sound, outrage and fury

I addressed Kamala Harris’s campaign rally in Washington on Tuesday not as a distinguished journalist but as an audience member, including four women who hate Donald Trump and, from their perspective, have unusual followers. .

The venue was protected by more stringent security measures than the airport, but we received an invitation that defined us as “friends and family.” We learned upon arriving at the park near the White House, where Harris was to deliver her “closing statement” ahead of next week’s election, there were at least 10,000 friends and family there.

Republicans see the Democrats as an elitist class and the Democrats see them as unintelligent

The end of the line was half a kilometer away from a single small door – one of five entrances to the park – where they reviewed each person’s documents and went through security checks. We could have given up and gone home, but we stayed for a few hours, during which time we moved only 50 meters to the small door on the horizon.

The wait wasn’t that bad. I had a captive audience. The orgy of interviews, the raw material of my job. An opportunity to feel the pulse of my female colleagues and other heroes of this issue who had nothing else to do but talk to me.

The problem was, what were they going to tell me next? When I was a correspondent in Washington in the 1990s, I came to the conclusion that half of Americans were recognizably human and that the other half, though physically similar, had different brains, just as they did any other. Be of species.

So, I anticipated the brutal polarization that defines the United States today. In fact, the two rivals for the presidency, Harris and Trump, are clearly two very different animals. He is one of us, from the Homo Sapiens branch, and he, Little Sapiens, seems to be a descendant of Neanderthals.

I talked to ten humans standing in line and struggled to learn anything from them that I didn’t know. He told me that Trump was a vile character, cruel, narcissistic, fascist by nature, a threat to his country and the world. etc. And that Vice President Harris, while perhaps not the most brilliant candidate in history, even if she was no Obama, had the immense ability to be a normal person given the circumstances. And that was enough. This was excessive.

I checked my phone and suddenly I was offered what could be a new topic of conversation.

Harris’s great Democratic ally, rapidly aging President Joe Biden, is believed to have given Trump a gift. He recently declared in an interview that Trump voters were “trash.” I am immediately reminded of Hillary Clinton’s big mistake in the 2016 election campaign, which greatly contributed to Trump’s delivery to the White House.

Clinton said those who voted for Trump were “deplorables”. Now Biden was saying he was trash. What is the problem? One of the decisive factors behind Trump’s support is his followers’ sense that Democrats are elitist who despise him. Nurturing that sentiment is encouraging more of them to vote.

what do you think about it Trumpers I asked my row mates. Do they really despise him? Are they trash? Carol, Susie, Ellie and Nicole – the four women I had come with – became a little uneasy. They consider themselves democratic in the broadest sense of the word. To respect everyone. He hesitated before answering. Until an explosion occurs: “We can’t afford them!” A free way of saying to another: “What’s going on in your mind?” “How can you not see how disgusting this guy is?” They all screamed at almost the same time.

During the long wait to see Harris, he and six other people I spoke to felt more frustration than contempt.

Another question: Do any of you have any friends who will vote for Trump? silence. Then, “Yes, one.” “Me too.” “I will also give.” Paul, who traveled to the capital from the Adirondack Mountains north of New York, confessed that you had more than two.

“I live in a rural community of 65 families where we all know each other,” said Paul, a 70-year-old retired journalist. “Apparently half or more are lifelong Republicans. “If they vote, they will vote for Trump.” But would you call some of them friends? I repeated. Paul did not hesitate. “Yes! Yes! They’re good people. I know they’d be as, or even more, willing to help me in a crisis than my Democratic neighbors.”

However, I saw Paul very hurt. He clearly loved his country, but he expressed anguish in his soul at what he perceived as the stupidity, ignorance, even madness, of many of his compatriots. “I think to understand it you have to look at it not from a political or economic perspective, but from a psychological perspective.”

Anger? “Yes, this is where things should be.” We didn’t need to say anything else because we understood each other. Members of the Trumpist Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement resent the perception that people like them view them as intellectually superior. Indeed, Paul and his wife are unusually highly educated, and my four colleagues, all wealthy, are proudly progressive on issues that make conservatives uncomfortable, such as abortion, feminism, and gay marriage.

We were not allowed to enter the premises. Organizers had estimated that about 20,000 people would come to hear Harris. About 100,000 people came, a quarter of us stayed away. I watched the speech on television. nothing new. That freedom had to be protected from “little dictators” and so on.

I was realizing that most Americans of all colors are decent and generous people who are willing to help each other in any way they can in normal life, but are hated when they wear their tribal t-shirts. The gap opens up. Like in Spain, like everywhere. Only in the United States, where everything is always bigger, with more sound and more fury.