Bernie Sanders is correct that the Democrats abandoned the working class. I will be blunt and say that Lemmy has ironic bigotry and disdain on the people of colour and working class who voted for Trump. It is important to understand the other side even if you don’t agree; that way you would know where they are coming from and sway them. Call Trump voters of all backgrounds racists, hillbillies, mysoginists, redneck, traitors, Uncle Toms or Uncle Hector; but people don’t have jobs and crime rate is up. The former blue wall is now the orange Rust Belt that colours Trump. And it is taboo to say this but many places are indeed overwhelmed by too much immigration since those places don’t have the infrastructure to support the sudden population increase. Chronically underfunded public services make locals and immigrants compete for school, jobs and hospital beds. Immigrants are blamed instead, when in fact it’s the affluent middle and upper classes who keep voting against building more social housing and expanding health services because they don’t want their property value to go down and/or pay more taxes. And frankly, I believe many Lemmy users fall into this class camp and don’t want to admit we’re part of the problem. Many of us are college-educated with higher economic mobility and earnings live in safe and affluent areas because we benefit from the new knowledge economy. We are not rubbing shoulders with working class folks who lost their traditional manufacturing jobs and not experiencing their every day struggle. So, we become detached from the real lived experiences of those left out and deprived of opportunities. We consign rural and de-industrialised Appalachian former workers as ignorant and racists, when in fact we’re also being bigoted against them for dismissing their genuine feelings of not having anymore jobs left, and their community left rotting by offshoring and automation caused by mismanaged globalisation. Why else has protectionism returned to the political menu? Has no one asked this instead of simply saying autarky and protectionism is dumb and makes their favourite video-games more expensive?

Simply saying that the economy is doing better is not enough if the rest are not feeling it. Just because we’re feeling cushy in our office job doesn’t mean those in the Rust Belt are feeling the same. We would not say we’re fine if we have cancer on the liver while the rest of the body don’t.

There is no denying that there are outright bigotry, but many people are left behind by emerging new technology and job market trend. And the folks who are out of jobs who could not put food on the table is the stuff that dictators are made of. I did not say this, it was Franklin Roosevelt. He knows that desperate people are easily brainwashed and swayed. Tell me you have not been in a dark place on a personal level before and you have not had negative thoughts dominate? It’s the same situation happening right now with the working class which manifest on the societal level.

If the mostly affluent Lemmy users, progressives and liberals realise this, then we can take back progressivism into the political spotlight. The same progressives who always call for empathy do not place the same to the blue collar, working class folks left behind economically. Progressives need to understand the people different from them. It is only right to learn even from the other side.

During the Great Depression, neighbours would buy their neighbouring farmers’ property at a penny to prevent being possessed by uncallous bankers, and threaten auctioneers for not agreeing with the sale. Where is that solidarity right now?