I Know Why Donald Trump Was Elected

It's a new year and a new president was sworn in last Friday. Granted, he is not really the president some people wanted, me included. He's pompous, arrogant, and is kind of like the bully you hated at school. He lacks the finer points of explaining things in a reasonable manner, and lacks the skills, well, of just being likeable. So far he's done a lot of things to dishevel the things that were already set in place for years. Abortion rights may change for the worse. The TPP  in Asia with America in it is virtually gone. Who know what will happen with NAFTA. But he got elected and is moving forward, and I know why. Being from Western Pennsylvania, I grew up with steel factories and blue collar workers. I was lucky actually that my father was a doctor in a regional hospital so I was out of that loop. But that doesn't mean I didn't witness glass factories and steel factories and mills closing. I did. It doesn't mean I didn't see friends whose fathers had been downsized or restructured, it doesn't mean I didn't see the hardships faced by small town life that revolved around the local factory. I did. And then those factories closed but are still there collecting dust, huge vacant memories of a time that has long passed, huge dinosaurs as a reminder of the jobs that went away. And the life of the downtown that revolved around the factory and that small town feeling of knowing everybody, of walking up and down a busy downtown street also went away. The people woke up to virtual shells that had once been active. And they have to continue to pass these enormous empty factories every day. To go where? To do what? To work in some little mom and pop restaurant that stands on a street so different from its former self? To work 2 jobs to make ends meet and pay medical bills and college tuition? Yes. And many of the sons of those proud factory workers have no future while that dinosaur looms over their every move on their ways to pick up their next batch of drugs. It's shameful. And it's also why Donald Trump got elected. Can he bring back jobs? Can he turn small town America around? Time will only tell. But we should be willing to give him a chance and ignore his shortcomings for a change into something good. Let's see what tomorrow brings.