The 30%

I find a Y less than a mile off the freeway just east of Knoxville. Again I park my truck where there is good visibility from inside the Y workout room!

But there’s also good access from the administration office so after the young white womon instructs me to sign the guest register and waves me thru the lobby toward the womyn’s locker room, I hear her answering the phone & then questioning her boss stating that she’s checked my ID. She hangs up and sheepishly motions me back & says there’s a new policy and she has to call my Y to confirm my membership.

& I say, oh your boss doesn’t like my truck.

The older white woman standing next to me waiting to be helped asks me how come I’m this far away from home. I tell her, staring into her eyes, I’m looking to interview folks who have voted to make amerikkka great again and I know I’m in a state where more older white women voted for tRump than for HRC. She is immaculately dressed for a workout venue, has a haircut similar to mine, but longer on the shorter side, and shorter on the longer side, coming to a smart if stiff blond curl framing one edge of her cheek, designer glasses perched on her nose.

She informs me with much derision as she edges away that amerikkka has ALWAYS been great. I do not tell her that I believe the opposite, that we have never been great plus I do not ask her “when? When we were committing genocide against First Nation peoples or maybe enslaving, raping, and murdering Black people? Or maybe from 1801 when we began sending our military around the world to take over countries to exploit their resources? Or perhaps when we dropped the atomic bomb twice on civilian populations???

But instead I ask her if she thinks we are continuing to be great under tRump. She turns abruptly and lets me know quite forcefully that she is one of the 30% of Tennesseans who voted for Hillary. Her eyes glaze over when she then begins to longingly talk about the brilliant, gracious, classy couple who lead our country for 8 years and now look what we have. The exact opposite.

I ask her what she thinks the campaign slogan meant & she again fixes me with an angry stare and declares this is the dying gasp of old men – I interrupt with “racist white” old men and she nods vigorously agreeing.

She tells me she has faith in the democrats & that the dems need to take over the house again. I think about the dems who’ve voted for war, the ‘tough on crime’ Clintons, the militarization of the police under the ‘dems’ and I can’t agree but I do tell her I agree with our need to be in D.C. and/or at our representatives offices DAILY, which she tells me she plans on doing.

I begin to think maybe I should talk with people who didn’t vote to ‘make amerikkka great again’ and find out what they think that might mean.