I woke up this morning and started reading my Facebook news feed. It was filled with emotional outcries and bewilderment that Donald Trump is our next President.
Many of you are shocked at how this could have happened. So I'm gonna take a second to explain it to you. If you are someone who is shocked by the results I’m guessing you live on the coast. That is to say you live in a state that borders the Atlantic or the Pacific.
It is also to say that you have never held a manufacturing job. You can most likely look out your window and see your neighbor's house if not their apartment building. It’s also to say that when you walk down the street to go to Starbucks you most likely pass either a Muslim, an African American, a Latino or a homosexual. If you live in a big city you probably passed all of those people.
You see that’s the difference. You don't have a clue about what people in the Midwest experience as the American way of life. If you live in rural Arkansas you don’t interact with a Muslim, an African American, a Latino or a homosexual on a daily basis. If you’re from the Midwest your experience with black culture is Kanye West interrupting Taylor Swift at the VMAs. And that’s true for every minority out there.
You see we’ve done terrible disservice to the American heartland. We’ve drained their resources. We’ve moved their factories. But worse of all we’ve removed the people who could provide diversity. Smart people go to college and don’t move back. Gays and Lesbians leave the MidWest the first chance they get.
Without diversity in the heartland fear of the outsider becomes entrenched. And coastals are just as much to blame. They too surround themselves with like minded individuals. Think about the last dinner party you attended. If you’re a liberal did that party include someone that was voting for Donald Trump. According to Pew Research Center 24% of liberals have stopped talking to someone because of opposing political viewpoints, compared to 16% of conservatives and 10% of those with mixed political viewpoints.
Pew reports that "roughly 4 in 10 consistent liberals on Facebook (44%) say they have blocked or unfriended someone on social media because they disagreed with something the person posted about on politics."
When Trump was talking about Obamacare, the Trade Deals, and Immigration it didn’t mean anything to the coastals. They don’t have an impact on your lives. But the whole middle of the country have seen their jobs disappear, their factories close and head to Mexico and China, and their standard of living decline.
Coastals don’t hear about these issues because they watch CNN, listen to NPR and read the New York Times. Those media outlets don’t discuss how unemployment numbers don’t include people who still haven’t found a job after their unemployment insurance runs out.
The media is to blame for this shocking presidential election. They’ve boosted up the American ideal “The Coastal Lifestyle” and ignored the disillusioned and disenfranchised from the Flyover states. Well those people did the one thing no one can take away from them as an American citizen. They voted, and just like Adolf Hitler in Germany they voted for the guy who told them he was going to “Make America Great Again”.
But the time for panicking has come and gone. When should you have panicked? It was when your conservative Jewish friend said they were voting for Trump despite the KKK stumping for him! That’s when you should have realized this was always going to happen. If the conservative Jews can get in bed and vote for the same candidate the KKK is voting for that’s when you know we’re up shits creek!!!
So many people on Facebook are asking the same question: “What do I tell my child?” You tell them they live in a bubble of diversity and acceptance. It’s a wonderful place to live but it’s a complete fantasy because out there in the Heartland all they see is white.