Why Trump Has Risen

When I first read this, I admit I was skeptical about its seriousness, considering the publication is which it appears. But as I read it I started nodding in agreement with much of what David Wong wrote, that being that half of America has lost its effin' mind.

He delves into the six reasons why Donald Trump has risen and how the whole thing boils down to Blue counties (cities) and Red counties (country) and the growing divisions between them, many of which are being created by the folks in the Blue enclaves and it's being done so on purpose. (As a note, I live in one of the red counties here in New Hampshire.) He tries to explain why so many in the Red counties support Trump and he pulls no punches. It all boils down to cityfolk have absolutely no understanding of people outside the city. They don't understand that folks out in the country have different issues, different problems, and require different solutions. Things that work in the cities won't necessarily work in the countryside and vice versa. But of course they really don't give a damn about it either.

"Nothing that happens outside the city matters!" they say at their cocktail parties, blissfully unaware of where their food is grown. Hey, remember when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans? Kind of weird that a big hurricane hundreds of miles across managed to snipe one specific city and avoid everything else. To watch the news (or the multiple movies and TV shows about it), you'd barely hear about how the storm utterly steamrolled rural Mississippi, killing 238 people and doing an astounding $125 billion in damage.

But who cares about those people, right? What's newsworthy about a bunch of toothless hillbillies crying over a flattened trailer? New Orleans is culturally important. It matters.

To those ignored, suffering people, Donald Trump is a brick chucked through the window of the elites. "Are you assholes listening now?"

Of course they aren't. It's a case of mind over matter – they don't mind because we don't matter. But they still don't realize where a lot of the things they consume, like food, come from. They assume it comes from supermarkets and high end specialty shoppes, appearing on shelves like magic. They don't yet understand that if the rural parts of the nation wither away and die, so will a lot of things they take for granted.

Then there's the perception that those of us who live out in the country are unintelligent bumpkins who can barely read and can't count past ten without removing our shoes. A lot of us are just as intelligent and educated as our urban brethren. In fact, some of us are just as wealthy as they are. We just realized we didn't want anything to do with the Blue enclaves and their decaying society and decided to move away and live more simply. We tend not to have the problems those in the cities must face every day.

Of course if the 'fit hits the shan', it's likely the rural areas will survive while the urban areas will be just like all of those post-apocalyptic scenes we see in movies. The surviving urban populace will evacuate the cities and find they have no place to go because those of us in the country – you know, those of us with all those guns – will tell them to keep moving because we can't take care of them. We hope no such thing will ever happen, but it won't be pretty if it does.

But what it all really boils down to is that we hate being ignored by our self-anointed 'betters'. It's but one reason Trump has risen to the point he has. He isn't ignoring that 'basket of deplorables' so disgusting to Hillary and her followers. He may be an awful candidate while being an inveterate entrepreneur and capitalist, but he also understands that if we do better, everyone else (including him) does better as well. That's something that seems to elude Hillary and the rest of the Blue elite.