If you want to try to understand the cultural and economic divides in America it may be best to begin where you live. Look around.
In a place that is familiar to you, if you stop and look and consider, the divisions become evident. But you really need to stop and consider, because you may have gotten so used to your surroundings that you have been missing the point as you go about your daily routine.
I have lived in Connecticut most of my life. I feel familiar with its regions and towns. I have driven past the same businesses, farms and churches for decades. I have seen the economic tides wash away old ways of life and in some cases plant new ones on our shores.
Though it is ranked as one of the wealthiest states in the country, based on per capita income, most of that wealth can be traced to the financial industry in nearby New York City and the insurance industry based mostly in Hartford. For many others, who live outside those two wealthy pockets, Connecticut is a state still recovering from declines in manufacturing and farming.
It is a small state and it is a small example of how the world economy has changed and is changing. In some of Connecticut's smaller cities, the architecture and empty store fronts stand frozen in time waiting for new life.
In this environment of the very rich and the very poor, it is easy to see how resentments can fester between the classes. Wealthy full-time and part-time residents enjoy the New England beauty and charm, but that charm is created in part by the quaint remnants of an antique economic model that no longer serves a large part of the population.
Connecticut is considered a Democratic state and long has been. The entire congressional delegation is Democrat. The governor is a Democrat. The state voted for Joe Biden for president in 2020. But Connecticut has had Republican governors in the recent past and in my lifetime a few Republican members of Congress.
So it's not pure Democrat and several regions of the state voted for a second term for Donald Trump. Economic distress, is the defining characteristic of the Connecticut towns that went for Trump. These communities are mostly rural, but also include towns that once relied heavily on a manufacturing base that disappeared more than fifty-years ago. This is where people need help. This is where Connecticut thinks it has been left behind. This is where the message of us versus them resonates.
The divide is stark. The privilege of the many makes it easy to ignore the struggle of a smaller, but significant, number of people who live just off the country roads, or in the tenement style housing of old mill towns. They have been stuck in this rut for generations.
This Connecticut - this America - has always been here, but in a louder voice the people who occupy it are saying, "the system is not fair." They are so desperate for a government that listens to them that they put their faith in a movement that was unlikely to use the power of government to intervene on their behalf. The platform of the once conservative Republican Party has historically been one of smaller government and self-reliance. Still these voters feel betrayed by Washington, D.C. and perhaps by their state government, and were willing to take a chance on an outsider. And based on how they voted in 2020, they are still willing to make that gamble. At the top of the ticket, they were not voting Republican - they were voting for help.
Even in wealthy Connecticut, there are those who simply feel they have been left behind and they are looking for someone to see them and to do something to even the playing field.
© Dean Pagani 2021
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© Dean Pagani 2021