One of the main themes of my 2018 dive into The Villages was white power. politico.com/magazine/story…
The American Legion post at The Villages (the nation's largest) stopped showing NFL games after Kaepernick. "Players taking a knee, that's bullshit!" said an 80-year-old retired stockbroker. "I'm with the president 100%: Throw your hand over your heart and protect the flag."
"All Obama did was play golf," said Louise Kneisley, a 69-year-old Villager from Rock HIll, S.C. When I pointed out that Trump plays more golf than Obama did, she didn't miss a beat: "OK, but then he goes to WORK!"
When I asked a 73-year-old former factory supervisor named Sam Huff why he liked Trump, he replied: "There's a lot of Mexicans in this country, and something's gotta be done about it."
Guy Knaak says that as Trump rose to prominence, he started hearing openly racist diatribes about Obama: "A lot of folks around here had a problem with a black president."
Oren Miller, a former logistics manager for Caterpillar, told me that at a block party, he mentioned how nice it was that an African-American neighbor always picked up litter on her daily walks. "People responded with pure racism. I thought we were past that in America."
The developer circulated a memo demanding the names of any laborers who skipped work on Life Without Immigrants Day, so they could go on a list of "radical individuals" ineligible to work for any Villages vendor. "These protesters are trying to cause harm to the Villages!"
At a dinner, I saw the head of the Trump Club of The Villages tell the Florida director of the John Birch Society: "I used to think of y'all as extremists. Now when I listen to your message, it sounds pretty mainstream to me."
Anyway, The Villages is 98% white. It's the fastest-growing community in America. If you read the piece, you'll see that a lot of stereotypes about it are wrong, but the stereotypes about its racial politics are not wrong. politico.com/magazine/story…
