In his Washington Post Op Ed, “‘Real America’ is its Own Bubble,” Richard Cohen states “I am tired of being told by (Trump voters) that I am not quite American because I did not vote for Trump or because I live on one of the coasts.”
He goes on to lay out his argument that given that the majority of voters did not vote for Trump, that Trump voters are the real “bubble,” especially those who live between the coasts. I recommend the read to anyone amongst the majority of us who elected Hillary.
I’m right there with you, Mr. Cohen. My father and my mother, who would have turned 100 and 99 this year, were raised poor by single mothers in rural east Texas and the mining towns of Colorado, respectively. They shared a common history that their fathers committed suicide in the 1920s, leaving the broken families to fend for themselves. Those families stayed intact despite the extraordinary challenges that you can imagine of single mothers trying to make their way in that era.
My mother was a single mother of my brother when she met my father. When they married, they vowed to create success for themselves and a good life for their children. They did. We were never rich, but we were loved and we always had food, shelter and encouragement. They both worked from before the day they met until just a couple of years before they died. I was the only member of my family to graduate from college, and I helped pay for it every step of the way.
My brother died at 29, a couple of years ahead of leaving the Navy and going to college. I’m as real an American as you, only I like and believe in my America.
As an adult with a family of my own, my husband and I have always worked. We’ve known economic hardship and job loss. So, like Cohen, I get what it means for the Trump voter to not feel that you’ve fulfilled your potential, that somehow your life is not totally within your control, and that you could always lose everything. Yet, I never once blamed an immigrant, a Black-American or a Mexican-American for my situation. I have blamed sexism, ageism, nepotism, but never an immigrant.
And, like Cohen, I believe strongly that a vast majority of you were played by “a charlatan, a blinged ignoramus who has promised the past as the future.” And, you dear Trump voters must live with that when you wake up in the near future without your healthcare, your Social Security, your Medicare, your college loan. You did it to yourselves … and to us.
You’ve never answered the question ‘why?’ to my satisfaction. And here is where I differ from Cohen. As a Southerner, I’ve seen it all. And, I’ve heard it all, in coded and decidedly uncoded language. You were not only played by this alleged billionaire, he appealed to your lesser selves and you did not disappoint. Your vote was rooted in racism and misogyny and no amount of denying it will change my mind. Any facts to the contrary do not bear out. Some of you say you voted twice for Obama so, therefore, you’re not a racist, but I’m not buying it.
And Obama delivered. He pulled you out of a devastating economic depression; he saved the jobs of many of you in the auto industry by pushing an unpopular bailout that has been paid back. He gave many of you with pre-existing health issues healthcare. He’s leaving you with a 4 percent unemployment rate and an economy, although still needing improvement, vastly better than the one he inherited. So what did you do when he implored you to vote for the one person who was qualified and fit to lead your country — your real America — into even better and more secure days? You couldn’t bring yourselves to listen. Instead, you listened to a charlatan’s lies in order to feel a false security in your bubble.
Roxann Wedegartner lives in Greenfield.