For some reason, purveyors of the news are always offering predictions. If a prediction comes true, they announce it and praise the predictor. Odd, because predictions are not news.
Currently, they are predicting that any Republican running for president in 2024, the twice-impeached, ex-President Donald Trump or a clone, will not be wooing the suburban soccer mom but will be wooing the white, evangelical-Christian, heterosexual-male. Begs the question: what does the white, heterosexual, evangelical-Christian male want?
When the press is not predicting, it is speculating. “How do you think someone in the news, whom you have never met, feels?” That’s not news either. I do not claim to have access to a representative sample, nonetheless, I thought I might try to understand their issues. Rather than speculating or predicting, I asked.
I learned from the daughter of that demographic, “My father had a high school education. With it, he could support a family. My mother could stay home. He could send all of us to college. He could stand tall and garner respect in the community.”
Before you dismiss 23 percent of the electorate, think about it. Once a high school education was more than adequate. Now it does not necessarily prepare you for life, work, or citizenship. This country had a robust manufacturing segment of the economy. These jobs paid well and offered upward mobility. Now we manufacture very little. We offer two rungs on our economic ladder: first class and steerage. In most cases, the husband cannot support the family; both parents must go to work. That changes both the family dynamic and the world of children. That could make someone mad.
What is harder to understand is when President Biden reaches to the heart of the problem and actually does things to make America great again—creating jobs, bringing back some American manufacturing, reestablishing civility and the integrity of America abroad—those same fellows throw spit balls at him. They spend their hard-earned money at rallies dedicated to grievance. Don’t fix it; complain about it?
Whenever I reached out, uniformly, the men were pleased to be asked and enthusiastic about answering. One retired serviceman told of his deep concerns about the threat to democracy and the unraveling of our society. He was not agreeing with the concerns of multi-racial liberal democrats, he was accusing them. Liberals were the very ones who, in his opinion, were doing all the threatening and unraveling. Those guys were the ones who support immigration that dilutes our population, who support the progressive ideas that weaken our economy, and support inclusiveness of sexual preferences that weakens our society.
Another man said, “So, I am mostly what would be deemed conservative and view traditional values as the foundation on which America stands.”
Though he sincerely wanted me to understand, here is what I don’t understand: the entire sentence. It is as if someone borrowed the words and changed the meanings. Conservatives used to be “Bow-tie Republicans”—committed defenders of the Constitution, fiscally responsible, in staunch support of law enforcement and the national defense. There is an axiom that agreement is possible at the highest level of abstraction, but the devil is in the details. We are all using the same words—liberal and conservative, democrat and autocrat. We are all aspiring to the same words—liberty, freedom—the language of western civilization. Certainly the meanings changed.
He explained conservation means returning to a white, Christian country because that is American tradition. In 1787, the representatives to the Constitutional Convention, the ones who prevailed, that is, who wrote the Constitution, leaned on the gathering to sign it, and fought for ratification, were mostly atheists and uniformly frightened to death of a “Christian” nation or any theocracy. That is what the Puritans fled from.
He went on, “I think my most serious concern is the country’s leaning and direction towards Socialism that can get out of the bag quickly and create in essence the loss of the democracy that we enjoy now. And that concept, in that direction, is exacerbated by immigrants and immigration where conceptually everybody is equal, everybody should be paid the same, and everybody shares everybody’s efforts. [That’s] a failure waiting to happen, but if enough socialists start making the law that could happen, not in my lifetime, I don’t think, but somewhere down the road.”
And on…
“My greatest fear and concern is Kamala Harris becoming president. Vastly unqualified to be president and vice president. Only put on the ticket only to accumulate votes. There was, of course, precedent — Sarah Palin.”
What do Harris and Palin have in common? Education? Experience? Beliefs? Anything? I have it! They are both female. Possibly females are innately unqualified for high-level jobs. No one tell Nancy Pelosi.
And on…
“Another one of my serious concerns is the left-leaning bias that is inherent in teachers now—things that the universities are teaching, things the high schools are teaching, and things that even the junior high and elementary schools are teaching about America … are amazing to me but detrimental to the country. America’s not perfect, but it’s certainly the best country on this earth, and we make mistakes but far fewer mistakes than the good things that we do.”
Throw in cancel culture and you have the Fox News talking points. These men were nice, fun-loving, communicative. They all have guns, but not one has shot another human—not even in the service. Each would be shocked and insulted to think they sounded racist, sexist, or xenophobic. It’s plain fact to them.
They were not cookie cutter—two had their COVID-19 shots; one thought that was a socialized government infringing on their rights). One thought Trump “lost fair and square”—two did not. Once, they were all three Democrats, and now two were Republicans, and one was politically homeless. Not a representative sample, but closer to journalism than speculating and predicting.
