Coastal elite hatred of Trump voters explained…
… by a member of the coastal elite.
On a recent trip to Washington, D.C., we had lunch with a highly educated highly paid person who expressed hatred of Donald Trump and the kind of people who would vote for him. She has a law degree and works for a government agency managing a team of attorneys who process “civil rights complaints” against the agency. What constitutes a civil rights complaint? “It is almost always an employee suing the agency for race, sex, or some other kind of discrimination,” she explained. “I don’t do any of the litigation myself, but only manage the attorneys who do. It isn’t fulfilling or meaningful, but it lets me attend all of my kids’ school events.”
One thing that she hated about Trump was his withdrawal from the Paris agreement (the same Wikipedia article notes that none of the big countries that have agreed to the agreement have actually delivered on their pledges). She described her own practice of trying to reuse plastic wrap and belief that if everyone did that it would result in a significant reduction in fossil fuel use and CO2 emissions. (She lives in the suburbs and drives everywhere in a private gasoline-powered vehicle, consistent with “study finds climate change skeptics are more likely to behave in eco-friendly ways than those who are highly concerned about the issue”.)
She was yet more passionate on the subject of immigration. Trump was obstructing her ability to hire immigrants, e.g., to maintain her suburban yard. “They’re doing jobs that Americans won’t do,” she pointed out.
Her lobbyist husband had dangerous libertarian tendencies that she had tolerated thus far. However, she believed that he would vote for Donald Trump if Elizabeth Warren were to be nominated by the Democrats. “I would have to divorce him,” she noted seriously and without mentioning that the well-being of her two young children was being factored into her decision.
(As the lower earning spouse, she would likely come out as the winner of the winner-take-all contest set up by Maryland family law, so divorce for her would mean little change in spending power and she’d have significant blocks of time completely free for Tindering among the righteous while the Warren-resisting father cared for the children.)
I tried to gently point out that a lot of the people who voted for Democrats happened to be those who benefited from a larger government. Thus, they might be said to be voting their pocketbook just as they accused Trump voters of doing. She replied that, when voting, she thought only of her children and the future of the planet rather than herself.
After the lunch party broke up, a fellow attendee (also a senior government worker and a voter for Democrats) and I discussed this woman’s perspective. We agreed that she simply did not like having to share the U.S. with the kind of fellow citizen who would vote for Donald Trump. Her beef was not actually with Trump, whom she agreed is merely doing what he promised to do, but rather with her fellow citizens who were and are Trump supporters.
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