New York Post - USA (2020-11-15)

New York Post, Sunday, November 15, 2020

nypost.com

—Gallup

“Today is

a great

day for

science

and

humanity.”

— Pfizer CEO

Albert Bourla, after

the company revealed

its coronavirus vaccine

appears to be 90

percent effective

“Certainly

it’s not going

to be a pandemic

for a lot

longer.”

— Dr. Anthony

Fauci, after

promising COVID

vaccine results

were reported

this week

hoT shoT

place in the rest of the country, from

the customs of Pentecostal and

Evangelical churches to gun culture

in the South and Southwest.

I have spent much of the past dec-

ade trying to tell some of the stories

of what we now think of as Trump

Country. And it’s complicated, be-

cause Trump Country is full of both

amazing things — from the startling

innovation of the energy industry to

high-tech farming — and horrifying

things: poverty, addiction, dysfunc-

tion, despair. I’ve reported from the

poorest corners of the country, from

homeless camps, from drug-treat-

ment facilities, pornographers’ con-

ventions, eviction court, gun court,

casinos, campaign rallies, and every-

where else I could think of. And I’ve

encountered things I wouldn’t quite

believe if I hadn’t seen them myself:

welfare dependents who use cases of

soda as an improved currency, the lo-

gistical ballet of Amazon fulfillment

centers, enormous fracking rigs that

walk from place to place

on gigantic robot legs. It’s

pretty far from Midtown

Manhattan — you can’t

see it from there, which is

one of the reasons I work

from Texas.

Blue America is feeling

triumphant at the mo-

ment. But vanquishing

Donald Trump is not

quite the achievement

they think it is, because Trump has

always been much more a symptom

of our Great Divide than a cause of

it. That may not be obvious to an in-

tellectual class that knows more

about the Uyghurs than it does about

Southwestern Oklahoma, but those

who are interested in un-

derstanding the other

America rather than

merely sneering at it have

a lot of homework to do.

Kevin D. Williamson’s new book,

“Big White Ghetto: Dead Broke,

Stone-Cold Stupid, and High on

Rage in the Dank Woolly Wilds of

the ‘Real America’” (Regnery), is

out Tuesday.

—Gallup

Americans, on how

likely they would be to

stay at home for a

month to help slow the

spread of coronavirus

loCk

us up!

Somewhat likely

Very/Somewhat

unlikely

Very

likely

18%

33%

49%

2012 2016 2020

50%

60%

US adults who approve

of the legalization

of marijuana, through

the years

GeTTinG

hiGher

68%

—A soon-to-retire cop to The Post, as it was

revealed that 2,400 NYPD officers have filed for

retirement from January 2020 till the first week of

October — a 25 percent increase over all of 2019

“You can’t do your job

if you’re not given the

support you need.”

But Blue America sees Red America

only in dribs and drabs: When J. D.

Vance’s excellent “Hillbilly Elegy” was

first published in 2016, the reaction to

that book in progressive intellectual

circles put me in mind of the death of

Tejano singer Selena in 1995: Selena

had 100 percent name recognition in

10 percent of the country and 0.00

percent name recognition among the

other 90 percent, where people were

perplexed by the intense outpouring

of grief at her murder. They were see-

ing the tip of a cultural iceberg.

Urban progressives who were sur-

prised by the Trump phenomenon

and shocked by QAnon are the same

ones who are made anxious and re-

pulsed by things that are common-

I

f people living in Trump

country seem like they live in

a different world from that

inhabited by Silicon Valley

executives and the editors of

The New York Times, there is a

reason for that: They do.

Before the election, I talked to

Democratic partisans who were ex-

pecting a blue wave that would see

Joe Biden winning not only swing

states such as Florida but also Repub-

lican-leaning states such as Texas,

and I talked to Republican partisans

who expected Donald Trump to

sweep blue states from Virginia to

California. Neither of those things

happened, of course. The run-up to

the election — and, now, the discon-

nect between town and country over

the president’s election-fraud com-

plaints — has contributed to the

sense that there are two Americas in-

habiting two very different realities.

Some of the snoots living in Blue

America sneer that the inhabitants

of Red America are ignorant, living

in a fantasyland. But in many ways

Red America understands Blue

America better than Blue America

understands Red America. It doesn’t

have much choice: The news media,

the entertainment business, technol-

ogy and social media, and the com-

manding heights of big business live

in Blue America and largely share

Blue America’s biases, assumptions

and points of view. Some of them are

at least a little aware of their igno-

rance — Dean Baquet, the editor of

The New York Times, confessed in

2016: “We don’t get religion. We

don’t get the role of religion in peo-

ple’s lives.” He might have added

guns, farming, and much else to the

list of things his staff doesn’t get.

kevin d.

williamson

Note to Blue America: Trump Country is here for good

President Trump President Trump

may have lost may have lost may have lost

re-election, but re-election, but re-election, but

his supporters — his supporters —

who turned out who turned out who turned out

in force in in force in

Washington, DC, Washington, DC,

on Saturday — on Saturday — on Saturday —

aren’t going aren’t going aren’t going

anywhere. Red-anywhere. Red-anywhere. Red-

state issues will state issues will state issues will

continue to loom continue to loom

large all across large all across

the nation, even the nation, even the nation, even

if coastal elites if coastal elites

ignore them.

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