This Article Explains PERFECTLY Why Trump Is So Popular. And It Has Nothing To Do With Trump.

If you’ve never heard of the website Cracked – it’s basically a meaner version of BuzzFeed. Their entire (and I do mean their ENTIRE) schtick is “Top 10”-esque listicles talking about pop culture and society in general. It’s DEFINITELY a left-leaning website (with a lot more profanity to go with it). Basically, everyone who doesn’t have a progressive/liberal ideology is a backwards racist bigot who shouldn’t be allowed to live (probably). It’s rare that I can read something on Cracked without wanting to throw my computer/phone/iPad out the window. So I avoid it as much as possible.

Which is why this particular article is so surprising. Mr. CJ showed it to me. At first, I told him I didn’t want to read anything from Cracked. But then he said – “No, I think you’ll like this one. This guy actually sees sense.”

And – wonder of wonders – I agreed with him!

First off, the author – David Wong – titles his list “How Half Of America Lost Its F**king Mind.” Originally, I suspect the title was more like “6 Reasons For Trump’s Rise That No One Talks About” (that’s what’s in the article’s URL, anyway). But, Cracked editors. They have a leftist audience to appeal to, you know.

Basically, Wong is trying to explain the Donald Trump phenomenon in this election in a way that doesn’t belittle or demean Trump supporters, but also show how deep the ideological divide in America runs. And it has nothing to do with race or gender or sexual orientation or any of the other category boxes Democrats use to appeal to people. It has everything to do with small town America vs. big city America. I have no doubt that he is NOT a Trump supporter, but he actually understands the mindset of a Trump supporter. Which puts him MILES ahead of the game, compared to his liberal colleagues.

I’ll hit the highlights in this recap, but I would encourage you read the whole thing. It’s a great read, one that I found myself nodding enthusiastically throughout.

First, Wong appeals to his audience by looking at three well-known movies – The Hunger Games, Star Wars, and Braveheart. –

I’m going to explain the Donald Trump phenomenon in three movies. And then some text.

There’s this universal shorthand that epic adventure movies use to tell the good guys from the bad. The good guys [in The Hunger Games] are simple folk from the while the bad guys are decadent assholes who live in the city and wear stupid clothes.

In Star Wars, Luke is a farm boy while the bad guys live in a shiny space station.

In Braveheart, the main character (Dennis Braveheart) is a simple farmer and the dastardly Prince Shithead lives in a luxurious castle and wears fancy, foppish clothes.

The theme expresses itself in several ways — primitive vs. advanced, tough vs. delicate, masculine vs. feminine, poor vs. rich, pure vs. decadent, traditional vs. weird. All of it is code for rural vs. urban. That tense divide between the two doesn’t exist because of these movies, obviously. These movies used it as shorthand because the divide already existed.

We country folk are programmed to hate the prissy elites. That brings us to Trump.

And here, my farm girl heart and mind both go – Well, yeah. Snotty big city dwellers think I grew up without indoor plumbing and dating my cousins. They don’t know me and they won’t bother to get to know me. What makes them experts on my life? Why would I listen to them?

Wong’s first point is how such a small fraction of the country dictates what the rest of the country does and thinks. He uses the example of the electoral map from 2012, where if you divide it on a county-by-county basis, you’d think the blue team were the biggest losers –

[T]hat makes it look like Obama’s blue party is some kind of fringe political faction that struggles to get 20 percent of the vote. The blue parts, however, are more densely populated — they’re the cities. In the upper left, you see the blue Seattle/Tacoma area, lower down is San Francisco and then L.A. The blue around the dick-shaped Lake Michigan is made of cities like Minneapolis, Milwaukee, and Chicago. In the northeast is, of course, New York and Boston, leading down into Philadelphia, which leads into a blue band which connects a bunch of southern cities like Charlotte and Atlanta.

Blue islands in an ocean of red. The cities are less than 4 percent of the land mass, but 62 percent of the population and easily 99 percent of the popular culture. Our movies, shows, songs, and news all radiate out from those blue islands.

And if you live in the red, that fucking sucks.

And it’s not just our politics that comes from the cities. It’s also our culture. How many movies and TV shows are set in New York City or somewhere in California? Include Chicago and DC – and yeah, that’s a LOT of liberal culture being force-fed to everyone else.

Also, the cities is where all the trends get started – good and bad. Everything from fashion and culture trends, to poverty, crime, and racism. In fact, Wong uses the example of when he was growing up in a deep-red part of Illinois (it’s not Illinois that’s blue, it’s Chicago that’s blue) no one he knew was actively racist. The fear of gangs and such wasn’t based on skin color, either. Those things came from the city. Small-town people visiting the city are told to lock their doors and don’t go into rough neighborhoods. And if you’re a black or Hispanic or other minority who lives in a small-town, you’re treated like a friend and a neighbor, rather than a census box demographic, because you have to depend on each other to make it through. Skin color rarely (if ever) factors into the equation.

