© Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast
In the wake of the Trumpocalypse, many in the deepest blue cores have turned on those parts of America that supported the president's election, developing oikophobia—
an irrational fear of their fellow citizens.
The rage against red America is so strong that
The New York Time's predictably progressive
Nick Kristoff says his calls to understand red voters were "my most unpopular idea."
The essential logic—as laid out in a particularly acerbic piece in
The New Republic—
is that Trump's America is not only socially deplorable, but economically moronic as well. The kind-hearted blue staters have sent their industries to the abodes of the unwashed, and taken in their poor, only to see them end up "more bitter, white, and alt-right than ever."The red states, by electing Trump, seem to have lost any claim on usually wide-ranging progressive empathy. Frank Rich, theater critic turned pundit, turns up his nose at what he calls "hillbilly chic." Another
leftist author suggests that working-class support for Brexit and Trump means it is time "to dissolve" the "more than 150-year-old alliance between the industrial working class and what one might call the intellectual-cultural Left."
The fondest hope among the blue bourgeoise lies with the demographic eclipse of their red-state foes. Some
clearly hope that the
less-educated "dying white America," already suffering
shorter lifespans, in part due to alcoholism and opioid abuse, is destined to fade from the scene. Then the blue lords can take over a country with which they can identify without embarrassment.
Comment: Further reading: The Fourth Turning and Steve Bannon Pt. 3: Implications for Hysterica-America