After the stunning victory of Donald Trump in 2016, the world is watching to see how Americans will vote in 2020. America is made up of 50 culturally unique states, each so nuanced and multilayered that no magic bullet could explain the vicissitudes of that election cycle. As pundits conjectured on the mood of America following Trump’s election, I decided to set off on a drive through all 50 states to talk to voters and elected officials of all political stripes. There are some things you can’t learn from books, scholarly articles, or the 24-hour news cycle – the diverse and multifaceted lives of the American people were one of them.
As I experienced my country in a more direct way, I repeatedly encountered the flames of discontent stoked by the values of an urban cultural elite, a sentiment that, in part, fueled Trump’s rise. There was a sense, for people outside the beltway, that those who are educated would rather spend their time competing for their tiny space in the big cities than helping to develop areas that need their attention. I, too, was a culprit of this mindset – leaving my small Rust Belt town in the Midwest, I moved to the big cities, leaving them only to go work in the field for Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
It was during this journey that I also realized how reductive identity politics can be. The walls of our 2016 office were adorned with signs differentiated by identity: “Millennials for Hillary” and “Caribbean Americans for Hillary”. But the voting patterns of these groups tell a more complex story. Millennial voters went 37% for Trump and 55% for Clinton; they split equally in crucial swing states like Iowa, which had elected Obama twice. According to the Pew Research Center, Trump obtained more black and Hispanic votes than the previous two Republican candidates. The one thing presidential elections teach us for certain is that America does not operate under the broad banner of a “white working class” or “African American women.” On my trip, I spoke to immigrant women who were Trump supporters in New York and septuagenarian white men who were fervid socialists in West Virginia. The media looks for broad trends. But in doing so, it robs us of the nuance of the American experience. If we learned anything from 2016, it was that the region of the country you were from was as much a determining factor as gender, sexuality, race, or class.
My discovery of a different side of America opened me up to the fact that in my urban-centric life, I had an overly-narrow view of political opinions across the country. Staying with people in their homes changed this. Over kitchen tables in all 50 states, I was always able to find common ground, even with those I disagreed with. I realized that outside the social media-verse – replete with Twitter tantrums and Facebook diatribes – true dialogue still existed. Americans across the country were tired of the social media tirades and the ideological rhetoric from politicians and the media. In a universe where political atrocities happen daily, from impoverished conditions at border detention centers to an incoherent foreign policy, it’s more important than ever to debate political issues. Failing to do so deprives us of a common language in which to understand and influence political decisions on behalf of our friends and neighbors. I found that approaching these issues with humility and not delegitimizing someone else’s narrative was incredibly valuable even around the most divisive issues.
In Ohio, I attended a Trump rally. I saw it as a civic duty to engage in discussions with the 62,984,828 Americans who I did not understand. My experiences talking to voters at a Trump rally highlighted exactly why the strategy of treating them as a monolith is further emboldening them. Many of the voters I spoke with were veterans and quite a few were former Democrats who left the party as part of the #WalkAwayMovement started by a gay New Yorker. None of them cared that I worked for Hillary. They accepted me with open arms and were candid about the reasons they voted for (and continue to support) Donald Trump. They spoke of close friends and family members severing ties because of their support for the then-candidate. The sense of abandonment and judgment caused them to dig their heels in more, and lean on the new community they had formed around him. When I conveyed what I learned at the rally to liberal friends, I was instantly accused of normalizing hatred. I got an unwilling taste of what it feels like to be judged before being understood.
In Alabama, I stayed in the house of a woman who is an artist, a Catholic, a Republican, and a volunteer with the African refugee community in Mobile. She introduced me to Nutunze, an immigrant from Tanzania, whose family was relocated to Mobile after twenty years in a refugee camp. She had raised money and donated furniture, crafted a business plan to start an African grocery store, and helped them secure a $500,000 loan to build a church in their community. “It really gets to me when I’m called a racist because I’m from the South or a Republican,” she told me, “because I’ve actually done the work that my faith is based on.” I found myself at a loss to judge her. She didn’t vote the way I did, but I found her community engagement an inspiration to all.
