What Michael Sokolove found in a tiny Pennsylvania town
Comprehending what’s become of a large faction of Americans and a majority of the Republican Party will be the object of study for historians and psychologists for decades. Reporting from Riegelsville, Pa., a hamlet of 800 that voted in 2020 for Donald Trump by a mere two votes, Michael Sokolove found not one of the 60 Republican and Democrat voters he spoke with is changing sides this election. Just why will be the subject of doctoral dissertations (gift link):
Most of the Harris supporters I spoke to in Riegelsville cited the vice president’s personal qualities — what they perceived as positivity and decency — along with a desire for a president who might somehow calm our rancorous political climate. Most of the Trump supporters were unconcerned with matters of character. If they ever had a hope that a U.S. president would be someone they admired, a person who might represent the best of us — a war hero, say, like Dwight Eisenhower; a straight arrow like Jimmy Carter; or a trailblazer like Barack Obama — they had abandoned it. Many said that was an outdated or even naïve notion. They know who Mr. Trump is and don’t care.
“They know it’s wrong and they don’t care” (October 2014) was one of my earliest observations on this site.
“He’s a shyster, but I’d take him over her,” Marvin Cegielski, 84, the retired stone mason, told me. “He’ll block off the border.”
“I detest him as a person,” said Natalie Wriker, 37, who works at the Lutheran church in town, “but he’s the lesser of two evils.” She said she believes that politicians are “easily bought” but that Mr. Trump has less motivation to do things for money because of his wealth.
Among the Harris voters I talked with was Jaycee Venini, 23, who grew up in Riegelsville and works as a landscaper. “She is actually a human being,” he said. “I feel like that’s a minimum requirement. And she’s not full of greed or a convicted felon.”
The Good Liars clearly cherry-pick the videos they post of Trump supporters absolutely certain of what Trump has done for them until asked to name it. Mitigating their cherry-picking is how many they find. These people are almost impossibly uninformed. What people who believe Trump incorruptible because he’s rich miss is this: the more people have, the less secure they feel and the more they feel they need.
In this exchange from “The Rise of the New Global Elite” (2011), Chrystia Freeland recounts:
As an example, she described a conversation with a couple at a Manhattan dinner party: “They started saying, ‘If you’re going to buy all this stuff, life starts getting really expensive. If you’re going to do the NetJet thing’”—this is a service offering “fractional aircraft ownership” for those who do not wish to buy outright—“‘and if you’re going to have four houses, and you’re going to run the four houses, it’s like you start spending some money.’”
The clincher, Peterson says, came from the wife: “She turns to me and she goes, ‘You know, the thing about 20’”—by this, she meant $20 million a year—“‘is 20 is only 10 after taxes.’ And everyone at the table is nodding.”
As out of touch with them are the Trump voters Sokolove encountered. On Trump’s Chinese menu of character defects, “they offered a range of explanations and rationalizations that did not align with any knowable reality.”
In this Hallmark town, Sokolove expected to find people who had grown tired of the divisiveness and chaos he spawns. He was disappointed.
I was wrong. One of my last conversations was with a construction worker at the general store who asked that his name not be used. He brought up the assassination attempt on Mr. Trump in western Pennsylvania. “It was Biden’s fault,” the man said. How so? I asked. “Oh, c’mon,” he said. “The deep state tried to take him down. You have to be an idiot not to be able to see that.”
I also heard Riegelsville described as “quintessential Americana” — and in a slightly altered way, that also felt apt. It is America in 2024. It’s defenseless, like everywhere else, from the ever-rising tide of division and madness in the civic life of our nation.
So get out and vote, willya? Knock some doors. Make come calls if MAGAland is not the America in which you care to live.