This is why Donald Trump's winning: The GOP thinks their base is backward - now they're... - 0 views
www.salon.com/...re_showing_them_whos_in_charge
social class working class revolt demagogue exploitation crisis 2016
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rump has become the hillbilly vehicle for revenge upon the elites who have manipulated them for decades.After 52 years of abuse by their rulers, this “base” has finally turned on its leaders. The irony is that the only option for the now-former dominant Republicans is going to be to fall in line with them behind Trump.
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They have no place else to go: They will follow those they had so easily manipulated for so long; they will support Trump. If they don’t, their influence will disappear.
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Today’s hillbilly is a rebuke to elite attitudes, taking sloth as a badge of pride—again, witness Trump. Though the elite have long claimed to want to “help” poor whites, the words they use for them make one suspicious: knuckledraggers, rednecks, know-nothings (harkening back to an older time), and, of course, hillbillies.
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For many of the elites, also, the McCarthy era of blacklists and low-level persecution, among other things (including the growing civil-rights struggle), had soured them on the “everyday” American (though most have continued to maintain their protective posture in terms of an idealized America and the rest of world)
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American intellectuals and artists and the rich felt more and more alienated from what had once been considered the small-town “backbone” of America. In their eyes, the veneer of acceptance and toleration had been stripped away, revealing hate and venom beneath. There were two main reactions to this by members of the elite: Turn away or try to utilize those emotions for one’s own purposes.
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The mass of the white population of the United States has learned to hate both those who ignore them and those who try to manipulate them
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In their eyes, Trump is the only leader they can trust, a real individualist, the ideal for many of them, the person with such confidence that he does not need the approval of anyone else. To them, he is the one person who can disdain the machinations of the elite.