On the one hand, an America that is increasingly urban, increasingly uniform, increasingly liberal, where people go to live in cities more and more and which tends towards political-cultural homogeneity (27 of the 30 major American cities are solidly Democrat).
And on the other hand, the "deeply rooted" America.
The first believes in color-coded equality. The second in freedom. The old simplifying distinction between the "anywhere" who could live anywhere and the "somewhere" who live somewhere.
They had hoped minorities would sprint Biden. Trump turned out to be the Republican candidate with the most votes among non-whites in Republican history.: The Latinos, who can't stand the people of color on the left telling them they must be called “Latinx” in homage to the transgender mania. The Cubans from Florida. The conservative and traditional Catholics, like Supreme Court Judge Amy Barrett. And then the African Americans, who didn't form a wall with the Dems after all.
But above all the working class white, who again voted for Trump. "Life expectancy in most Appalachians is lower than in Bangladesh," explained Nobel Prize Winner Angus Deaton in reference to America's typically rural and white region. It has always struck me, this phrase. In Norton, West Virginia, the American Ground Zero of opioid addiction, Trump took 70 percent. These are places where the simple questions are asked: Will my country go broke? Will I have enough fuel? What life will my children have? Will we be able to defend ourselves and protect our friends? The oligarchs of technology and "intelligent people" do not understand them or at most consider them "homophobic and racist."
On the one hand, the America of the "new yuppies": TV series producers, employees of non-governmental organizations, screenwriters, journalists, university administrators, bioengineers, financial consultants, lawyers… They all read the same things and discuss inequality. Their insurance policy is education and they want an America of high taxes, egalitarianism and ecology. They want to be not only rich, but "better". They don't go to malls, they go to Facebook. It is an elite engaged in a ruthless project of reproducing social prestige.
Then there is the hoarse, rough, noisy America, where the social elevator is broken, the "steel towns" of Pennsylvania, the shabby factories and families, the conglomerates of Michigan warehouses, the America portrayed in Cimino’s movie "The Hunter", the America of a social anxiety, of the "white trash" as stupid sociologists call it, of the communities of Scottish and Irish origin, economically undefended, where you trust no one and you struggle to find a new job, the grammatically incorrect and somewhat obese caricature of all the media. This America does not want China to destroy what is left of the American economy, that cares about patriotism, that does not want minorities, the far left and Black Lives Matter to process American history. And there are the Evangelists and other decent, patriotic, family-oriented small-town Americans who feel the same.
They are not concerned with an extra celsius degree, but with extracting gas. They don't want the state to tell them how to live and die or which bathroom to use.
It is the America that still wants to "do" things, cultivate, frack oil, which occasionally still goes to church and observes human disentegration, family disintegration, the decline of cultural reference points. They don't follow Emmy Awards. They are horrified by the idea of being politically correct. They don't give a damn about the sermons from Hollywood stars. They do not accept the solution prepared for them by the elites: oblivion. It is what the media trivially call "populism".
I find it very sad, this inability of our pollsters, our media and our writers to understand this real America of Walt Whitman's "I hear America singing", that of the "deplorables".