Serving the High Plains

Parties can't keep ignoring 'Flyover Man'

New York Times columnist David Brooks, a thinking conservative, wrote what I consider a brilliant piece that sympathetically explains the loyalty of President Donald Trump’s base.

Brooks, who is as critical of Trump as any “never-Trump” conservative, explains Trump loyalty without condescension by imagining a debate between an anti-Trump “Urban Guy” and “Flyover Man” from the nation’s interior. (It could have been two women, and maybe someone should imagine that conversation, too.)

As Urban Guy ticks off Trump’s outrages and outbursts, Flyover Man remembers Trump was the only candidate from either party in decades who addressed working people on their own terms.

Yes, Flyover Man acknowledges, “We knew this guy was a snake when we signed up. But he was the only one who saw us. He was the only one who saw that the America we love is being transformed in front of our eyes. Good jobs for hard-working people were gone. Our communities in tatters. Our kids in trouble.”

Since Trump’s election and after a brief flurry of curiosity about real people who inhabit the blur that passes under Urban Guy between coasts, the urban media and most politicians are again ignoring the the rural areas and small cities of mid-America, Flyover Man points out.

The New York Times itself provided two very recent examples of this on two consecutive days.

The Times ignored a federal judge’s Oct. 2 ruling overturning of California’s requirement that all candidates must reveal tax returns, and on Oct. 3, the newspaper ignored Trump’s order that increases consumer benefits from Medicare Advantage plans.

Yes, impeachment is a huge story, but short-shrifting two significant pro-Trump developments shows a disturbing bias that ignores issues important to a lot of very real people.

Flyover Man bristles at Trump being called the wrong answer to the right problems,because Trump is still the only political figure who seems to be listening to middle America.

I do think Trump is the wrong answer, but as Flyover Man points out, no one is developing viable alternatives.

Republicans have lost all courage in the face of loyalty to Trump, so they’re not looking for an alternative to the self-serving brat who occupies the Oval Office. Democrats, meanwhile, are advancing an agenda that is abhorrent to many middle Americans, and they’re not even trying to sell it to the nation’s interior.

It’s sad to me that if Trump does not survive Ukraine-gate, neither will Biden, the Democrats’ only moderate hope to appeal to the traditional mindset of Flyover Man.

On the other hand, with the Senate cowering before Trump, it is likely the president will survive impeachment. With Democrats moving to the left of traditional common sense, Trump could be re-elected to continue and expand his erratic and destructive one-man rule.

Brooks has helped me understand Flyover Man, who also chafes at being considered “a block of concrete you call ‘his base.’”

If both parties continue to ignore Flyover Man, however, that block of concrete could crush a democracy.

Steve Hansen writes about our life and times from his perspective of a semi-retired Tucumcari journalist. Contact him at:

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