"Blue islands in an ocean of red. The cities are less than 4 percent of the land mass, but 62 percent of the population and easily 99 percent of the popular culture. Our movies, shows, songs, and news all radiate out from those blue islands.
And if you live in the red, that fucking sucks...
Every TV show is about LA or New York, maybe with some Chicago or Baltimore thrown in. When they did make a show about us, we were jokes -- either wide-eyed, naive fluffballs (Parks And Recreation, and before that, Newhart) or filthy murderous mutants (True Detective, and before that, Deliverance). You could feel the arrogance from hundreds of miles away...
To those ignored, suffering people, Donald Trump is a brick chucked through the window of the elites. "Are you assholes listening now?...
If you'd asked me at the time, I'd have said the fear and hatred wasn't of people with brown skin, but of that specific tribe they have in Chicago -- you know, the guys with the weird slang, music and clothes, the dope fiends who murder everyone they see. It was all part of the bizarro nature of the cities, as perceived from afar -- a combination of hyper-aggressive savages and frivolous white elites. Their ways are strange."
I wasn't going to click on this link, because (a) I thought the title was dismissive and so (b) I thought it was going to be things I had already read. I also thought that I 'understood', which I guess I do in the big sketch of it: People feel voiceless and unrepresented in Federal politics, and Trump came along to very intentionally position himself as their representative.
But reading this...
I'm realizing so many things: I didn't even realize the sense of city vs. country, I was just thinking coast vs. midwest. I didn't think about how rarely rural communities are represented, much less represented as themselves instead of caricatures created in cities. I didn't think about how disconnected people must feel from the cities that physically hold the institutions of political power and therefore rule over the other parts of the country (and I've seen ~all 4~ hunger games movies!).
And another interesting point (extrapolating a bit) is how people of color are perceived as part of the city, part of this hegemonic and exclusive culture. And that speaks to the way that socioeconomically privileged white people appropriate POC as status signals, so that resenting the presence of a Buddhist temple can be similar to resenting a manicured walled community of McMansions. They are both experienced as symbols of class oppression.
And I think about how, historically, poor white people were encouraged by plantation owners to see the freed blacks as enemies, in order to prevent the economically oppressed from coming together in opposition to the economically privileged. But also, I now realize, POCs have been encouraged to see poor white people as dangerous enemies. Both groups have to recognize and support the other group.
I am so glad that I read this.
FB: I strongly recommend reading this; I thought I had gotten my head around this, but I realize that I totally hadn't. We really, really need to learn to listen to each other "The rural folk with the Trump signs in their yards say their way of life is dying, and you smirk and say what they really mean is that blacks and gays are finally getting equal rights and they hate it. But I'm telling you, they say their way of life is dying because their way of life is dying. It's not their imagination. No movie about the future portrays it as being full of traditional families, hunters, and coal mines. Well, except for Hunger Games, and that was depicted as an apocalypse."
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