‘I voted for Obama twice and Hillary once. But I tell you, I’m going to vote for that knucklehead Donald Trump again.” My Uber driver made that declaration without much of an invitation. We were passing protesters in Midtown Manhattan. As best I can tell, they were protesting inhuman work hours. The few protesters who weren’t wearing masks were Asian, so I’m going to take a not-so-wild guess and assume they were protesting a Chinese company with offices in the building. We are well aware of slave labor and worse in China. But my Uber driver didn’t really care what they were protesting — he only saw “woke.” He feels powerless and fed up.
The outburst took me down memory lane. The first time Donald Trump ran for president, I would make it a point to talk with everyone I could. Often, they themselves would bring up the elections. Muslims, Mexicans, black, immigrants — all were saying some version of the same: They were fed up. I would hear some version of: Donald Trump doesn’t care, he will take on the media and everyone else. They felt as if the American dream they so loved was fading — the chance for a better life, compared with the homeland they had fled for one reason or another.
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