If you do not listen to a community, you cannot learn how to persuade its members. Apparently, it is impossible for some people to listen to voices from Trump’s electorate. You can dislike Trump, but disdain for his voters (or those who did not support Hillary Clinton) in a geographically divided nation could work against the goals of anti-Trump advocates.
Trump is everything I dislike, yet I listen to his voters and non-Hillary voters daily. I live among them.
Best interview I’ve read on the Trump voters. Period.
“I’m Hearing You’re Really Angry”
By Isaac Chotiner
Advice on how to talk to the white working class.In a new book, White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America, Joan C. Williams argues that much of the analysis of this class has been misguided and condescending. So too is the general cultural attitude toward the white working class from society’s more fortunate members. The result, Williams says, is a white working class increasingly isolated from the Democratic Party, with dangerous consequences for our politics.
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| Self-identified Democrats vs. self-identified Republicans, per state, according to Gallup. http://www.gallup.com/poll/141548/States-Competitive-Terms-Party-Identification.aspx. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
And the Slate reporter conducting the interview? Total jerk. Cannot stand the tone of the questions. I resent the tone. It is precisely why I am not and will never be a Democrat. The insulting, condescending, Thomas Frank “you’re all idiots back home” rhetoric pushes me away from the “elites.” The elites are self-styled experts on their deplorable fellow citizens. Neither education nor income defines the elites — it is an attitude embraced (loudly) by some fractional percentage of progressives.
Chotiner: Donald Trump is a con man who is taking advantage of his voters and using them to enrich rich people and himself, while doing nothing for them. I’m sitting here saying Donald Trump is a con man, and he’s doing this, and it’s really bad because people in this country need help, and he’s not going to help them, and instead he’s using them. And it seems like what you’re saying is that I’m somehow being more disrespectful to those voters than he is, even though he is the one using them.
The assumption that Trump voters are too ignorant or stupid or racist to see through him — but progressives see him for what he is — implies progressives are wiser, smarter, better. And the questions include this generalization, which concerns me because some Obama voters also voted for Trump.
Chotiner: Do you really think Donald Trump could’ve ever gotten the kind of support he got from the white working class if he had not shown himself to be a bigot?
I dislike the reporter more and more as the interview transcript progresses. A self-absorbed, self-righteous intellectual moron. Why? Because he seems to view Trump voters as a mass of White Trash, hillbillies, and Neo-Nazis. Nothing in the transcript explores the emotional response some voters had to the establishments of both major parties. Trump was not only a “screw you” to the Democrats, he was a rejection of the mainstream Republican party, too.
If you want to persuade Trump voters, or at least those unwilling to embrace the urban progressivism, stop insulting a large swath of America.
The problem with the elitism is the assumptions and generalizations. I dislike Trump. A lot. Dislike so much about him… and yet I dislike so many of the elites I meet in academia and the media more. Much more. How is that possible? Trump is a buffoon, and even some of his voters know he’s P. T. Barnum. But the media and academic elites judge me with their generalizations as they judge my friends and family for not being college-educated urban cosmopolitans.
Example: I was recently insulted (outright insulted) for saying I do not like cities. I prefer isolation and quiet. It’s not a rejection of anyone, it’s a need for quiet.
“You’ll never get ahead if you don’t learn to love cities. Only hicks love the country.”
Then let me be a hick. If you look at a map and assume the Rust Belt, the South, the Plains… everywhere not on a coast or bordering the Great Lakes… is a bunch of racist, uneducated, religious zealots with guns, you don’t really understand the United States.
Wait, you might say, this post generalizes. No, I said I don’t like the self-styled elites. These elites could not sit down and listen to the disillusioned, disappointed, and alienated voters who helped elect Trump. They cannot get over the disgust they feel for Trump to listen to his voters.
Advice on how to talk to the white working class.
Photo by tedeytan 
Photo by DonkeyHotey