Trump and mudsills part 2

OK, so my original blog post on how the word "mudsill" is, in my opinion, fairly explanatory of stereotypical core Trump support drew strong disagreement from closer friends.

That's OK.

Using some of the update material I added, and going beyond it, I'm going to do a follow-up.

My dad was a racist. Most of my siblings, with one exception, would refuse to admit that. But he was. He wasn't the worst racist, but ... he was one.

And, to some degree, the family history fits the bill.

Germans aren't Scotch-Irish, tis true. But, otherwise, my dad's one grandfather could have been.

He grew up in southern Indiana. Appalachia extended.

He then moved to northeast Texas. Appalachia extended. (One could argue for the Ozarks, with Arkansas and Missouri both being slave states before the Civil War, being a second Appalachia, too, and great-grandpa lived less than 50 miles from Arkansas and less than 35 from Oklahoma.)

He then moved to northwest Texas ... a bit more outside the mold, but maybe not totally.

He then moved to Oklahoma, specifically, eastern Oklahoma, where the five "civilized tribes" had been slave Indian nations before the Civil War. Then on to Missouri, where my dad was born and raised — and great-grandpa moved in with his one son, my dad's dad, for a while.

In short, the word from the original wasn't used lightly.

My dad probably would have publicly objected to Trump's sexism as well as racism — and privately condoned both. It's not fun thinking about this (my mom surely would have backed Cruz), but, it's reality.

Update: In places like Johnstown, Pennsylvania, heartland of the northern end of Appalachia, Trump is like crack cocaine. They feed on his anger at "others" — who are often racial "others." And, per the Atlantic, even non-mudsills (by economic class) among white give every appearance of being more racist than Joe Biden would like to admit.

And now, July 2018, we have multiple racists and affirmed neo-Nazis who are GOP general election candidates. When Ted Cruz tells Illionoisians to vote Dem if they don't have a write-in, it's serious.

That said, Teddy, then or since, hasn't done even more to criticize Trump. Or certain sub-groups of Trump voters.

The 2016 elections show this. The Atlantic notes that, among working-class white voters, sociocultural anxiety, and NOT economic anxiety, pushed such voters who indulged any anxieties toward Trump.