Thread by @RadioFreeTom

Yet another of my lifelong friends telling me Trump isn't so bad because "he looks out for the little guy."
They believe this. Against all evidence, they believe this. But there's a larger point here, about how "the little guy" got screwed. Or didn't, more accurately. /1

Almost all of my friends from humble origins - that is to say, just like mine - feel like they've been screwed. And yet when I ask them to survey their lives,. they admit they have the Dream: A house, two cars, kids who went to school, parents with good medical care. /2

These are people who, by and large, have only a high school diploma, a few of them only by the skin of their teeth. "I was screwed by the elites," they tell me while they soak in their pool. I am constantly stunned into silence by this, because I remember us as working poor. /3

Ask them to explain *how* they were screwed, and it's usually their turn to be silent. They can't explain it; they tell you that "you just don't understand." Press them, and then you start getting real answers.
Hispanics. Blacks. How much better our town was once. Nostalgia. /4

Push a little harder, and then it's "people like you," the educated elites, not "respecting" them. I ask who they voted for.
Reagan. Clinton. Obama. Trump. They're all over the place.
I try to get them to explain how they felt disrespected.
This usually goes nowhere. /5

The whole issue of "respect" is another world, but I'll never get over people sitting on boats and in jacuzzis explaining how screwed-over they feel while in my mind's eye I'm remembering us watching our moms clip coupons and our fathers dragging their asses to factories. /6x