A few days ago, I was walking along the river trail in my new town, Bend, Oregon. A group of Lululemon-clad older walkers strode past, on their Tuesday mid-morning jaunt:
"... and, you know, Hawaii was so nice!..."
"Yes, we've gone to Mexico the past few Christmases,..."
"Isn't it beautiful? So great!"
"... yes, it is beautiful, but we might try Hawaii next year."
"Oh, you should, you'll love it!"
Here's another recent conversation, from dinner with a group of strangers (assembled via an online Meetup group):
"The food in Hong Kong is really amazing. You get stuff you can't get here, like shark-fin soup, because they have to kill the shark to get the fin."
"How long did it take you to get there? I really can't bear to spend more than fourteen hours flying. I flew to South Africa a couple of years ago -- twenty three hours! Can you believe it? Nearly killed me! But the ticket was only $2200 -- for each of us, of course -- so I couldn't refuse!"
This morning, an NPR story was talking about the rarity of white truffles, and how much people will pay to have a few shavings over their hundred-dollar plates of pasta.
... Do you still wonder how Trump got elected president?
I have a confession: I am a woman with a problem. I am liberal elite...
... from the midwest.
Born in Ohio in the 1960s to a social worker father and a stay-at-home mom (back then, they were just "moms"), I had three siblings to keep me company. Our family wasn't poor -- we owned our own home (built by my father and grandfather), had enough to eat, clean clothes. I got a new bike for Christmas one year after kicking around on my brother's oversized Huffy for some years prior to that. There was always a drivable car in the driveway, though we never knew which one of the five junkers we owned was going to start on any given day. One summer, I changed flat tires on cars three times in one day.
But we weren't rich, either. Things got repaired not replaced. My dad had a favorite cobbler shop in town to fix his shoes. We sold old newspapers and tin cans to the dump, and returned bottles for the deposit money. I was allowed one new outfit each year for school. Senior year, I was offered the choice between accompanying my French class to Paris for a week, or going to college -- it never occurred to me to ask for both. Our parents didn't allow pets, because we couldn't afford them.
My family lived a respectable life -- my father's alcoholism only our own family's version of a dirty little secret -- and showed up clean and punctual to school every day. We kids were expected to work hard, to earn our way through the world. -- If there was something I wanted to buy, I was given a list of extra chores I could do to earn the money to purchase it myself. When I was nine, I used to iron my dad's work handkerchiefs for ten cents apiece.
But I was also fortunate. I'd been born with brains and a bit of ambition -- I wanted to get to Paris eventually! -- and a father who was an ardent supporter of higher education. With financial assistance from him and the government, I attended and graduated from the prestigious Oberlin College. Some years later, I went back to school for a degree in veterinary medicine (again, with generous support from my clever father who'd done well for himself in the stock market while never changing his own pauper-like lifestyle).
I took my dreams and left the midwest, intending never to return. The midwest was too small for me, you see. I wanted to explore the big wide world, live among mountains, experience culture and art and music. I was fortunate that my parents appreciated these things though they didn't really have the funds to live the lifestyle. Nevertheless, we'd go to the art museum, which was free on Tuesdays, about once a year.
Still, I wanted out. Ohio was flat and ugly, I thought. Cornfields for miles. Strip malls. No one wanted to speak any other language than English. People were content to live out their lives in one place. Not me. I wanted "other." To see the world.
So I moved to Alaska. My career matured and so did my earnings. Without children of my own, I could spend the money as I saw fit, nurturing my love of travel, and then later food and wine, in somewhat extravagant fashion. I still saved, but I spent plenty, as well. I made charitable donations but could have afforded to give more. Instead, I was encouraged by my friends to "treat yourself" -- I'd "worked hard." I "deserve it!" Not Bill Gates rich, but what my mother would have tactfully called "well-off."
However, there's a part of me that has never quite escaped my midwestern upbringing. With time and distance, I no longer hold my fellow brethren in the disdain I had in my youth, but merely as people who made a different choice than I. My sister, for instance, has lived nearly all of her life within a ten mile radius of where she was born. She has a lovely home in a familiar community that is known to her and knows her. She has a respectable career as a critical-care nurse. She could, at any time, have pulled up roots and moved to San Francisco or New York, but that was not what she wanted. She was never -- could never be -- "lesser" than I. We are just two sisters making different choices for their lives' trajectories.
