Benjamin Hart journeys to the forgotten post-industrial town of Bleaksville, Kentucky and digs deep to find the answer to the question no other journalist (apart from the roughly 7,200 who wrote articles on this subject during this election cycle) will ask: why are Trump supporters so angry?
This is really the only article you need to read to understand the psyche of Trump’s base, because it’s the only article that’s been written on this subject, over and over again.
I spoke with Freddy O’Brien, a fifth-generation Bleaksviller who operates the bar. He told me he’d already talked about his support for Donald Trump to reporters from The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, The Daily Mail, The Hindustan Times, and Stormfront so far that day, but that he’d be willing to do one more interview before hosting an opioid and pizza party for the high-school football team (which I assume is the linchpin of the community). I asked him why he disliked Hillary Clinton so much, given that her tax and health care policies would directly benefit his family, whereas Trump had personally pledged to take away his father’s oxygen tank and burn it for sport. “People around here are tired of getting spit on, and Trump gets that,” O’Brien said. “I’m angry. We’re all angry.”“What are you angry about?” I asked.
“Everything,” he replied.
I couldn’t help but notice that people in Bleaksville are angry.
My suspicions were confirmed when I spoke to Ed Sherman, a sixty-seven-year-old retired teacher who has a thirty-seven-foot-tall sign outside his house that reads “Barack Obama Is A Demogorgon From Hell.” Though he believes that Obama is a secret member of ISIS who has recruited Hillary Clinton to smooth the group’s transition into witchcraft, he insists his support for Trump has nothing to do with race or gender.
“I don’t have a racist bone in my body,” he said. “I don’t care if you’re white, yellow, or colored. I’m just worried about these Muslims forcing Shariah Law on us here in Bleaksville. Trump’s gonna put a stop to that.”
The Only Article You Need To Read About Why Trump Voters Are Angry
[Benjamin Hart/The Awl]
(via Making Light)
(Image: Donald Trump, Gage Skidmore, CC-BY-SA)