Thread by @SlavaMalamud

To all you media types who still think we need to talk to Trump voters, understand them, hear them. Can I save you a bit of trouble? Here is a (short, I promise) thread about who they are, what they want and where they are coming from.
It's not complicated, either...

My bio says "sports writer", and this is what I used to be (and still am, occasionally), but my full time job is a public school teacher. I teach in Baltimore, in low-income areas. One of my former jobs was in a mostly white, working-class community, full of rabid Trumpers...

This was probably the worst job I ever had, which had little to do with the community or the kids and a lot to do with admin, but that's beside the point. The kids all came from very poor, very dysfunctional families, rife with drugs, abuse and violence. Many were unmanageable...

The teacher turnover rate was insane. My last year there, something like 7 teachers quit in the middle of the year. One English teacher up and left in the middle of the day, leaving all her stuff behind, and never came back.
There was one teacher, though, who'd been there forever

It was the gym teacher, a tall, black man, a former pro basketball player. We talked a lot about what was happening around us. We got friendly. He called me "my brother from another mother", because we actually looked alike, despite his being black and 25 years older...

"Ain't nothing worse than poor white folk", he told me once. "See, ghetto kids, they know they are trash. They know the rules. But these kids from poor white families, they are the same trash, but they think they are kings. They think the world owes them everything..."

One thing I know for sure, through my own teaching experience, is that there isn't a kid out there who can't be loved. Doesn't mean you'll love them all, but that's your limitations. All of them, deep down, want to be safe and appreciated. But the gym teacher had a point, too...

The mentality of the poor white community was not hard to understand. Coming from one of the poorest neighborhoods in one of the poorest part of the former USSR (a really shitty country), I understood them pretty well. And the mentality is as follows...

They are bitter, they are aggrieved, they know their lives suck and they view themselves as heroic martyrs. They don't hate the rich, they hate those they view as even lower than themselves. But they really, really hate people who they think look down on them, i.e. educated types

Even though they themselves are the ones always looking for someone to snub their noses at. Their recipe for those people is "Stop whining, get yourself together, help yourself." However, their recipe for themselves is "The world must listen to me, take care of me, protect me"

And for me, as a teacher, it was plain as day that their mentality is that of children. They are utterly childish, without the cuteness and the ability to learn. They will not accept any state of affairs other than the world revolving around them, gratifying their needs and...

... crucially and most importantly, PRAISING them. All the time. For anything at all. Just like I constantly needed to praise 7th-graders for the most mundane things to make sure they don't start throwing trash cans around. Making them feel great. Better than others. This is it.

This is uniquely American, by the way. Poor Russian people are by no means rays of sunshine, but they don't have that sense of entitlement and they sure as shit don't throw tantrums. And this, the last 4 years, is what you have actually been seeing: a giant fucking tantrum...

Back in 2016, a fellow hockey parent told me why he, a registered Democrat, would be voting for Trump. "For the first time", he said, "there is a politician who I feel will take care of me, as a white guy."
This is all there is to it, folks. This is the entire mystery...

So, the next time your editor sends you to Sowfuck, MO to sit in a diner and "try to understand the Trump voters", ask yourself: how useful would it be to talk to kindergarteners about complex national issues?
This is it, really. You are welcome. No charge.