I just spent a week in Florida staying with a very pro-Trump friend. In the last week, I watched a lot of Fox News.
I think it's clear liberals and conservatives hold very different worldviews. A lot of this is based on the very different stories we're told every day.
For liberals who don't understand conservatives -- or even loathe them -- I think they should be aware of what Trump backers are saying right now:
Inflation is way too high. Joe Biden blew it by throwing so much money at America's problems. With so much cash floating around, prices rose -- as did interest rates.
Joe Biden is weak. This is why we have so many wars right now. If Trump were president, Putin, Hamas, Iran and others simply wouldn't dare cause trouble. We also wouldn't have the inflow of illegal immigrants on the southern border. We wouldn't have crime in our cities, and homelessness would disappear.
Instead of focusing on real issues like inflation and the border crisis, Biden and his backers are more focused on "woke" issues (LGBTQ rights, climate change, Black Lives Matter, student loan forgiveness, trans issues, political correctness, preserving pro-Palestinian speech on campus, etc.).
Taxes are too high, and much of our tax dollars are wasted on social programs that don't work -- or undeserving individuals looking for a handout.
America as we know it is falling apart, but keep the faith: Soon enough, we'll have the opportunity to vote Trump back in. There's no way that doddering old fool Joe Biden and his cackling sidekick, Kamala Harris, can win.
Last but not least, stop looking down on us, you coastal elites. You aren't any smarter than we are; in fact, you are utterly lacking in common sense. You have messed up the country, big time. It's time to return to tried-and-true values.
Back in 2015, I wrote an article that almost predicted Donald Trump would beat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. I didn't quite say he would win, but I did say liberals should stop laughing about him and take him seriously, for he spoke for a lot of Americans who felt left behind.
I used to live in Missouri for 10 years, and I think I got a pretty good feel for how Middle America thinks. I now live in West Los Angeles, a very liberal part of the world.
When I told some friends at a dinner party in 2015 that I thought Trump might just pull it off, they laughed at me, saying Hillary Clinton was going to trounce that total buffoon with the orange hair.
I think the same dynamics are in play now, maybe more so than in 2015.
Acknowledgment: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the individual author.