Republished. We have all come to grips at this point with the fact that tens of millions of rural community dwellers have consciously, purposefully chosen to support public officials, e.g., election deniers, who undermine the best interests of people living outside urban centers.
We may still be unable to figure out why, but there they are, right in our faces, and they won’t take “think” for an answer. It smacks as too partisan to simply point out that almost every one of the public officials that have endorsed discredited coronavirus information, election fraud, school board tyranny, and so on are leaders in the Republican Party.
Democratic leadership makes mistakes, but none of them threaten the thin fibers that make up the fabric of our representative democracy. Historians and social scientists probably will study this phenomenon forever. But the next few weeks don’t give historians a wide enough window to show much of anything that could impact decisions we expect rural America to make as it votes. Bob Woodward’s tapes of Don Trump may do so if we live in a perfect world.
In reading the overview of his own interviews, Woodward makes it clear that the tone of Don Trump’s voice gives significant context to seemingly vapid answers. The way he says “No,” for instance, sent shivers up Woodward’s spine. Everyone who is inclined to take the easy way out and just let headlines and innuendo dictate their voting choices owes it to themselves and to our country to at least listen to the tapes, if only for a little while.
We can only hope that, in listening to Trump’s voice, they find their own.