In response to this whiny piece by an angry urbanite at The Hill: This is why you lost and will continue to lose.
They either want their country back or they’re tired of being ignored. They regularly blurt the latter as justification for electing right-wing theocrat/closed minds, austerity minded, cultural fascists to office. These are people that use more government subsidy than any segment of the country, but they hate “handouts” to anyone else. They are the largest consumers of SNAP benefits, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
The flyover states are the main reason Congress is irreparably broken.
[…]
The alleged silent majority is deafening and easily provoked. They reside in their own echo-chamber bubble of indignation about everything from “New York values” (urban, ethnic rights, LGBT, social justice), to the war on Christmas and Black Lives Matter. They mocked and derided all people’s protests from Occupy to #NoDAPL. Their old standbys are opposing a woman’s right to choose, reinstituting school prayer and eradicating “big government.” They hate progress. Their idea of American values is straight from circa 1870.[…]
They’re delusional in their belief that their views are more important, more valid, more ethical, and more patriotic than any other groups. They claim American Christian values, home, God and country. White values. Any dissenting viewpoints are taken as literal acts of war.
Anyone who questions the narrow vision of Middle America Christian values, being forced on 325 million people of multiple cultures, religions, no religion, and a mosaic of ethnicities, is deemed ungodly and un-American.
It’s clear cultural fascism.
[…]
To Trump voters: You allowed your bigotry and anger at the system to be cynically exploited yet again, by regressive, wealthy demagogues. I have little sympathy for you. I for one will not be contorting myself to “give Trump a chance” or seek common ground with you.
Where to start?
The author, Duane Townsend, has no idea who or what flyover nation is or the beliefs of this demographic, beyond the stereotypical platitudes parroted by progressive talking heads ad nauseam on cable news. I'm from flyover. In my last book, Flyover Nation, I explained how, if Democrats are to lose, they will lose for not understanding us.
Flyover has been stereotyped, mocked, and ridiculed my entire life. We are the first people to feel the burn of the coasts's attack on culture and Washington's bad policies. These are people who watched as Democrats peddled away jobs through burdensome corporate regulations, they watched as Hillary Clinton told them she wanted to ruin their industries, take away their jobs and impoverish their families. I detailed in my book that as flyover struggled to keep employed, lights on, food on the table they were lectured by the left about bathrooms and pronouns. As they lost their health insurance they were told by the left that their realized fears were made up stories. They watch programming mostly packaged by media entities on the coasts who don't care if flyover is burning or flooding, like in Tennessee, so long as it's not California or New Jersey. Someone, I can't recall whom, for proper atrribution, but someone I read recently put it brilliantly: These people felt like outsiders looking in, their faces pressed against the glass, wondering when they were going to get their piece of improvement. When were they going to win? Where was their hope? Progressives like Townsend write an entire column impugning the character of Americans because they didn't support Hillary Clinton—additionally, a disproportionate (cited in my book in its own chapter) of our military men and women, the ones who protect Townsend's right to pen this screed, come from these people, are these people, are flyover nation.
Townsend writes to flyover, with no awareness of irony:
“You allowed your bigotry and anger at the system to be cynically exploited yet again, by regressive, wealthy demagogues.”
Townsend has the audacity to state this in a piece where he also asserts that values like “home, God, and country” held by fly over folks are “white values.” That is the only bigotry I see here.
I have said this before, flyover denizens were good enough for Democrats when they supported the Clintons in the 90s but now that they enact their free will and take a chance on an unknown with a great promise of prosperity, they're called “racists,” “bigots,” “fascists,” and “sexists” by their former progressive brethren. It's an ugly argument that excuses the complainant from any real soul searching.
