Conservative distress goes way beyond the face on the $20 bill
Heading north along US 11, this Washington County city is known as ‘Hub City’ because of its concentration of commercial industries. (Shannon Venditti / Washington Examiner)
by Salena Zito, National Political Reporter |
| January 31, 2021
RANSON, West Virginia — Drive along U.S. 11 in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and here in West Virginia, and you pretty much are roaming through the more conservative enclaves in the region.
The road, one of the first north-south routes in the country, takes the traveler through places such as Chambersburg, Shippensburg, and Carlisle, as well as Hagerstown and Martinsburg.
The offramps wind down to treasures such as here in Ranson.
Drive too fast, and you miss meeting some really great people or seeing some beautiful places, some gorgeous in preservation projects that have brought homes and businesses back to life, some reflecting beauty even in decay.
Fly over the states or use an interstate, and you are likely never to know who the people are who live along U.S. 11 and what they care about. That’s OK. People really don’t like feeling like a specimen, but if you are going to write about them, you should probably have a conversation or two.
(Shannon Venditti / Washington Examiner)And just stop and sit a spell.
Do that, and you will probably learn a few things about them that might dispel some assumptions that exist. Such as: Not all people who live in rural areas are Republicans. You often find a healthy mix of Democrats, Republicans, and independent voters who often believe the most important Election Day is the one for mayor, sheriff, county commissioner, school board, or state legislator.
More often than not, you will find that they are not as obsessed with politics in the way social media would have people believe and that they are capable of having conversations with people with different points of view and conducting their lives way outside the boundaries of the stereotypes people who don’t know a thing about them imagine.
They have long figured out two things about the people who write about them in a story or reference them on social media: Nuance is dead, and it is much easier to make a monster out of someone you don’t understand than to try to make an honest attempt to understand them.
Last week, there was a column in the Washington Post about how conservatives feel in the light of the news the Biden administration revived an effort for the image of Harriet Tubman to replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill.
The column declared, “Many conservatives will find the new Tubman bill distressing, even if they could barely tell you the first thing about Jackson.”
There is so much to unpack here, beginning with where does the ‘many conservatives’ head count come from because I was hard-pressed to find ‘many conservatives’ that found the news distressing.
Also, I was hard-pressed to find ‘many conservatives’ who didn’t know who Jackson was, what his failures and successes were as president, his role as a general, and the painful legacies of the Trail of Tears and slave ownership.
All you have to do is ask. All you need to do is listen.
In fact, had the columnist asked what truly distressed them right now, you’d find the virus and the impacts it has had not just on the people whose family members lost their lives, but also the toll it has taken on the mental health of children, seniors, mothers, and fathers.
That distresses them.
So does the uncertainty of their jobs, their small businesses, their shuttered communities.
That distresses them.
Not having hugged someone in nearly a year.
(Shannon Venditti / Washington Examiner)That distresses them.
Tubman? Hardly. Talk to a conservative, and they will tell you unequivocally that it is hard for them not to admire a gun-toting woman of faith who risked her life to free slaves.
Perhaps the columnist made the ‘many conservatives’ assumption by scrolling through and finding it on Twitter. Possibly, but Twitter is not really the place to find a good cross-section of everyday people.
In mid-October, the Pew Research Center released a comprehensive study on Twitter use, and its conclusion, in many ways, should shake any person who uses the social media platform as a guide to the pulse of what America thinks.
In short, 92% of every tweet produced was done by just 10% of all Twitter users, with an eye-popping 69% of those “highly prolific users” Democrats.
Pretty much kills the idea that Twitter thought or distress represents public thought or distress.
Going even more granular, the survey found those Democrats who are on Twitter are much further left than Democrats who are not.
It is a reminder for reporters perhaps to shy away from using Twitter as an indication for public perspectives.
So, just because everyone on Twitter says conservatives are mad about Tubman and that they don’t know who Jackson is, be a wee bit skeptical because your words continue a narrative that may not be true.
There is a line in the J.D. Vance book Hillbilly Elegy in which he wrote, “Where we come from is who we are, but we choose everyday who we become.”
All people out here want is to be able to tell the story of where they’ve come from and who they’ve become, not someone to write the story of who they think they’ve become.
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