My humble opinion as an outsider just passing through... toured around the USA four times over the past 18 months, saw loads of new places, met so many people, learnt a lot and each trip really made me feel more and more like Trump was going to win the election. I realised that the edges of the USA are really different to the middle, and the middle is incomprehensibly VAST - something that I've only begun to fathom since doing so much of the touring by driving. I felt that whilst my experience of the USA had been confined to the big cities like NYC, LA, Chicago, it gave me quite a warped sense of what America is and the more I've explored, the more my perspective has shifted. Every time we stopped at a gas station, we'd look at the "America merch" that was being sold in these seemingly remote "in the middle of nowhere" places and we'd be half-shocked, half-amused by the garish, aggressive slogans on baseball caps, key rings, water bottles... At first, I honestly felt these were kinda niche and I couldn't really imagine who would want to buy these things. But then I just kept seeing it everywhere - from Iowa to Texas - and I'd notice billboards on the freeway and placards outside people's houses and bumper stickers on people's cars... There's a very distinctive sense of what "freedom" means out in these places, and to me it seems intrinsically linked to a sense of territorial patriotism (reinforced by religion) that's so profound that it can't help but come across as aggressive to an outsider, and no doubt it stems out of the colonial history of the USA. It seems so deep in the psyche of America and Trump has managed to tap into it and he knows that if he makes himself the symbol for all of this, it basically makes him unstoppable. It's an energy and a loyalty that supersedes politics and law and humanity - it's all about the power and "freedom" of the individual and I guess that's actually always been a motif in American history since the Europeans first got there.
My humble opinion as an outsider just passing through... toured around the USA four times over the past 18 months, saw loads of new places, met so many people, learnt a lot and each trip really made me feel more and more like Trump was going to win the election. I realised that the edges of the USA are really different to the middle, and the middle is incomprehensibly VAST - something that I've only begun to fathom since doing so much of the touring by driving. I felt that whilst my experience of the USA had been confined to the big cities like NYC, LA, Chicago, it gave me quite a warped sense of what America is and the more I've explored, the more my perspective has shifted. Every time we stopped at a gas station, we'd look at the "America merch" that was being sold in these seemingly remote "in the middle of nowhere" places and we'd be half-shocked, half-amused by the garish, aggressive slogans on baseball caps, key rings, water bottles... At first, I honestly felt these were kinda niche and I couldn't really imagine who would want to buy these things. But then I just kept seeing it everywhere - from Iowa to Texas - and I'd notice billboards on the freeway and placards outside people's houses and bumper stickers on people's cars... There's a very distinctive sense of what "freedom" means out in these places, and to me it seems intrinsically linked to a sense of territorial patriotism (reinforced by religion) that's so profound that it can't help but come across as aggressive to an outsider, and no doubt it stems out of the colonial history of the USA. It seems so deep in the psyche of America and Trump has managed to tap into it and he knows that if he makes himself the symbol for all of this, it basically makes him unstoppable. It's an energy and a loyalty that supersedes politics and law and humanity - it's all about the power and "freedom" of the individual and I guess that's actually always been a motif in American history since the Europeans first got there.
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