For years I’ve been reading those much-mocked New York Times diner interviews with voters. I read how those people respond to a reporter’s questions. And every single time I said out loud, “These people are just stupid.” By that I meant ignorant about government, about reality, about causation, and about time, i.e., how long it takes for a government to get things done in a country of 360 million people.
They were just flat out dumb. And flat out incurious. Yet they seemed to feel rather smug about their opinions and beliefs, and quite taken with the serious attention being shown to them by a newspaper they clearly didn’t read. They sort of preened.
I’m not entirely sure why I was expected to pay attention to them, or why I should be caring about their situations in life. My compassion is for vulnerable people, not people who are pissed that they’re being overlooked. Flown over. Most of the diner bunch were employed or self-employed at solid jobs, in solid professions. Some were university students.
But their resentment of me — as an avatar of what they seemed to loathe — leaked out of all those Times pages. They all seemed to live in another country, a weird sort of country. A science fiction sort of country. I kept thinking this was The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Oh, and The Stepford Wives. Yeah. Definitely.
Today the Times had one of their sober, deep analyses of what happened. A lot of readers chimed in with comments. A lot of blaming tossed around, in all sorts of directions. The Times and its readers came up with reasons this happened: voters were distressed about immigration, the economy, their wages. That’s why they voted for Trump. One reader said they voted for a return to sanity and economic growth. (!?!?!?)
What nonsense. All of it. I understand why the Times has to write analyses of difficult situations, why they are compelled to explain how something so awfully extraordinary came about. The problem is, the Times is full of intelligent and rational journalists. Intelligent and rational people are incapable of explaining craziness; they are helpless to do anything but lay out their search for rationality in these thoughtful, misguided articles. Their work at being profound is utterly wasted and sad.
Why a majority voted for Trump has nothing to do with the Times’ interpretation, which is, I think, based on their years’ worth of diner interviews and the things that the diners said about what worries them and how they feel.
The Diner Mob mouths “immigration” — although there’s no indication they have been affected by immigration, let alone have understood how much our country, their territory and our tax system depend upon undocumented immigrants; there was a strong immigration bill which Trump killed. Their anger at immigration is crap and someone fed it to them
The Diner Mob mouths “inflation” — for which there is no basis in reality without considering COVID, supply chains, corporate price gouging, blah blah blah. They’re mouthing blame because someone fed them that crap.
The diners mouth “the economy.” There’s no indication that any of them understands anything whatsoever about “the economy.” Someone fed them that crap.
If Trump voters were ever capable of investigating their own viscera, their own psyches, their explanation would be quite different. It’d be a scary confession.
Here’s what David Fiedler in Poughkeepsie, New York wrote as a comment to that New York Times analysis. It’s so smart and sane and wise, I’m blowing it up:
I think this article makes the whole thing too complicated. They voted for him because they LIKE the venom he spews, not in spite of it. His embrace of hatred gives them permission to hate openly. It’s really very simple.
Add in white supremacy, racism and misogyny and it’s still very simple, Mr. Fiedler.
Aside from his many, many pathologies, Trump is at base a stupid man. He talks hate, resentment, persecution. He talks vengeance, violence, sexual assault. He is incoherent when he talks about anything other than hating. It is at the center of his existence. It’s really all he is. He is a stupid man who hates.
The Diner Mob is undoubtedly smarter than Trump. Almost anyone is. But they seem to feel they’ve been cheated by life, they haven’t gotten the gilt Trump flashes, haven’t been hugely successful, even if Trump’s success is one of his many lies.
The Diner Mob has taken Trump’s sick hate as a release from acceptable human behavior and the controls we as adults accept that restrict us from saying and doing horrible things to each other. Because if they imitate his resentment and hate, maybe it’ll somehow hand them the attention and money and power they think they deserve.
That’s what they voted for, those Diner People. They voted to join Trump in stupidity, in open and naked rage. He licensed their ids to fly free. That’s why they voted for him.
Somehow, I don’t feel obligated to hold them in new respect and admiration just because they’ve shown how much they hate the rest of us.
Do you?