This new portrait of Alabama helped me understand that truly engaging with people has gone out of fashion. According to the 2016 Annual Social and Economic Supplement, geographic mobility as at a record low of 11.2 percent. This lack of dynamism in the US economy is partly responsible for the political homogeneity in our communities. As I prepare to leave Oxford and decided where in the United States I would return to, I realized that visiting these places wasn’t enough. Going forward, all young Americans and I have an opportunity to look at where we take up space and what that means socially and politically for our country. How did we begin to clump ourselves into homogenous groups in the first place? For college-educated students, there’s a myth being sold that the NY-LA-DC triangle is where the action is and that in order to succeed one must be competing in the largest markets. There is an opportunity at this juncture in American life to make an active effort to start living in a different town, alongside people with different political opinions. Young people are tired of New York’s broken MTA and L.A.’s heavy traffic. Even in rising cities like Seattle, Austin, Nashville, and Denver, locals are seeing local infrastructure groan under the weight of new transplants.
College grads want to move to where it’s cheaper, but they’re afraid they won’t be able to advance their careers. This can change, and I’ve seen it done. I’ve found that young people who have moved to smaller places (from Casper, Wyoming to Anchorage, Alaska to Wheeling, West Virginia) have started lucrative businesses to fill a niche and risen to leadership positions in the community.
The revitalization of towns has now made moving to small communities in line with a young person’s best interest. The largest cities are not the places with the happiest citizens – National Geographic consistently ranks mid-sized towns above large cities in personal satisfaction. From my travels, this goes beyond finances; it has to do with the sense of purpose that comes from the ability to have an impact on the community. Young people can be involved in the innovation and development of hidden gems all across the country, from Appleton, Wisconsin to Oklahoma City, where rents are cheap and entrepreneurial risks are less costly. I’ve seen careers take off from something as simple as noticing a lack of a men’s clothing store on the main street in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Or the owners of a drilling company filling an empty storefront with an upscale coffee shop in Great Falls, Montana. This isn’t gentrification, but revitalization. No one is being kicked out; rather, it’s using up space that would’ve stood vacant. When I pulled into Palestine, Arkansas, a town of 600, I did so because of a new restaurant advertised at the exit. The “Crazy Donkey” was packed with locals, but it also attracted many new tourists to the formerly traffic-less town such that the owners had optimistically opened a new furniture store as well. “I spent all of my savings on this place,” the owner told me. “But I needed to do something for this town.” A former D.C. native crystallized this point for me in Indianapolis. Joanna Taft, who started the Harrison Center for the Arts, “a community-based, nonprofit arts organization that seeks to be a catalyst for renewal in the city of Indianapolis”, was cognizant of the fact that if she had stayed in a city saturated with talent, she would not have been able to accomplish half of what she had in Indianapolis. As young college-educated artists tend to look towards the coasts to make their mark, it’s so much more possible to make a visible impact in these cities. If you don’t, maybe no one else will.
My trip across the country did not yield a political consensus on the most divisive issues of the day. However, I found a common hunger to be listened to and understood – a yearning for recognition that one’s political perspectives are as multi-dimensional as one’s lived experience. It was through honest conversation that I was able to cut through the political rhetoric, and connect with many on a more human level – where candor and vulnerability yields nuance and an empathetic understanding. The experience of putting myself into so many situations helped me reevaluate my own role in where I choose to live. It became apparent that finding a new place was not only a personal decision but a political one. Whether I was conscious of it or not, my choice of where to settle had implications on the community’s political makeup, the associations that are possible, and the types of relationships that can be had. In short, where we choose to live also reflects what kind of democracy we choose to live in. A dynamic, tolerant, and collaborative democracy is one where communities are formed not by fear of others but by good faith, where bonds are born from common humanity rather than political identity. Part of the lesson of 2016 is that coastal Americans had lost touch with the geopolitical nature of their existence. The sense of purpose and pride that exists in smaller towns in the heart of the country, sometimes amidst terrible hardships, is the story that I believe is most worth sharing from my trip through all 50 states. As I return from the U.K. intending to put down roots in the very middle of the country, I do so with the understanding that telling and listening to stories is the most powerful political asset we have today. Maybe it’s time to listen to new ones.
Ryan Bernsten is doing an MSt in Creative Writing at Brasenose College. For more on his experiences across all 50 states see his podcast.