In contrast, some years ago, my then-husband & I were driving through Kentucky, spending time with his grandparents for their seventieth (!) wedding anniversary.
As we drove through the small town of Henderson, he said, aloud, "You know, I think I'm better than almost everyone else around here." You could have knocked me over with a feather: "Did you just say what I think you said?" I asked, incredulous.
"Yeah," he said, with thoughtful consideration, "I do."
"In what way?" though I already knew what he was going to say.
"Well, you know, with food and culture and wine and ... just the way we live our lives, you know?"
The midwesterner in me kicked in, "That doesn't make you 'better.' These people have something you & I will never have. Roots, and an attachment to their community that you & I will never experience, and a love of family and loyalty..." --- Okay, so maybe I was laying it on a little thick. But these were the values I remembered from my youth, and values I'd seen reflected in his own family's gathering to celebrate the grandparents (great-grandparents to some in attendance) and the family itself.
... You've read a long way to get to this point -- to get to THE point -- and here it is: These are the people forgotten by the Liberal Elite and, in my opinion, a major reason we liberals lost this year's presidential election to that heinous megalomaniac. These people, trying to live a quiet peaceful life with dignity and self-respect, have been abandoned by the upper echelons of politics. Who cares if their infrastructure is breaking down? Or they can't find jobs? Or don't have good schools to educate their children? -- The Left wants to throw welfare dollars at them and expect them to fix it themselves, and the Right expects them to get up off their lazy asses and do some work already! But no one gives them attention, respect, dignity.
We all want to lead a dignified life. Few people actually want a handout forever. Inherently, we know it's not fair. It's hard to value something you didn't earn. And it's easy, at the same time, to want more. Maybe your neighbor is getting more and you feel slighted -- your problems are worst than his, after all. Or you're younger. Or older. Always some reason it's unjust.
Me, I'm still reeling from the aftershock of the presidential election, but through the pain, I can't help but feel there must be some reason why the "rust belt" rejected Hilary Clinton as a candidate, and I think it's this: she didn't pay ordinary American working-class citizens proper attention and respect. Not as a publicity stunt (Shake a farmer's hand for the paparazzi, Secretary Clinton!) but out of genuine concern. I believe, in her heart, she wants all Americans to do well -- I do truly believe that. I mean, don't you want that? Don't we all, really, want that for each other? And I don't know why she didn't address it -- it is, after all, a behemoth of a problem, how to bridge that gap -- but the other guy sure did.
Trump came out with his baseball cap, and his "plain talk." A billionaire but using his own money, not the sponsorship of Wall Street. Somehow, this made him more relatable.
I don't think the rust belt wanted to vote for Trump, but at least he was saying something (we'll see if those promises are true or not, in the months and years to come) whereas she was saying nothing.
I don't disagree that the United States has a lot on its platter, including terrorism, climate change, global conflict involvement and other non-domestic issues. But it's hard to think about those global issues when you're worried about the basic necessities of a safe life for yourself and your family.
Besides, it is not the global citizenry who votes for POTUS; it's the citizens of this, our own, country. And they were sorely neglected by the Left during this election.
Make no mistake, as I said at the beginning: I am Liberal Elite. I have been to Paris, several times. And Rome. And Barcelona, Istanbul, Vienna, Edinburgh, Reykjavik, ... the list is now nearly (embarrassingly) too long to mention. I am grateful. I did work hard for the money I earned to pay for those trips. But there are people who work harder than I do, every day, who will never have the same opportunities I do, for a variety of reasons.
So I say this to my fellow Liberal Elite: It is smug and gauche to ever disregard our good fortune and forget about others who are less fortunate than we and need our help, not just our dollars. It is fitting this painful comeuppance came from the midwest, my own roots, where it is generally unseemly to behave as if one is "too big for one's britches."
Now let us go cut a switch, take our licks, and learn this most valuable lesson so as not to do it ever ever again.
