The Trump campaign, the moral equivalent of Hitler using the N-word, stopped to take a leak in West Virginia. Some locals eagerly drank from that bowl because the hideous hotelier’s lies sound less polished than the ones they’ve heard before, because the promises he would break are different than other politicians’ broken promises. His words have an unfamiliar and angrier and more accusatory tone, placing the blame elsewhere, allowing the worst of our citizens to feel relieved of their flaws and failings.

This election season has shown us there are a surprising number of damaged, racist Americans who want to hold non-white people accountable for their problems, and the idea that all of them are poor, struggling folks is a falsehood. They come from all manner of background and financial situation and are united in that they look at Trump’s ugliness and see themselves.

Ben Jacobs’ of the Guardian has written an excellent account of rockhead visiting coal country. I will only say that I hope to never have Greg Bonecutter Jr. as my nurse. An excerpt:

The rally at the Charleston Civic Center, a brutalist hunk of concrete, started to fill up hours before Trump arrived and an orderly line outside dissolved into a horde of people desperate to make it into the event.

Greg Bonecutter Jr, a former nurse on disability from Letart, West Virginia, was an avid Trump supporter wearing a Make America Great Again hat and a shirt that proclaimed “Hillary sucks but not like Monica”.

He was a longtime Trump supporter who backed the nominee because he was someone with whom “you knew where you stood” and was sick “of politicians, big money scams and cover-up lies”. A registered independent, he said he thought Obama was “sucking Muslim tail and an apologist to terrorist actions” and “if it was up to me we’d bring back public execution and there’d be several trap doors on the White House lawn.” Bonecutter warned darkly that if Clinton was elected there might be another civil war.

Sandra Riddle of North Charleston shared his pessimism. She was worried about the supreme court and that if Clinton was elected “we might lose freedom of speech and assembly” as well as the second amendment. She wasn’t a gun owner but noted “we have to protect guns … because of people coming from Isis”.

Yet others simply liked Trump for his populist appeal.•