I’m sitting next to a Trump voter on a five-hour flight. He’s wearing cowboy boots bigger than he is tall, a shiny belt buckle, and a red ballcap, and he is eating a bag of fast-food, which fills the plane with French Fry smell. There is a seat between us, and I offer to share the middle tray so we can put our drinks there, and he takes this as an invitation to chat.
He tells me about his farm and his family. He grows specialty fruits and nuts. He married his high school sweetheart, and he has three kids, plus an adopted nephew. He’s been having indigestion, lately. He says he drinks too much after work, socially. He lost a lot of money on crypto.
He voted for Trump, mostly, because he makes him feel represented and safe in the world. He says, “I felt better with him in charge.”
This is familiar to me. I spent the first years of the monument campaign 2013 and 2014, and last bit of 2015, in the rural southern Sierra Nevada, mostly listening to Republicans.
The task of a grassroots advocate (or any advocate who seeks to persuade anyone), is not to talk, but to listen deeply until a person feels fully understood and you understand them. This gives people the emotional capacity to hear you. It’s like a good campfire chat, relaxed and easy, though counterintuitive in the world of politics.
I’m not campaigning here. I’m on a flight to paradise so I can climb up and down volcanoes, swim in tropical waters, and forget about everything for a while, though I do truly enjoy listening to people. So I listen.
A couple of hours later, he asks about me.
I tell him straight up that I run a nonprofit, I’m a tree hugging environmentalist trying to save the forest between Yosemite and Sequoia, and I want to make a big park for people and wildlife.
He googles me, stares at his phone, and looks me over.
“Well, you seem trustworthy and authentic,” he says. He owns a cabin at Shaver Lake, which is in the center of the proposed monument. After pausing a moment, “Would you allow hunting?”
“Yes, I would. But hunting groups never return my calls.”
“Well,” he says. “If you allow hunting, I’d support you.”
I laugh. I’ve learned so much in these conversations with people, and I’ve made a few friends along the way, too. Giving speeches, and all the rest of pushing policy change is another thing…and we’ll get to that.
When you talk to people one on one, about specific issues that affect us all, like the homelessness, healthcare for all (not what we have), immigration, fair pay, clean air, pure water, and parks, you’ll find that we mostly agree. (I’m fairly certain Republicans go to Yosemite.) I discovered this in the early part of the campaign, that about 90 percent of people agree on most things, which surprised me, given the optics of division so prevalent in social media.
The heart of our problem in America is that we live in an oligarchy. The rich and powerful set most of our nation’s public policies and determine how we communicate and what we discuss, and this doesn’t serve most of us very well. Facebook fuels conflict and spreads misinformation (more on this later). The two-party system encourages division. And, the Citizen United ruling allowed unrestricted spending on political campaigns by corporations, which have their own interests at the forefront.
It’s hard to know how much we have in common. As I consider this, he says, “You seem a bit tired.”
After 10 years on the campaign, I’m more exasperated than tired, and it’s not because of Trump voters – they are a reflection of the state of this country and our failure to enact meaningful changes and build a future that includes and serves most regular people. On “my side of the aisle,” there is a lack of vision and courage, which I am quite familiar with.
The first Range of Light bill was gutted into a “nothing burger.” When I discovered this (and that’s another story too), I pulled my support, and thankfully, that first bill was quietly crushed. But it was a four-year setback for me. To get the right bill, I had to climb back up that ladder.
Most of us don’t understand how our government works. It’s complex, and when we are filled with emotion and anger, we show up at the polls. We make noise at a rally. But after that, we leave it to the legislators and lobbyists, and things don’t turn out right. A sense of helplessness sets in.
Then, the angry ones show up at the polls, and who will they vote for?
Take a guess.
At the end of the flight, my cowboy companion walks me to my bags and gives me with a hug goodbye, which surprises me, and then disappears.
People are mostly decent. Not all. But most.
Trump is not the answer, but Biden isn’t offering a response to him that addresses the bread and butter of most Americans, who want a President who cares for them as his first priority. We want a President who articulates that with charisma and vision and acts on his policies with integrity and courage.
That’s what people really want.
Minerva's Moxie 