Wong also explains that – to much of small-town America – the church is the center of social life. Community gatherings, cultural events, service opportunities. Whereas people in the big cities have all kinds of options to socialize and gather, not just church. So, they lose that connection to religion altogether, making it this weird thing that people with no teeth practice. And that annoys small-town folks to no end –

Well, the perception back then was that those city folks were all turning atheist, abandoning church for their bisexual sex parties. That, we were told, was literally a sign of the Apocalypse. Not just due to the spiritual consequences (which were dire), but the devastation that would come to the culture. I couldn’t imagine any rebuttal. In that place, at that time, the church was everything. Don’t take my word for it — listen to the experts:

via Gallup

Church was where you made friends, met girls, networked for jobs, got social support. The poor could get food and clothes there, couples could get advice on their marriages, addicts could try to get clean. But now we’re seeing a startling decline in Christianity among the general population, the godless disease having spread alongside Valley Girl talk. So according to Fox News, what’s the result of those decadent, atheist, amoral snobs in the cities having turned their noses up at God?

Chaos.

The savages are coming.

Blacks riot, Muslims set bombs, gays spread AIDS, Mexican cartels behead children, atheists tear down Christmas trees. Meanwhile, those liberal Lena Dunhams in their $5,000-a-month apartments sip wine and say, “But those white Christians are the real problem!” Terror victims scream in the street next to their own severed limbs, and the response from the elites is to cry about how men should be allowed to use women’s restrooms and how it’s cruel to keep chickens in cages.
[…]

Madness. Their heads are so far up their asses that they can’t tell up from down. Basic, obvious truths that have gone unquestioned for thousands of years now get laughed at and shouted down — the fact that hard work is better than dependence on government, that children do better with both parents in the picture, that peace is better than rioting, that a strict moral code is better than blithe hedonism, that humans tend to value things they’ve earned more than what they get for free, that not getting exploded by a bomb is better than getting exploded by a bomb.

Or as they say out in the country, “Don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining.”

The foundation upon which America was undeniably built — family, faith, and hard work — had been deemed unfashionable and small-minded. Those snooty elites up in their ivory tower laughed as they kicked away that foundation, and then wrote 10,000-word thinkpieces blaming the builders for the ensuing collapse.

People in rural America are tired of being treated like garbage. They’re tired of the elites getting away with things that normal people would be serving decades in prison for (HELLO Hillary Clinton!) They’re tired of working hard for nothing, while taxes go up on their small businesses and their Mom and Pop stores go under. And the left keeps crying about how small business owners are part of “the rich” who don’t pay their fair share. Meanwhile, Mom and Pop are looking at the liberal elites and say “Why don’t you pay your fair share, Gwyneth?” –

It really does feel like the worst of both worlds: all the ravages of poverty, but none of the sympathy. “Blacks burn police cars, and those liberal elites say it’s not their fault because they’re poor. My son gets jailed and fired over a baggie of meth, and those same elites make jokes about his missing teeth!” You’re everyone’s punching bag, one of society’s last remaining safe comedy targets.
Just because you can afford the big bottle of Pepsi doesn’t mean people are punching up when roasting you.

They take it hard. These are people who come from a long line of folks who took pride in looking after themselves. Where I’m from, you weren’t a real man unless you could repair a car, patch a roof, hunt your own meat, and defend your home from an intruder. It was a source of shame to be dependent on anyone — especially the government. You mowed your own lawn and fixed your own pipes when they leaked, you hauled your own firewood in your own pickup truck. (Mine was a 1994 Ford Ranger! The current owner says it still runs!)

Not like those hipsters in their tiny apartments, or “those people” in their public housing projects, waiting for the landlord any time something breaks, knowing if things get too bad they can just pick up and move. When you don’t own anything, it’s all somebody else’s problem. “They probably don’t pay taxes, either! Just treating America itself as a subsidized apartment they can trash!”

There are other examples Wong uses, but the crux of the article is this – Rural America has no voice anymore. The liberal elites who are in power don’t listen to us. We’re denounced as racist, etc. and we don’t have a say at the table. Just shut up and let your leftist betters in government handle things.

Enter, Donald Trump –

“But Trump is objectively a piece of shit!” you say. “He insults people, he objectifies women, and cheats whenever possible! And he’s not an everyman; he’s a smarmy, arrogant billionaire!”

Wait, are you talking about Donald Trump, or this guy:

You’ve never rooted for somebody like that? Someone powerful who gives your enemies the insults they deserve? Somebody with big fun appetites who screws up just enough to make them relatable? Like Dr. House or Walter White? Or any of the several million renegade cop characters who can break all the rules because they get shit done? Who only get shit done because they don’t care about the rules?

“But those are fictional characters!” Okay, what about all those millionaire left-leaning talk show hosts? You think they keep their insults classy? Tune into any bit about Chris Christie and start counting down the seconds until the fat joke. Google David Letterman’s sex scandals. But it’s okay, because they’re on our side, and everybody wants an asshole on their team — a spiked bat to smash their enemies with. That’s all Trump is. The howls of elite outrage are like the sounds of bombs landing on the enemy’s fortress. The louder the better.

Yes. Donald Trump is Tony Stark (just without the shiny suit, but the analogy works great).

So, when the Democrats think that Flyover America is racist and sexist and homophobic simply because they’re supporting Trump, they miss the point. Flyover America is sick of being taken for granted and being talked down to and being told that everything they hold dear is EEEEEEEEVIL. Americans are tired of being punched by the liberal elites, so they’re punching back. And Donald Trump stepped up to be the messenger. Agree or disagree with him as a candidate as you choose, but you cannot deny that there is a real problem here that won’t be swept away with a government program or another self-righteous lecture from the left.

And I hope David Wong is merely the start of liberals figuring this out.