the rural guy is the 'good guy' and the rich city slicker is the 'bad guy,' then doesn't that contradict rural support for Trump? Trump is the embodiment of everything rural America is against.

 

[320 Years of History]

My psychic powers tell me that you're going to get some very high quality responses in this thread.

Did you read the article?

I did, just now. I'm gonna think about it a bit. It was interesting, but somehow slightly insulting to rural Americans in a way.

He also contradicts himself with the intro, if we've been conditioned that the rural guy is the 'good guy' and the rich city slicker is the 'bad guy,' then doesn't that contradict rural support for Trump? Trump is the embodiment of everything rural America is against.

Red:
Maybe that was Wong's intent. I'm not inclined to think it was. Indeed, I'd have to contrive through a whole lot of hoops to even get a taint of the article's being a jeer aimed toward rural Americans.

Blue:
Thank you! I don't get how the man can for some 50 years been "all NYC Boy" and now, we're supposed to construe that he's "all about the little guy from the sticks." I don't buy that for a minute. I can't understand why anyone would.