Never mind that Trump has gold-plated fixtures in every mansion he owns. Or that he got his start from his father’s seed money. Or that he wouldn’t piss on a poor white person if they burning alive. (Maybe if they were in a hotel bed in Moscow.) Never mind that Meghan McCain comes from a background of extraordinary privilege that made it even possible for her to land prestigious gigs at Saturday Night Live and The Daily Beast. Never mind all of that, because we’re supposed to believe that people like McCain and Trump understand “regular folks” like me.

To a certain extent, they're right. Trump understands that a number of rural Americans are fucking morons. And I’m not talking about folks too down on their luck to care about staying informed. I’m talking about people who have the access and resources and $70,000 median household incomes—they have no excuse not to know better, but stay willfully ignorant as a point of cultural pride. These are the folks who think intellectualism is a sign of weakness. In the arbitrary purview of toxic masculinity, books are frowned upon and brute strength and bluster are held up as virtues. These people occupy a world in which a swaggering John Wayne (who never served in the military during WWII, by the way) is somehow more patriotic than his liberal contemporaries who served in combat. Trump knows this. He knows how to ignite people’s worst impulses. He is the canvass upon which these folks project all their insecurities, the kind of people who are afraid of black and Latinos and Muslims and receive welfare while they rant against “government handouts.”

You know what I call a bigoted, moronic white person in a “blue collar” job? I call them a bigoted moron.

But Meghan McCain and all her conservative friends want all of us to believe that the bubble is exclusive to liberals on both coasts, not rural Americans who insulate themselves into an enormous social echo chamber, repeating the same stupid “facts,” fears, and conspiracy theories to each other while earnestly calling for a wall to be built upon the Mexican border.

You know what I call a bigoted, moronic white person in a “blue collar” job? I call them a bigoted moron. Because they are. And as someone who is from this world, we sure as hell don’t need pundits and politicians placating that bigotry. If the Meghan McCains and Tomi Lehrens and Donald Trumps of the world cared about this segment of America, they’d expect more of us; the rural wouldn’t be antonymous with an interest in the academic. There are so many honest, hardworking folks in these communities. I know them. They deserve honesty and good faith and leaders who genuinely care about their well being. Instead, these leaders talk to us like children. We're reduced to stereotypes that become self-fulfilling, imprisoned in a cycle of low expectations, and exploited by conservative politicians who bang the same drum and walk away reaping the benefits.

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