Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential election illuminated growing political, economic, and cultural polarization in America. Shocked pundits and political analysts have struggled to understand how Trump’s unorthodox candidacy so successfully appealed to non-urban, working class Americans, especially among those without a college degree.

Some have bluntly concluded that Trump galvanized support because the Republican Party is “filled with idiots.” In the eyes of so-called “elites,” Trump voters were too ignorant to discern which candidate would actually serve them best.

But these voters aren’t idiots, even though some may find it easier to think so. Tired of stagnant wages and dwindling opportunities, millions of lower-income, rural, and small-town Americans voted for the candidate who paid attention to them and spoke about their lives with respect, pledging that “the forgotten . . . will be forgotten no longer.”

While coastal cities have boomed, these long-overlooked communities have faced years of diminishing employment, increasing isolation, and a downward spiral of social dysfunction. Opioid addiction has skyrocketed. As economic and social well-being has deteriorated over generations, the lifespan of middle-aged whites without college degrees has shortened for the first time in decades — caused by sharply increasing “deaths of despair” due to drugs, alcohol, and suicide.

Read the source article at aei.org