"Hell is very silly," my friend from Michigan said. "There's nothing there really."
Hell, Michigan, is one of those tourist traps where the journey is more thrilling than the actual location. And when you finally get there, all you do is use a functioning toilet and buy a kitschy bumper sticker. It's a middle of nowhere town where good ol’ boys like to drive their oversized pick-up trucks like reckless assholes.
Hell has a gift shop with an ice cream counter, and a bar.
The friendly woman behind the ice cream counter at the gift shop in Hell explained that this was the best job she's ever had. She said she grew up in the area, and that this was just a side job.
"I do taxes," she says with a hearty laugh. "Sometimes, at my other job, I answer the phone and almost say, 'Welcome to Hell!'"
A handful of aging bikers sipping domestic bottles out front explained that the bar has been there "forever." The guy who owns the gift shop bought the bar some years back, fixed it up, and turned the whole place into a destination.
"I mean, this place was a dump," a biker tells me. "You really didn't want to use the bathroom. It was a biker bar, a dive. Now, the bathroom’s real nice, there's pretty good food, and a bunch of different beer."
As I sat down at the bar to once again ponder the rationale of a bar that requires you to drive to it, a waitress greeted the man next to me with a warm smile and shouted, "Hey, decided to come to Hell?"
He was a veteran, 11 Bravo, an infantryman, he explained. He joked that at bootcamp, whenever he told people he was from Hell, people would say, "Oh, that's why you're such a pain in the ass!"
A few drinks later, he explained that the Army never taught him how to do much beyond soldiering. So he went back home, back to Hell, and didn't know what to do with himself.
About 15 minutes outside of Hell is Dexter, Michigan. According to the US Census Bureau, there's only about 4,500 people in Dexter, and just over 1,700 families. It's very much the type of Andy Griffith-Mayberry place where everyone knows everyone, and they're all up in each other’s business, a local woman tells me.
Dexter was celebrating its bicentennial. A city councilman beamed that the town spent three years planning it, and that they couldn't be more proud of the execution and turnout. There was free parking, a cover band, rides and games; local shops were filling their tills and an orchestra was playing classic and contemporary American standards, including that goddamn Lee Greenwood song Trump uses at every rally.
"Honey, you're in Trump country," the local woman explained. "You gotta be careful what you say, and who you say it to. These guys drivin' around with the flags on their trucks and tractors? That's Michigan Militia. You're in their backyard."
She grabbed my arm and leaned in to whisper, "You know everyone in town's watching you, right?”
During the 2016 election, practically every political journalist was traveling around the United States looking for Trump supporters. The media was struggling to explain why anyone could support an openly racist carnival barker who hailed from the notorious and dastardly world of New York real estate. We kept asking ourselves: Who are these Americans flocking to shitty little airports in the middle of nowhere to suffer heatstroke on a sweltering tarmac in the dead of summer while waiting for "Trump Force One" to deliver a mediocre reality TV star who just screams in sentence fragments and hashtags?
Some of us called this a "Cleetus Safari."
Overworked and road weary, reporters just wanted to get their three quote minimum so they could file a story and be done. Digging into census data, or speaking with what was left of a gutted local newsroom for context, was not in the budget. Reporters HAVE to meet deadlines. Whoever didn't tell you to "fuck off" is who made it into the report because the whole song and dance would repeat the next day, sometimes at three or four different rallies in as many towns.
And when the vacuous human pencils sent from New York and Washington tried talking to folks in "fly-over country," the reporters couldn't understand why, "... and I'm with the New York Times” was worse than introducing yourself as Hester Pryne.
The Cletus Safari often missed, and still misses, the simple fact that this obnoxious, foul-mouthed asshole's visit may be the biggest thing to ever happen in that town. It doesn’t matter what Trump is lying about because he was actually there, and dragging throngs of media with him. People feel seen and heard. Sure, Trump’s simple solution to complicated problems are nothing more than racist fearmongering and idiotic catchphrases, but these people don’t worry about that liberal media, egghead bullshit.
They’re thinking, "What's the worst that could happen?"
Please keep us paying the photojournalists, if you are able!
Philadelphia Inquirer:
"Lost in the hand wringing was Donald Trump’s usual bombastic litany of lies, hyperbole, bigotry, ignorance, and fear mongering. His performance demonstrated once again that he is a danger to democracy and unfit for office.
In fact, the debate about the debate is misplaced. The only person who should withdraw from the race is Trump.
Trump, 78, has been on the political stage for eight years marked by chaos, corruption, and incivility. Why go back to that?"
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thank you, Philly Ink, for being the first and only major newspaper to call for the 88-count convicted felon and adjudicated rapist to drop out of the race.
~Jeff Tiedrich
OT: It's election day here in France, and I just did my duty.
One of my friends turned 50 a few days ago, he had a big birthday party last night and I was glad because it kept me from doomscrolling all night long (the far right is predicted to get good results)
As I am from Vietnamese/Laotian decent, me and my cousins often joked about being sent back to our parents' country if the far right ever came to power. It's unlikely to happen to me personally but hate crimes against black and maghrebi people have risen in the past few weeks and it will only get worse if the xenophobes are first in the elections.
Argh, this is so stressful.