It’s been almost a year of living with election shellshock. Many of us have spent our time in mouth gaping, head shaking disbelief at what has become of our civil discourse. It’s like we turned on the light in our dark city apartment at 3am and saw all of the cockroaches for the first time. They were always there, we just didn’t believe.

Being ½ hillbilly, I also have the added joy of discovering that many of my family and childhood friends are Trump supporters. Now, most people know me as a loudish, opinionated lady person and not surprisingly these now known Trumpies aren’t engaging me in conversation about politics. Who can blame them, I’m horrible.

Yet even a horrible person like me would like to go home occasionally but it has become increasingly clear that we don’t really inhabit the same reality. So instead of posting long, thoughtful articles from scholars regarding the institutional and societal interpretations of our differing opinions, I’m just going to lay down some Hilljack truth.

Dear cop loving, blue collar family members and friends who voted for Trump:

Your manufacturing jobs are not coming back. There are other jobs, really! I know that our parents worked for Ford and Goodyear and other big plants. They got pensions and health benefits and great pay. Those days are over, they’ve been over and we have to adapt. Here’s something, the coal mining industry is  about .019 % of the American Workforce. But your boy Trump really loves coal miners. Why do you think that is? Hell, there are more public school teachers in West Virginia than coal miners. I think your man Trump just likes yelling into holes.

No one gets welfare checks. Except for every employee of the City, State and Federal government (and our military). There are people on Disability, that’s facilitated through the Social Security administration. No one gets a check for being poor. No one.

You have to be a US citizen to get Medicaid and food stamps. There may be people cheating, but being someone who has applied for those benefits for many individuals over the years working in social service I assure you that benefits are intended for US citizens only.

There are hundreds of thousands of non citizens working in America paying into Social Security who will never benefit from it. Those H-1B visa workers are mostly in tech and usually well paid. Do you know anything about infrastructure automation using Java or JSON?  Then quit yer bitchin’!

Not all Jewish people are wealthy. Now, Jewish people value education and better educated people tend to make more so maybe that’s the confusion. Most of you people I’m addressing share ½ of the Bible with Jews so you should get to know more about them, it’s  your history, too.

Speaking of the Bible, Jesus didn’t write the Bible. I don’t know for a fact that anyone believes this but I know that the someone out there who does voted for Trump.

No, you can’t say the N word if you’re white but black people can. Call it Black Privilege if it makes you feel better. Also, there is no such thing as Black Privilege.

There is no such thing as Black Privilege.  You may call it reverse racism and that doesn’t exist either. You can read about this, I suggest starting with the President’s Pal Frederick Douglass, he was a Republican! If you don’t wanna read nuttin’ just look at a picture of your PTA, or Congress (in fairness the house has almost 11% but the Senate only has 2%) or the Fortune 500 CEO list. Take a shot of Jack every time you see a black face. Not even gonna get buzzed, son.

Everyone works for a living. I know that you think that you are the only person holding all of this shit together but let me assure you that you are not. If you took all of that time that you spend bitching about how no one ever works around here but you and applied it to doing your job better then maybe you would get a promotion. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Daddy Daughter dances are disgusting. You treat your women like objects and then are gobsmacked when the rest of the world does the same. She was taught to be an accessory, to meet the impossible standards of being a great student, quiet, kind, neat and polite and to look good doing it. Quit telling your daughters to save sex until marriage and tell you daughters the most empowering thing she will ever hear, “have sex when YOU want to”. It will never be the wrong time for that.