Land of the free, home of the White
A trip to the Homeland makes me question the myths I carry with me
Hatred is something peculiar. You will always find it strongest and most violent. Where there is the lowest degree of culture.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I grew up in Minnesota, a place where, since I knew nowhere else until after I graduated from college, I always felt to be kind and accepting- “Minnesota Nice.” It was a place I believed to be full of people who cared for others, even those who weren’t like them. Granted, I grew up in an environment that was 99.5% White and overwhelmingly Lutheran. There were few college graduates, but education wasn’t a priority beyond high school, because there were few opportunities for anyone with a bachelor’s degree
(In fifth grade, I began writing to colleges around the country because even then, I knew I needed to escape, but that’s another story best left for another time.)
I went to a high school in St. Cloud, MN, with a student body of roughly 2000. There was ONE black student for one semester during my junior year. He returned to Minneapolis because he didn’t like standing out and always being the object of constant curiosity.
I was aware of racism growing up, but only as something I saw on the 6:00 news. It wasn’t something that reached close to Walker, MN, the small town I lived in until we moved about 90 minutes south to St. Cloud after my freshman year in high school. I was fascinated by whatever news I could get about the outside world and read every history book I could get my hands on. Still, racism seemed an abstract concept and nothing that would cause me concern. Canada was closer to Walker than anything that felt like the real world.
In my hermetically sealed bubble in northern and then central Minnesota, I felt as if I was surrounded by good people who didn’t discriminate against others because of their religion, ethnicity, or skin color. In retrospect, I was naive, not paying attention, or didn’t know enough to recognize the signs. Or all of the above.
In early 2021, a few months after the Presidential election, I was back in Walker. It was only the second time since 1975 that I’d returned, the first being in 2014. I walked into a souvenir shop to get out of the chill, only to immediately be confronted with a stand topped by a MAGA hat and a “TRUMP 2020- NO MORE BULLSHIT” flag.
I was stunned. Once I collected myself, I turned on my heel and walked out. I tried to process what I’d just seen because it didn’t mesh with my recollection of the town I’d left behind in 1975.
Trying to make sense of things, I sat on a bench on Main Street and used my phone to pull up election results for Cass County, of which Walker is the county seat. It showed that Cass County had gone for Donald Trump by 71%-29%.
Suddenly I had to come to grips with the knowledge that many of the people I’d grown up with had voted for Trump. And that the people who I had presumed to be good, kind, and thoughtful had voted for a racist, xenophobic self-absorbed asshole.
That realization was even more distressing than when I’d learned that former Republican Congresswoman (and itinerant baby farmer) Michele Bachmann had represented the district where I went to high school.
How could people I’d grown up around and knew to be good people have devolved into narrow, hateful Trumpers?
Love, friendship, and respect do not unite people as much as a common hatred for something.
Anton Chekhov
Sadly, I know I’m not the only one wrestling with these questions. So many Americans have (at the risk of sounding trite) gone over to the Dark Side, and not just for the cookies. They’ve given in to their ignorance and hatred and found it easier to blame The Other for what they perceive to be the limitations of their lot in life.
Populists like Donald Trump have exploited these hatreds, promising easy solutions to complex problems. Unfortunately, they don’t understand that easy solutions only work for fascists and maybe teenagers (apologies to Frank Turner). Promises of simple solutions can be successful in getting a despot into office. Still, they can be elusive once said despot attempts to govern and finds out just how complex some problems genuinely are.
Of course, once a despot like Trump is in office, he can buy time by blaming his predecessor and vague, undefined forces aligned against him for boogering things up beyond repairs. Of course, the haters will eat this up, as they did for four years and, in many cases, continue to do. Despite Trump’s many obvious shortcomings and ineptitude, there are still millions who believe him to be a quasi-deity.
Yeah, I know; tell me you’re in a cult without telling me you’re in a cult.
That people I grew up around have fallen for Trump’s brand of fascism and hatred profoundly saddens me. Perhaps I’m giving too much credit to places I left in 1975 (Walker) and 1978 (St. Cloud), respectively. Or maybe I didn’t know people nearly as well as I thought, like when I found out a few years ago that my best friend in Walker gets his news from Fox News Channel. Not only that, he’s a fervent supporter of Donald Trump.
Perhaps these folks are simply being who they were all along, and I missed it because I was too naive or inexperienced to see it. Or I chose not to see the truth. Maybe I was too young to notice that truth for what it was.
I’ve learned the hard way that sometimes people turn out not to be who you may have once believed them to be. Sometimes that’s a good thing, but more often than not, it’s not very reassuring. For some reason, I like to think of the people I grew up with as being suspended in amber, but after close to 50 years, it turns out that we’ve grown in very different directions.
I suppose it’s silly to think that after so much water under the bridge, I’d have anything in common with the kids I grew up with. There’s been a lot of life for everyone since then. It saddens me to think so many of them have headed off in such a dark direction.
These are my people, but I consider myself fortunate to have been able to escape when I did. I could have become one of them. I’ll be forever grateful that I didn’t.
