I’m just a poor white trash motherfucker. No one cares about me.
With these words, Jonna Ivin sets off on a long form essay explaining the Trump phenomenon. Part history lesson, part memoir, it is absolutely a fascinating read, and there’s little I can add except to point you to it. I will say that she traces the roots of the problem back to pre-slavery days where indentured servants were freed to Appalachia. Here’s how she follows that opening quote:
I met the man who said those words while working as a bartender in the Ozark Mountains of northwest Arkansas. It was a one-street town in Benton County. It had a beauty parlor, a gas station, and a bar where locals came on Friday nights to shoot the shit over cheap drinks and country music. I arrived in Arkansas by way of another little town in Louisiana, where all but a few local businesses had boarded up when Walmart moved in. In Arkansas, I was struggling to survive. I served drinks in the middle of the afternoon to people described as America’s “white ”— in other words, people just like me.
http://www.stirjournal.com/2016/04/01/i-know-why-poor-whites-chant-trump-trump-trump/
