Making the Majority the Majority
A Path to Power
November 30, 2016
Name-calling or Identity Politics
Hillbilly a term derogatory to many, but one I always used jokingly in reference to myself. I could tell you of my being out in the woods (timbur) at night as a second grader hunting racoons (coon-hunting) with my father and his friend. Yes, you could say, I have a Hillbilly side to my family. Sometimes that hard R sound still drops into my language when discussing washing (warshing) my clothes. As I mispronounce our now media melded English, my sons descend into derisive laughter. I will say, “Hey, it’s just my Hillbilly English popping out.” Hillbilly most properly refers to the Appalachia-Ozark region and its Scots-Irish inhabitants. It has also come to refer to those immigrants from the South, especially the states of West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Arkansas who came to Midwest cities for jobs just as Black people did in the great migration of the early 20th Century. This group brought a different dialect, different cooking, and a different understanding of America and American history.
One of my favorite photos. I came early to Shiloh just as the mist was rising from the Tennesee River.
Now, there is a great debate of being too PC, politically correct. It seemed the one thing that outraged the Trump electorate the most was being too PC. They see it all as some one (a whiny librrul or elite intellectual) telling them what to do, not as a civic choice to use words to make America a better place. They do not look forward but back; they do not want to make America a better place. They want America to be the great place they have imagined it was. An America when all these nonwhite people were not on their TVs; this is the time they long for. Not one of them admits to being racist. It is not just ethnicity that became all too PC. What about those with disabilities, why must they have to call them challenged. In complaining about our current society being all too sensitive they have made themselves immune to sensitivity and common sense. Trump could indeed shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and they would still support him. Within the Trump voter some special identity or emotional place has been nurtured. It is a combination of fear, resentment, envy, and longing. They long for the hero, the simple solution, and the miracle that will make it all right (white?) again. When my mother grew up a doctor would say this what you have. This is what we will do. She complained these new doctors are less certain and they give you choices. She longed for the older times of more certainty, even if she intellectually knew modern medicine had more knowledge and more options. Within the Trump electorate are a large number of people who have had this emotional state fed, nurtured, and reinforced to where they now cheer the calamities of those not like them. Schadenfreude has become a rallying point for their movement.
The North Carolina monument at Gettysburg. Our cause is no less pressing than in 1863. We must make a determined stand against the heirs of these men who now once again seek to seize the American dream.
As is ever true of either a society or a nation, we struggle with touchy emotional issues. We want to let pass or just ignore unpleasantness. We prefer a state of blissful ignorance. ...
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