Real America is its own bubble

[DemocratSinceBirth]

This column is for Bernard Gibson, a good man from the state of Indiana. Late last month, NPR went out to Vigo County there to explain why it flipped from voting for Barack Obama in 2012 to Donald Trump in 2016. Gibson was one of those interviewed, and here is what he said: “These are real people here. These are not New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles. You know, these are real people that live every day from hand to hand, just have to work to make a living and everything else.”

Oh.

There are some things you ought to know, Mr. Gibson. I served in the Army. I worked at blue-collar jobs. I washed dishes and bused tables. I went to college at night and worked during the day for an insurance company (as the legendary “Cohen of Claims”). My father was raised in an orphanage, and my mother was an immigrant from Poland whose first childhood memory was of hunger. Somehow, despite all of that, I am called a member of the “elite.” If so, I damned well earned it.

...


But I will not concede that a greater wisdom exists in what is known as “flyover country.” It has voted for a charlatan, a blinged ignoramus who has promised the past as the future. Trump, who lives in a gilded bubble of his own, cannot reverse automation, replace robots with people or blunt American businesses’ compulsive search for the cheapest workforce.

Gibson is one thing. I understand. What I cannot understand is fellow bubble dwellers who tell me, with an air of impeccable condescension, that a vote for Trump was such proof of their own superior wisdom that it eclipsed all doubts about his qualifications, his temperament, his honesty in business and his veracity in speech. These people live in a bubble of their own. It is one that excludes the lesson of history and the demands of common sense. It will burst.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/real-america-is-its-own-bubble/2016/12/12/e8ba60c2-c09f-11e6-b527-949c5893595e_story.html?tid=pm_pop&utm_term=.98087d8e40d0

There are some things you need to know, Mr. Gibson. My dad had a ninth grade education. I was fourteen years old when he died at the ripe old age of 58 putting up road signs in the hot Florida sun. He left my mom and I with a 700 square foot shot gun shack and a load of debt. I worked as a bouncer, mover, and fitness instructor to put myself through college and graduate school. My maternal grandfather died when my mom was nine months old. I would never vote for a racist, a nativist, a xenopohobe, and a sexual predator because I thought there was something in it for me. If that makes me an elitist I wear that sobriquet like a crown.

[The_Casual_Observer]

1. Real people huh? Why didn't he just say old white bigots.

[DBoon]

2. And people in cities don't work hard to make a living?

Bite me

[Mime-Is-Money]

3. Completely Agree!

Got into an argument with friends back home (KY) about the "bubble" myth. I live in SF to which they keep referring as a bubble separated from the rest of the US.

True, the Bay Area is unlike most of America, but the flyover over states are in their own bubble with little comprehension of the rest of the world. There's only one place on earth like middle America, and that's middle America.

People in the Bay Area BUST THEIR A$$ES to get where they are. There are few 9to5ers, including executives. Since moving out here it's the hardest I've ever worked.