Dumped by the Roadside

It wasn’t always this way and it won’t stay like this forever. I am sure of that, despite coming from a place that looks pretty much as it did a hundred years ago and more or less as it will a hundred years from now. Outward appearances deceive.

Over the course of 40-plus years, I have stood before thousands of audiences small and large, mostly small. Each time, I spoke my piece, doing my best to raise my nasally voice for social and economic justice, then took comments and questions. In more recent years, I heard one comment more than any other from audiences that were aware of my rural roots.

They vote the way they do because they’re bigots.

I understand where the comment comes from. Of Wisconsin’s rural residents who bothered to vote in the last three presidential elections, commanding majorities of them cast their ballots for a man who is unquestionably a white supremacist and has shown himself to be not only a male chauvinist but also a sexual predator.

Still, every time it came up, …