Sneering at the Yokels in the Age of Trump
Elite journalists like @thejoelstein and Sam Tanenhaus return from Red America feeling very superior indeed, via Jeff Polet theamericanconservative.com/articles/sneer… via @amconmag
Elite journalists like @thejoelstein and Sam Tanenhaus return from Red America feeling very superior indeed, via Jeff Polet theamericanconservative.com/articles/sneer… via @amconmag
Stein averred that the election of Donald Trump left him “very, very, like, legitimately scared.” Why? Because it not only meant the possibility of nuclear war, but even more damningly the fear “that globalization was going to end.”
Seriously? 😂
Seriously? 😂
Visiting the heart of Trump country, Stein discovered that the people there exactly matched his disdainful preconceptions of them. Pretty much all they do is fight. “Dignity is their most valuable nonboat possession,” he said.
“If their girlfriend gets insulted, they fight. If their friend gets in a fight, they fight. If their fighting ability is questioned, they fight. When they get cut off, they honk. Then they yell at the other driver to get out of their car and fight.”
Why are they so angry? Because their inability to adjust to the wonders of the modern world, by which Stein means the wonders of globalization that have occurred since 1985, has left them fearful.
Trapped in the time warp of wistfully watching “The Andy Griffith Show,” the scared denizens of red America naturally recur to racism, sexism, and nativism as ways of shoring up their declining power.
As a result, they put incompetents such as Trump in charge, instead of the intelligentsia who alone can be expected to run things well. The ingrates have no respect for their superiors.
Like Stein, Tanenhaus sees us as living in a past he has happily discarded, which he alludes to when he refers to Holland, Michigan, as a “1950’s time capsule of Candy Land façades.”
Tanenhaus and Stein seem oblivious to how their writings contribute to polarization and the rise of politicians such as Trump. If Tanenenhaus wants to write a serious piece about us and our region, he’d avoid observing that “the Michigan heartland” is “angry, even truculent.”
Instead he’d note that we reasonably don’t want decision-makers in faraway places telling us how to live and then resenting us for not accepting their superior wisdom.
Reporters from the coasts might want, when coming to our parts of the country, to consider getting out of their designer pumps and walking in our work shoes rather than mocking us.
They might want to consider appreciating our rock-ribbed conservatism that seeks to preserve what we love against their dreams of progress and globalization. That kind of diversity will make for a better America than the kind they’re always yattering about.
