[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by GGG

https://theringer.com/two-days-with-...f1d#.cr8j8qehx

I like this article from the ringer. It humanizes trump supporters instead of just labelling them as deplorables and at the same time shows the angry mob mentality of them.

I have to disagree:

Eventually he turns to his easiest trick: saying the words “Hillary Clinton.”

“Lock her the #### up!” yells the man standing next to me, whom I’ll call Ed. Ed is short and muscular and middle-aged. He wears an oversize T-shirt that says “DONALD ####IN’ TRUMP.” He scans the room, awed by the spectacle in a way that feels contagious. He can barely see anything onstage, but a few times he jumps up so that he can catch a fleeting glimpse. At one point, he hands me his phone, and he asks me to take a 360-degree panoramic photo of the room. When I oblige, he takes one look at the picture, and then he smiles up at me and says, with a certain reverence: “####ing bad-ass, dude. Bad. ####ing. Ass.” I look at the photo. He’s right. The scene is astonishing.

And yet it is also jarring in a way that, days later, I will still be unable to fully describe. I’m no stranger to red America. I’ve spent most of my life in the South, and I grew up attending evangelical Christian schools. I once voted for the reelection of George W. Bush. And beyond a life spent among people who are now Trump supporters, I’ve also worked for years as a sportswriter, sitting among crowds and listening to people scream. The boos in Philadelphia. The insults in Cleveland. The gleefully polite bile that pours forth from stadiums all across the SEC. And yet I’ve never experienced anything quite like tonight in Cincinnati. Ed hasn’t either. “This is unreal,” he says.

Just to Ed’s right stands a young woman. She enjoys screaming. She has a favorite word: ####. “#### Obama!” “#### Syrians!” And at one point, when Trump mentions Republicans who have not honored their pledge to support him, she offers a vague but menacing “#### them!” This is something of a moment, because right as she is screaming “#### them!” Ed is screaming “Goddamn pussies!” and after they each scream their respective epithets, for a second, their eyes meet. They laugh. Then they turn back toward Trump and ready for their next chance to scream.

Outside, after the rally, I meet a protester named Tonja who holds a sign that says, “Don’t Grab My #####!” Young men parade past her, all making the same joke, aping the response that Trump has given at rallies all week. They say, “You don’t have to worry about anyone grabbing your #####,” or some variation thereof, one after another, laughing every time.

As we’re talking, an older man walks up. He looks Hamid up and down and he grins, warm and a little confused. “Now haven’t I seen you on the news?” he asks.

She turns toward him and smiles. “Maybe,” she says.

“Yeah,” he says. “I think I seen you on there.”

Awkward silence. Mutual nods. Then he asks, “You having a good time tonight?”

“I am.”

He registers this for a moment. He looks down, as if processing the weight of her words. “Good,” he says. “That’s good to hear. You have a nice night.”

He walks away. As he leaves, Hamid turns back to me and smiles. “See?” she says. “Most people are really nice.” Now another man approaches, this one in a gray suit. He appears to be a campaign staffer. He is less curious. He is less nice. “Come with me, please,” he says, and she follows. He leads her toward the exit, and as she walks, she keeps smiling, pulling out pens and handing them to men and women on her way to the back of the room. She knows what this is. She’s been through this before. Finally they reach the exit and disappear.

Minutes later, the man returns. She does not. I ask him what happened. “That’s confidential,” he says. I ask if Hamid had been asked to leave, and he says, “I believe so.” He won’t say anything more, not even his name.

A few minutes later, Hamid says by phone that once she left the room, the man told her, “This is a private event. You are not welcome here.”
She says she got in her car. She drove home.

Deplorable.