When we look at the electoral map of the United States, we can’t help but notice that there is a veritable sea of Red States that stretches from one coast to the other. When we look a little closer at that sea, we notice that it’s actually composed of millions of tiny, little towns in thousands of tiny, little counties. This is rock solid Trump country and – since Trump is a Master Salesman – it might behoove us to look at exactly what it is that he’s selling to these folks.
In a word, it’s, “nostalgia.” Nostalgia for a simpler, cleaner, more understandable way of life. You know . . . like we all had in the 1950s.
Now, I passed through a fair number of those little towns as I was growing up and, in many ways, they were all remarkably similar.
1 – They all had a local cafe’/hamburger joint with a cute name like, “The Chat ’N’ Chew,” where folks gathered for Sunday brunch or morning coffee.
2 -They all had one barber shop and one beauty salon.
3 -They all had a local high school and the Friday night football game at that high school was the most important event of the week.
4 -The high school football team was always called, “The Fightin’ ___________, “ (fill in the blank according to the local animal mascot, although I never encountered, “The Fighting’ Oysters.”)
5 -They all had some version of a local swimming hole where the younger kids frolicked and the older kids might go skinny dipping on a dare.
6 -They all had a, “lovers lane,” which was usually a small road on a hill or bluff where the high school kids went to explore their sexualities and lose their virginities.
7 – Except in the South, they all had one or two, “Negro,” families whose children might be allowed to attend the local schools, but were de facto segregated in every other way.
8 – They all had one token, “queer,” who was usually a single, older male who owned the local antique shop, cared for his aging mother, and was known to be, “a little light in the loafers, if ya know what I mean.”
9 – They were all convinced that their little town was somehow unique, different, and better than all of the other little towns and they usually had a billboard right outside of the town to tell you just exactly that.
I mention all of this, not to make fun of or denigrate those towns, but to point out that THEY WERE REALLY REAL. Millions of Americans were born in and grew up those places and lived extremely happy lives in them.
And then they left.
A big factor in their leaving is that Small Town America doesn’t have many ways to make a living. Unless your Daddy owned a farm or your Mama owned The Chat ’N’ Chew, you were pretty well screwed in finding a job. Another reason, of course, is that young people naturally want to get out and explore the world, to see what lies beyond that billboard on the edge of town.
There are many other millions of us who never had those small town experiences. We can legitimately point out that while they were living their Ozzie and Harriet/white picket fences/1950s lives, Black people were still being lynched in the South. Latinos were walled into barrios. Gay folks were routinely beaten and sometimes killed. Middle class women were quietly losing their minds and becoming addicted to Valium in record numbers.
That’s not to say that those small towns were hot beds of racism and homophobia. For most of the people who lived there, those simply weren’t issues that they dealt with. Except for that local antique dealer, there weren’t any queers and the few Black folks who lived there weren’t a problem because they kept their heads down and kept to themselves.
The end result is that we have millions of Americans who look back on their lives in Small Town, USA, as a golden, magical time. These are the folks who spend thousands of dollars to travel back to high school reunions and reminisce over, “that year when the football team was the district champion.”
You also see these folks on the local community pages on FaceBook. They chime in with comments like, “Hey, I lived in Thimble Town in the 1960s. Does anybody else remember the milk shakes at Stegner’s 5 and dime?” Or, “Whatever happened to Mrs. Peachtree? She was my favorite teacher.”
That’s exactly what Trump is selling to that sea of Red Counties and Towns: nostalgia for a time that they viewed as simpler and easier, where everything, “made sense.” It isn’t just the people who are still living there, it’s also the millions of people who USED to live there.
And so we’ve ended up with an America that’s essentially divided into two different cultures: the rural folks, who remember a time when their lives were so much better; and the urban and coastal dwellers who view that life as largely incomprehensible, if not a down right lie. Much like the Five of Wands, we’ve got a whole bunch of people swinging sticks at each other but never quite connecting.
The ironic thing, of course, is that the man who’s selling that nostalgic vision to the rural folks has never gone camping or hiking, never gone fishing or hunting, never owned a dog, lived most of his life in a penthouse in New York City, and wouldn’t be caught dead in a pair of blue jeans.
All of which doesn’t matter to his supporters in the least. A good salesman doesn’t just sell a product. He sells an illusion. And there is no better illusionist in the world than Donald J. Trump.
Just the Tarot 