The antidote to the 'Heartland'

Who has the stomach to vote to Donald Trump? The legislative elections tomorrow have reverdecido the curiosity Spanish, and the Manifesto Redneck, Jim Goad, may be the paradigm of the story more widely as a response. Published in our language in 2017 (the original book is from 1997), he exposes the rage of the America ignored by the liberal elites (in the sense an american, not an economic one, but more similar to our progress).

During the campaign of the presidential elections, Hillary Clinton stirred up the hornet's nest to get "half of followers of Trump" in the "basket of the poor". In the basket at the end fit more than 31 million of your countrymen... The adjective "deplorable" home to perfection with the concept of white trash, which defines the last stratum of american society. In an arabesque racist, it is those who, being white, are located in the orbit of poverty and the exclusion of black people. However, according to US Poverty Statistics, only 8.8% of non-hispanic whites are under the poverty threshold and, in addition, simply... not vote, as he acknowledged, Alec MacGillis in The Atlantic.

Both Goad and Hillary mix churras with merino to create a critical mass that will confirm their hypothesis. Goad appeals in his book to the redneck ("necks of red", in reference to the American agrarian), but disolviéndolos sibilinamente in the white trash. For example: "[What] redneck is not a political party, is an inheritance. It is not a philosophy, it is a legacy. The white trash has existed from that emerged the class structure in Europe". After associating redneck to the ideas of tradition and legacy, speaking of white trash without a solution of continuity, as if the two concepts were synonymous, to take out the artillery pseudomarxista and make an army of outcasts. In reality, it is the geography that defines the field of battle. Goad devotes the Manifesto Redneck to "all those who live between New York and Los Angeles," and in march, Hillary said down that "if you look at the map of the USA, see all that red [color republican] in the middle."

The key is in the midwest, which includes the states redneck center of the country. The term west was applied to them because its origins are connected with the pioneers who left the civilized east coast states to follow in the footsteps of the sun and into the unknown. Once established in a fertile but dangerous, they founded the true american way of life, tough and enterprising, healthy rural customs. For this reason the area also receives the name of Heartland, the heart of the country. In addition, the set of equilibria of the electoral map, has decided almost every presidential election. In the past, Trump was made in it with 50 electoral votes-more than the previous republican candidate.

This summer, on a trip throughout the region, I have found many voters Trump, but none was very happy with his antics. In his regional analysis of the elections, the very democratic Daily Kos concluded that the midwest won not Trump: what lost Hillary Clinton. Wife of ex-president and well-connected with Wall Street, during his time as secretary of State used the email from a private server, for their official communications. The redneck understood as the nth demonstration that the elite did not distinguish between the institutions and the courtyard of his house. In a café in Lima, Ohio, I met you a couple of examples of this crowds of voters Trump. Tisha, a nurse with three children, and Donna, a housewife with six, agreed that the soul of the midwest lies in a vast middle class with an income of about $ 60,000 a year. Nothing white trash. "People vote for Trump because of the economy, and the thing is improving. Trump is doing its job, fulfills his promises, not like others, and your personal life is your business", I explained to Donna. In addition, much of what was said, he added, Tisha, had to do with the current drift of the media. This torque liberal of the acts indignant to Donna: "For the first time in history, a good part of the population refused to accept the result of elections. There was a lot of whining, they behaved like spoilt children who cannot accept defeat. When Obama won, I was very clear that he was my president, even though I don't like it".

Days later, I stayed in an airbnb in Marysville, Missouri. My host, a missionary, a retired married with a teacher of the high school local to me, I insisted that the people had reacted to what is happening on both coasts, so liberal that the environment was already unbreathable. "The Government had become too much to himself, not thinking of the needs of the people. We needed someone from outside of that stale environment to fix it."

In Western American Writing: Tradition and Promise, R. Nash recalls the concept of "culture" part of Emerson to conclude that "americans have become sufficiently civilized to appreciate the wild state". In the same book, J. Gurian explains that the foundational myth of the garden was shaded with historical facts to give on the stage of "conflicting realities" embodied in two stories are paradigmatic: the settlement is democratic and the outside of the law. The first asserts that the correct targets -civilization, commerce, culture, and church - guides into the settler, while the hero of the second operating outside the social order accepted, but often protects it. From the first outlaws of the west to the superheroes of Marvell, this icon came into the adjective maverick, coined from the figure of Samuel Maverick. The son of a wealthy business man and rancher of the NINETEENTH century, refused to mark his cattle. He argued that he wanted to spare them suffering; and their neighbors suspected that what was to be attributed to all cattle unmarked, or not too clearly marked, of the surrounding area. Everyone agreed that it was one of the heads harder to the west of the Mississippi. Increased his fortune and went into politics. Does it sound like? Since then, his last name is used to refer to someone of stubborn independence. Its use extends throughout society, but it resonates with force in policy. In retrospect, it is assigned to president Andrew Jackson, a crude lawyer-border, willing to massacre the indians and to remove the central bank in order to the expansion of the country, and the brake to the political and economic elite that corroía the american dream. Does it sound like? Years later, he came to power, another outsider, a lawyer of the middle west the object of the ridicule of the aristocratic Washington. Abraham Lincoln ended the concessions politiqueras to the south and changed the nation forever. Her end, very western, was similar to that of J. F. Kennedy, an outsider to the catholic. Reagan, directly out of the movies vaquerI also suffered an attack.

the official biography of The recently deceased John McCain, the republican candidate for the presidency in 2008, is titled McCain: The Myth of a Maverick. In it he praises Roosevelt because "he was not seeking to destroy the institutions of capitalism, that so much wealth created, but to save them from their own excesses". McCain refused to Trump up beyond death: he banned you at his own funeral. Very maverick. The morphology mythical of the current president is more about Jackson -a portrait of him occupies today the place more visible from the oval office - but, above all, Trump and McCain were contemporaries, and in these contexts, laden with testosterone, up until the global village is too small for two mavericks. The maverick is destined to disappear from the scene once their task was accomplished. If any falls in to the human temptation to perpetuate themselves, the citizen-readers-viewers-voters tend to dispose of it. While new names freshen the democratic and republican parties in Michigan a survey this summer showed that 62% of voters felt that the time had come to replace Trump...

*Angel Peña is a journalist and professor at IE University, where he received his doctorate with a thesis on ethical perception of space in the narratives of the collective Spanish and american.

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