The Real "Real America"

Two days until Trump is sworn in by one judge, and sworn at by 200 million Americans.

You know how conservatives, and people in the hinterlands, are always saying that people in coastal areas like New York, D.C., Boston, San Francisco, Hollywood (they never say "Los Angeles" or "L.A.," always "Hollywood," as if studio heads haven't always been Republicans) -- and I'm including the Great Lakes, which have tides -- simply don't understand the interior of the country, which they call "the real America"?

Well, earlier today, I just read a comment by a Facebook Friend, who pointed out that the converse argument is, at the least, equally true: "The GOP spent 8 years so demonizing Mr. Obama, and terrifying these isolated miners and others with no real concept of the rest of the country so badly."

This is true. They assaulted people with propaganda, to the point where "the people" want Obamacare repealed, but they're terrified at the thought of losing the Affordable Care Act. It's the same thing.

They say, "Keep your government hands off my Social Security and my Medicare." When the Republicans they vote for have been trying to destroy them since 1935 and 1965, respectively.

They believe foreign aid is a huge part of the federal budget, when it's about 1/10th of 1 percent of that budget.

They believe "welfare" is a bigger part than it actually is.

They hate the Department of Energy, when it includes the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that prevents future disasters like the one that nearly happened at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979.

And, of course, just as the cities on the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts are home not only to "the coastal elites," but are also home to white bigots, so, too, does "the Heartland" have a few people who seem like blue islands in a red sea.

One more thing: When the enemy they hate so much wanted to attack a place to symbolize America, they didn't go a "heartland" State like Kansas, or a "God-fearin'" Southern State like Alabama, or even anything in a "Purple State" like Ohio.

The enemy went after New York City.

And it wasn't the conservative Texas gool ol' boy that made them pay. It was a liberal Democrat, the man from Hawaii by way of Manhattan, Harvard, and the South Side of Chicago, who did that.

Every time the Republicans get into power, the push their conservative priorities, and mess things up. And the Democrats have to go in and fix it all, with liberal policies that actually work.

The Republicans have lied their way into power. As their favorite President of all time, Ronald Reagan, said in a very different context, "There you go again."