The Thursday Ramble: Why Do People Follow "he who shall not be named?"

I was having a late lunch, and a glass of wine with an old friend late last week, and she said "I just don't understand how anyone can follow #rump (he who shall not be named - HWSNBN.)  We agreed that we find him vile, evil, sexist, racist, a braggart who at the heart of it is a failure (he claims to be a billionaire but couldn't raise $175,000,000.) 

I kind of understand why people follow him, support him.  Some are family members, some are people I knew growing up in middle America.  

He says things that make them feel better, or powerful, or even good about themselves. And many of them have a had a difficult life. 

When I was a teenager the dream of my high school classmates was to graduate, get a job in one of the automobile plants before you turned 25, and retire at 55 (55 and 30 or more years of service) with a comfortable pension and guaranteed health insurance coverage for life.  Older brothers and sisters of my classmates who had graduated a decade earlier were already on that path, they were earning a good living, buying homes, new cars, and starting families.  Then came the Arab Oil Embargo of the middle 1970's, the price of gasoline quadrupled,  energy efficient cars entered the market from Japan and Germany, and the bottom dropped out of the auto industry.  Over the next 30 years those jobs never really came back.  Old inefficient plants were closed, new one's built that require many fewer man hours to build each car. Many of the high paying jobs like the paint room, are now entirely automated.  We build as many cars as we ever did, but with many fewer well paid workers. 

Other industry never filled the void in employment and opportunities in those areas.  Often the best job in town, maybe the only job in town was McDonalds at minimum wage.  I went to my 25th High School reunion, I had classmates who were still living in their mother's basement eeking out a living at less than $10 an hour.  

That generation is angry, they feel left behind, overlooked.  They are looking for something, anything to blame their misery on.  Women, immigrants, or persons of color are easy targets and HWSNBN pushes that button for them.  Makes them feel okay about blaming others for their lot in life.  

And to a great extent the government's efforts to address poverty failed this generation in rural America.  The efforts to eliminate poverty focused on inner city and urban poverty. Many people never understood poverty in rural America.  The population in rural areas is much less dense, it is easier to address jobs and poverty in an urban area, than in farm country, but the suffering of poverty is just the same in a rural area.  We put transit funding in cities, but if you are poor and live 5 miles from the nearest grocery store a junker car may be your lifeline. They watched others prosper, while they were left behind. 

Many urban areas, especially where manufacturing was the primary employer also imploded, and never recovered. As long as it is cheaper to manufacture halfway around the globe and ship the item to market, that is how it will be done.  People want cheap manufactured goods, companies make bigger profits on them, and the "rust belt" and "cotton belt" factories closed and the jobs were not replaced. In places like Louisville, large appliance manufacturing was all sent out of the country, and as it has slowly returned, it has been automated, with 1/3 of the workforce employed 40 years ago.  (My new top GE Profile appliances were made in Louisville.)    

This same message of blaming the other was perpetuated in some faith and community based organizations.  People showed up, if what was said made them feel better about their life, and blaming the challenges on the success or sins of others made people feel better.  I know that is not what religion should be about, but the gospel of prosperity flourishes in the this country.  

I was fortunate, in that I had seen some of the country outside of the where I grew up, and had an opportunity to move and start life where there were more opportunities.  I realized that education would bring more opportunities and worked my way through it.  When the two greatest opportunities opened up for me, I was not afraid to leave home and chase them.  If I had stayed behind in my home town, I would be likely be as battered as what is left of mainstreet.