Blue state girl’s adventures in Trumpland

Photo: Frank Boston

Photo: Frank Boston

I’ll admit it: I don’t get it. Why did the working class vote for someone who doesn’t understand their lifestyles, struggles, and needs? Why did they put their trust in a guy who inherited all of his money, and seems to have little empathy for any other kind of lifestyle?

I sat down and shared meals and long conversations with these voters. No, I didn’t choose alt-right or Nazi flag waving extremists. I’m not crazy! All of the people I interviewed were wonderful, hospitable, deeply kind people who welcomed me into their homes and lives. But they do inhabit a political universe my blue state friends and I have little connection to. And I won’t sugarcoat it, some said things that made my blood boil. But the point of this was listening for the sake of understanding. I tried to, as we geeky anthropologists say, make the strange familiar.