Why No One Seems to Understand Trump Supporters
…and why he may possibly beat Biden in the coming election.
The pundits seem to think America’s electorate breaks down between good, solid right-thinking individuals, and the ill-educated crazies who are willing to follow a madman off a political cliff.
Well, it ain’t so
Nearly three quarters (72%) of Americans live in small towns. You wouldn’t know that if you lived in Chicago or Atlanta and flew to other large cities on business, but it’s true. America is mostly out there, just a few miles off the interstate highways. And its residents are angry. They aren’t poorly educated or crazy, they’re just like Howard Beale (played by Peter Finch) in the 1976 film Network.
For those of you too young to have been around in 1976, the image of Beale, in a khaki raincoat with his wet hair plastered to his head, standing up during the middle of his newscast saying, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" is often listed as one of the most iconic in film history, and ranked #19 on the American Film Institute's 2005 list of the 100 greatest American movie quotes.
So, what made so much of America as angry as Beale?
Consider small-town America for a moment, frame it in your mind, as we revisit this vital part of what’s gone-to-hell in our country since the end of WWII.
First of all, these towns were (and are) mostly agricultural, much like my grandparents Tipton, Iowa (pop 2633 in 1950). Sweltering on their porch, long before air conditioning, I’d smell grandma’s fresh bread baking and the conversation was ‘good weather for the corn.’ My grandad sent five daughters to university, one to the Sorbonne in Paris, and knew everyone in town by name. “Mornin’, George, hot enough for you?” “You bet, Charlie. See you at the café this afternoon?”
Grandad had acquired two farms, a poultry-butter-and-egg business, a café, a small apartment building, a lovely home on 3rd street and five daughters. I never saw him not working.
Tipton had three drugstores, a Sears Roebuck, two barber shops, two gas stations (one at each end of town, both with repair shops), a jeweler, two bakeries, a men’s and women’s-wear store, a bowling alley, three family restaurants, a bank, a Carnegie library, a YMCA, a home for the elderly, a funeral home, a feed-store, a John Deere farm implement store (Nothing runs like a Deere), a grain elevator, an elementary school, middle school and a regional high school.
Then two things happened
Eisenhower’s interstate highway (I-80) marched across Iowa, just south of Tipton and soon after that, Wal-Mart built a megastore that served Tipton as well as five other nearby small towns. The I-80 intersected old Route 38 and a blossoming flower of fast-food enterprises sprung up where the roads crossed, destroying the family restaurants in town. They limped on for a decade or so and closed, one by one. Wal-Mart boarded up most of the rest of the downtown, all but grandpa’s café, John Deere and the funeral home.
Maybe three things happened, come to think of it.
With Tipton’s ordeal came a change in the social fabric. The young kids whose families could afford it went off to college…and never came back. Many of the less fortunate joined the military or got a job at Wal-Mart, but the family cohesion was un-cohesed.
Farmers got old, sold the family farm and doddered off to the elderly home. Corporate farming took over, run by bean-counters from New York. Hedge-rows were torn out, wetlands filled in and crops maximized by fertilizers whose run-off polluted the Cedar River.
Elders are the moral ground-zero of small towns, but the young are its life-blood and the young were leaving
What’s left is, more often than not, bitterness, anger and regret. Regret has a way of dying off, but bitterness and anger grow like a cancer.
The world moved on from small-town America like a streak across the sky, leaving three-quarters of the political electorate disaffected. In America’s smaller cities, such as Davenport, Metropolis, Lowell, Peoria, Pullman and Corning, the same infection spread rapidly, only this time it was mom-and-pop industry that disappeared.
Sometimes, not even so mom-and-pop, as Caterpillar fled Peoria, Ford, GM and Chrysler eased out of Detroit and America’s line-worker middle class came down with a major case of Asian flu. No more boats in the driveway to take the kids fishing. No more Sunday dinners with extended families, the kids had all left town.
It wasn’t an accident, but a forced march for profit at any cost that ate away our heartland
Meanwhile, presidents came and went.
Ronald Reagan originated the slogan “Make America Great Again,” a not-so-subtle recognition that we were going downhill. He shelved that motto for another president to repeat, thirty-six years down the line.
Bill Clinton’s "United We Stand, America" promised dedication to patriotism, candor, honesty, and a balanced budget. Actually, Clinton did balance the budget and paid down a hunk of the national debt, the only president to do so.
George W. Bush promised us “compassionate conservatism,” whatever the hell that was, but got sidetracked into two wars and a military policy of torture.
Barack Obama held out “Hope, you can believe in” and ‘hope’ turned out to be like ‘faith,’ while Republicans closed the door to Barack’s church.
Then came Donald Trump and we were full circle to “Make America Great Again.” The rich got richer, the poor poorer and small towns boarded up a few more buildings.
Joe Biden offered some stuff that made pretty good sense; “Forgive student debt, End the Afghan War and Make union organizing easier for workers.” Actually, he’s done pretty well on all three, while facing a locked-horns Congress. But I guess it’s too little too late.
There’s no there there anymore for small-town America
The three-quarters of America that asked no more than to be included, has been turned into just another failed example of consumerism. Since the 1950s, three full generations in Tipton had been promised everything except what they hungered for. A share of prosperity and blue-collar jobs. The middle class was thirsty, having suffered a half-century of drought.
That hunger included a return to the single wage-earner family, that owned a home, had dinner together every night and was able to send their kids to college without breaking the bank. What they got instead was lost jobs, lost farms, subsistence wages, kids coming back to live in their old bedroom and 10% of the upper class that owned it all.
They were not dumb then and are not dumb today. They noticed, as Jeff Bezos bought a $350 million dollar California home on an afternoon’s income. They were not unaware, while watching the 10% fight the unions, get tax break after tax break, as well as buying and paying for total control of the American Congress. The land of the free and the brave had become a billionaire club and the 72% are not members, nor will they ever be.
There is no mistaking American anger if you take the time to look. The pundits who tell us Trump supporters are ignorant crazies are blind to economic inequality, homelessness, broken dreams and broken towns.
The disadvantaged are angry, with reasons aplenty, and ready to burn the furniture in order to feel some heat
If Donald Trump wins in November, the furniture will burn and, if he loses, it may burn anyway.
It’s the 72% Rule (an invention of mine), and history tells us the have-nots will no longer sit silent as their political dreams continue to fail. Win, lose or draw, Biden or Trump, the November election will not solve America’s existential problems.
Anarchy is not a solution, but neither is an endlessly blind eye.
There is so much work to do and so little time to do it. Unfortunately, it is in the interests of no one but the public, to get it done.