My discovery is late by a month, but this 5.30 piece by photographer & Guardian contributor Chris Arnade offers the most concise and illuminating explanation of the moronic mentality of your average downscale Trump voter that I’ve read thus far.
The hinterlanders have basically become Pvt. Gomer Pyle in Full Metal Jacket, living in what they feel is a world of shit. They’ve stopped being reasonable, they don’t believe in positivism or constructive solutions, they drink a lot and they’re holding a loaded gun in their hands and telling themselves that things are so bad — stuck, no hope, no future — that pulling the trigger couldn’t make things any worse, and it might just make them better.
Arnade: “As any trader will tell you, if you are stuck lower, you want volatility, uncertainty. No matter how it comes. Put another way, your downside is flat but your upside isn’t. Break the system.”
Seven Arnade paragraphs + Wells comments:
(1) “Large parts of the U.S. have become completely isolated, socially and economically. Kids are growing up in towns where by six, seven, or eleven, they are doomed to be viewed as second class. They feel unvalued. They feel stuck. They are mocked. And there is nothing they feel they can do about it.”
Wells comment: There’s at least a possibility of a way out for under-30s through self-education. Higher learning and all kinds of unforeseen creativity via the internet is free. They don’t need college. And the more they listen to their out-of-work dad or mom or uncle, the more fucked they’ll be. Leave them behind. Their future is mapped out for them, but it isn’t for people who believe in tomorrow. They can do anything or at least die trying.