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Cynique, shared with us a picture of her childhood from 80 years ago. It was an idyllic picture of an America--during the Great Depression no less. When Donald Trump says "Lets Make America Great Again," what his supporters hear is a return to a time when kids can grow up like Cynique did. Black people like to interpret this to mean Trump wants Black people enslaved again. Today the white community is being ravished by a heroin epidemic; millions have lost their homes due to crooked Wall Street bankers; good paying jobs, for those without a college degrees have dried up; and those with a college degree struggle to find meaningful work that pays enough to get them out the oppressive debt they have piled on to attend schools which are really overpriced minor leagues for the NBA and NFL. White men are committing suicide at record numbers. Of course when white folks catch a cold... I'm not sure what percentage of Black folks, 80 years ago, grew up; without fear of violence; free of economic strife; and educated well; and how that compared to the way Cynique grew up. I bet the comparison was not favorable. I wonder what the percentage would be today. Does anyone think is has changed from 80 years ago? People want to go back to the way things were, but that is impossible, and for many Black Americans it would not be desireable.

I don't think Trump supporters are just one thing that are capable of being described with a broad brush. Some I'm sure are just as you've described them, some are rabid racists, and others just want America to live up to it's potential. This is why I'm not so willing to reduce his supporters to racist idiots. Similarly I'm not willing to raise Hillary supporters to enlightened people... The results of the election will be interesting. I think the odds are that Hillary will prevail, but it will be interesting to see how many people come out to vote, who they select, and what happens as a result. I look forward to your commentary four years from now--either way.

Everybody yearns for the good ol days. Humans think Life owes them something and then when it becomes more of an adversary than an ally, they filter out the good memories from the past and focus on them. This is an escape mechanism. Concerning blacks, when I went to the U. of I, during the early 1950s, the black population on this huge campus of over 25,000 was about 500 at the most. So all of us blacks associated and socialized with each other. We came from little towns and villages from all up and down the state of Illinois as well larger places like Chicago and Springfield. And many of my black school mates had backgrounds similar to mine. In their hometowns they were the minority where whites were the majority, and we were all able to co-exist in such environments because our small numbers made us nonthreatening. We stayed to ourselves, and created our own little communities within the dominant one. And we had all perfected our double consciousness, presenting one face for whites and one for our own folks. And in my day, Maywood's sedate little black community was the recipient of many of the things that accrued to whites, especially when it came to the schools which were top notch during this time. I kinda think these are untold stories, and are not as rare as one might think. In fact, my father who was raised on a Kansas farm, went to a one-room school house that was integrated, and he often talked about his "Tom Sawyer" way of life back in the early 1900s. I'm sure, of course, it was quite different in the Jim Crow South. Nowadays my kids, who range in age from 45 to 58, have taken to talking about "the good old days", which they seem to measure in terms of music and styles. They look back fondly on the '70s and '80s; the R&B Soul train times with the Afros, bell bottoms and platform shoes being the rage, and the MTV days with the videos of Prince and Michael Jackson, and the Disco era of Donna Summer. And actually, those 2 decades were kind of a pleasant interlude.There was no major war, the economy was fairly stable, drugs had not yet reached epidemics portions in their environment and - best of all there was no social media to addict and stultify young folks. IMO, malcontents make up a large portion of Donald Trump's followers. They don't like how Liberals expect them to be tolerant of those who are different, They don't like what they perceive as interference by big Government in their lives, they don't like America being soft on terrorism but they love their guns and embrace their religious hypocrisy. Above all, they don't like a nigger running the country or the prospects of a "cunt" replacing him. When they say make America great again, they mean reaffirming their right to be assholes.