On Election Day, people tell you who they really are

I was green as a reporter, covering education and local government for a countywide daily in western North Carolina. Think: rural, not desolate; poor, not destitute; recovering from a near-fatal blow dealt by the early 2000s recession; beautiful scenery and the most community-minded people I have ever met; voted overwhelmingly for President Trump.

Suffice to say the sitting president’s campaign rally was my biggest assignment to date.

I went into it anxious. I’m the type of reporter who sometimes has to dunk my head in cold water to work up the nerve for a phone call. So I was not excited about driving down to the airport and standing in a box surrounded by 30,000 people.

I also knew the script of President Trump’s campaign rallies that year, and I knew most of those 30,000 people would be turning in my direction before the night was over.

The president was late, so I walked the fence that separated the press corps from the crowd of supporters, chatting with anyone who was up for it.

After getting all the lines I needed to add some color to my article, I spent most of my time talking with an older couple.

One was a retired teacher, and I told them that I became an education reporter because both of my parents were schoolteachers. They said teaching was hard, they talked about the struggles of their students and how they tried to help. They knew about my parents’ high school in Raleigh, they knew random details about my hometown, they were also fans of the University of North Carolina Tar Heels basketball team.

Eventually, word spread that President Trump’s aircraft would be arriving soon. “Good to see you, take care, have a good one, Go Heels;” we exchanged the typical Carolina pleasantries and I headed back to the press bleachers.

Mr Trump arrived, and before long he delivered the line I was dreading.

“You know the fake news media, there’s a lot of it right back there.”

The crowd took the cue as they always did. It was mostly tame, just a chorus of boos.

I looked down and saw that the older couple were right where I’d left them. I couldn’t hear them, but the extended middle fingers and open mouths told me they weren’t talking about the need for good teachers anymore.

It upset me. Not in a hurt feelings kind of way, although that was part of it, but in a “what am I supposed to make of that” kind of way.

It seemed impossible that people could chat casually about my family, and then scream expletives in my general direction on command. Which part was real?

Or was it all real?

For many Americans, Donald Trump’s rise to power revealed that we don’t know each other very well. 

People say things we don’t expect. And it’s not just strangers. It’s your neighbors, your family. As we speak to people we know well, we too often find ourselves thinking – ‘I never thought you’d say that.’

No matter how close I am to a person, I never want to talk about Donald Trump. It’s not just their reactions I worry about. I’m part of it too.

My response to him is too instinctive. I don’t want to think about the complicated reasons people support him.

This most recent election has driven all of that home. 

President Trump drove wedges in communities, that’s clear from the voting patterns. He drove wedges in families, too. It’s more complicated than disagreement. To reconcile, you need to need to understand the other side. But I’ve watched people around me lose interest in that.

We don’t want to try to bring friends and family around to our point of view. We’re too afraid of what theirs might be.

So instead, we don’t talk a lot of the time.

For me, that’s Donald Trump’s America.