Here was their first mistake:
On one side of Ambassador Karin Olofsdotter sat a former German defense minister and on the other a Washington think-tanker, a former Obama White House official who had organized the Trump country excursion.Why would you get an Obama White House official to organize your trip to understand 'Trump's America'?
“Do the people who live in the Trump circles work in these high-tech companies?” Olofsdotter asked during her meeting with editors at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.Yes, being completely terrified of these wild animals helps you understand them.
“It’s a little scary, but a lot of them work in the medical field,” one of the editors replied.
Now for their second mistake:
Soon they came to a stop at the public library, a new, two-story brick building, where the parking lot was full and the librarian was eagerly waiting for them by the front door.Public libraries are like deep-blue monasteries in the reddest of red places. Go to Madison County, Georgia, and you'll find the only "Coexist" and "Clinton 2016" bumper stickers in the whole county on the two cars parked in the employee lot. These people -- who may be very decent, in most respects -- will not help you understand Trump voters.
“Do Trump voters go to libraries?” one of Smith’s former Obama administration colleagues, now a University of Pittsburgh professor, had asked her the previous day.You're off to a grand start with your understanding tour.
5 comments:
I find it actually alarming that the Germans lacked an "America Strategy". I mean either they were taking us for granted, or they were making massive assumptions. After all the US has plans for Canada and we have pretty much the most cordial relationship in human history with them.
These people don't even understand that there are Trump supporters/voters right in their neighborhoods. They don't know because we don't say so right up front because they get totally irrational when they hear it.
Going on a safari into the heartland? California had more Trump voters in raw numbers than all but three states. Maybe engage your own neighbors a little first.
From the linked-to article: “What we don’t do is talk to people like you,” she [the community organizer who organized this trip] said.
"People like us?" You mean Americans? Maybe that was Smith's second mistake.
Notice, too, that she didn't take them to "Trump country;" she carefully avoided flyover country where all the deplorable inmates live, nor did she venture to Michigan or Wisconsin; even in the western Pennsylvania area that in the main voted Trump, Smith took her party to Liberal outposts and not to the main areas where she knew she would encounter the plethora of actual Trump voters she pretended to want to meet with. Of course this careful targeting was elided by the WaPo.
The ambassador came away with a carefully choreographed misunderstanding.
Eric Hines
"...carefully choreographed misunderstanding." Yes, but one that the ambassador wanted to hear.
My wife is a retired children's librarian, and looking over the professional publications, I will confirm that the stereotype is largely correct. This has been true for decades.
Olofs' Daughter.
The Norse used to attach that as their last name or family lineage. Sort of like Smith did for professions, but it is interesting a common lineage made it officially their dynastic name.
The Ambassador was showed what the Left wanted to show them. Much in the same way the Soviets showed the Sovietologists a tour of Russia's great 5 year plans and the cure to world famine.
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