Existing comment:
It was the day after the election and Donald Trump had won the electoral college. I had voted early in Maryland before taking this trip which was heavy on civil rights sites because the campaign had put civil rights in a free fire zone and I wanted to reconnect with whatever good we had had of late as a nation.
I avoided talking to whites down in Alabama about the election because, well, they lynch people down there. With the election results known, I asked an African-American woman at Vulcan what her thoughts were about the election.
She: Well, I voted for Hillary but it was because of all the misogynistic things Donald Trump had said. I was really disappointed in Obama's second term.
Me: Disappointed?
She: Yes, when he put those rainbow colors on the White House...
Me: (Pause) You were upset about gay marriage?
She: Yes, I'm a minister [lots of ministers down in Alabama -- think Roy Moore] and it's an abomination.
Me: Well, you know 60 years ago people would have said the same thing about blacks voting and blacks marrying whites. And someone, gee I forget his name... said something like the arc of justice is long but it always bends toward freedom... [MLK: "Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."]
She: I don't care. I'm just not ready!
That was when I realized that I was indeed in a bubble. Where I live, very few people would question the right of a gay couple to marry and few would see anything wrong with it. In fact, given how many heterosexual marriages end in divorce, the fact that anyone wants to get married is pretty damned courageous to me.
But down here in the bible belt, it's a whole 'nother issue.
Of course, where I live, having someone like Roy Moore trying to pick up teenage age girls would be considered shocking. Not in Alabama!
I still think most of the opposition to Obama was mostly from
(1) white trash/racists,
(2) male chauvinist pigs,
(3) xenophobes,
(4) religious bigots, or
(5) the 1% who wanted to fleece the American public.
But the African-American woman added another dimension to this -- desperate people who are afraid of change. They know they don't have any control over their lives, their jobs, their health, or the environment and they reach out to anything which offers salvation or hope no matter how unrealistic that hope is.
No, Little Donnie's not going to bring your job back (automation and economic realities make that impossible), he's not going to help you directly (he's going to help the 1% and let you hope the trickle down sustains you), he's not going to fix health care (he's hoping you shut up and die), and climate change isn't going to go away just by denying it. But if he pretends loud enough, you'll actually believe some of what he says because you're desperate. |