Editor’s note: This commentary is by Jon Glascoe, of Randolph, who is a screenwriter, a filmmaker and a Democrat.
[A]mazon, the largest company in the world, has spent months soliciting offers from towns and cities throughout America for where to build their next empire. Virtually every state is bidding to become Amazon’s second home. Some are even offering to amend their tax codes to make themselves more attractive to the bosses in Silicon Valley. Light rail has been discussed to make commutes easier for workers at the new facility, and entire schools are being planned to educate their children. The states are all pulling out every stop.
And why not? Fifty thousand jobs or more will be created, with an average starting income in six figures. The work environment and benefits will be off the charts. Whatever governor snags the deal will be governor for a long time. Whatever state snags the deal will be a wealthier state for it.
I don’t know who will win the Amazon sweepstakes, Or what the determining factors will be. But I do know who won’t win. Alabama won’t win. Or Louisiana. Or Arkansas. Oklahoma won’t win. Neither will Kansas, Iowa, the Dakotas, West Virginia, Indiana or Alaska. No deeply red state will win and that is not a coincidence. They won’t win because they don’t deserve to win.
All we hear from Trump’s base in this angry, divided and violent country is how the elites and the “fake media” have screwed them for too long. The immigrants have taken their jobs. Their so called “national identity” (i.e. racist heart), has been trampled on by “libtards.” How “White Lives Matter.” What an ugly and tone deaf perversion of the point Colin Kaepernick and the BLM movement have been making. White male heterosexual lives have always mattered. That’s the point. From the dawn of this experiment until today, their lives have mattered more than gay lives, or women’s lives, or black lives, or Muslim lives. Because white men don’t have to fear for their lives when they are pulled over for traffic stops. Or get shot in the back walking away with their hands up. They don’t get choked to death for selling a loose cigarette on the street, nor do they need to be selling loose cigarettes on the street to make a buck.
White men have never been oppressed in America and they are not oppressed now. People in blue states, me included, understand white privilege. I know it’s not fair, never was, but I have tried to conduct my life grateful for the advantages I didn’t deserve because of the color of my skin, and hopefully with eyes wide open to the real oppression out there, not the invented complaints of Trump’s base. They are angry, all right. Angry at their lot in life. Everybody gets a break but them, and they showed us just how sick of it they are by electing a lying, unfit, unstable and undeniably racist president. Wow. They showed us!
But here’s the unhappy truth. Obama didn’t ruin their lives. Instead he went from nothing, to Columbia University, to Harvard law to the oval office where, whatever your politics, he comported himself with more grace, intelligence and dignity than any president in my lifetime. Hillary’s emails didn’t ruin their lives. She lived a life of service that came within one Trumped-up reinforcement from shattering the glass ceiling. Black people didn’t ruin their lives. Muslims didn’t ruin their lives. Immigrants didn’t ruin their lives. They mostly all just keep their heads down and work to get ahead. Just like the rest of us. Just like the base. And I didn’t ruin their lives — liberal, educated, engaged snowflake that I am.
No. Hate, violence, bigotry and ignorance is what ruins lives. All passed down from one generation to the next. Lyndon Johnson said, “If you can convince the lowest white man that he is better than the best colored man, he won’t notice that you are picking his pocket. Hell, if you give him somebody to look down on, he will empty his pockets for you.” And that, of course, is Trump’s only coherent national policy. By stirring up the hate that’s always been there, by winking at the myth of white supremacy, his base has barely noticed that he’s done not one thing to help them. Instead he reaches into their pockets for the last remaining crumbs that he can turn over to the rich.
So Amazon won’t be coming to the red states. As with any successful, 21st century, forward-looking enterprise, they don’t have time for 19th century thinking. They embrace an immigrant culture that has contributed mightily to their success. People don’t walk around on their campuses with guns because none are needed. No prohibitions on gays, or blacks, or Muslims, or women. They just want to get the job done. But the base will, of course, see it as one more indignity. And their states and their schools and their standard of living will continue to fall. Addiction, pollution, obesity and violence will continue to grow, and Trump will do nothing to help them.
So a word of advice from one American to the next. Turn off Fox News for a minute. Turn off Breitbart and Bannon. Be objective, for once, about whether Trump is a liar and a danger, and whether he cares about you. If you have children in the military, how has he treated Gold Star families so far (and I don’t just mean the black ones and the Muslim ones)? Stop blaming Obama. At best, what are you blaming him for? At worst, was it the color of his skin? Stop blaming Hillary. She lost. In fact, stop blaming, period. You call yourselves the real patriots, and yet our country is coming apart at the seams because of your choice. The people who will suffer first and most live in red states. When you get a chance to choose again, put the hate aside, look in the mirror and be patriots. Democrats cannot fix this. Only you can.
Do that, and the next big thing — the next Amazon — will come knocking. And life will look a little brighter for us all.
