Here is Trump's racist America on full display. Listen and weep.
If you want to know how many are ignorant or hateful (white nationalists) in "the heartland," just look at the election stats.
On December 12, 2008, I was performing at a corporate Christmas party in Norfolk, Nebraska, for Nucor Steel. Barack Obama had been elected a month before, and at my dinner table before the show, employees used the "N" word freely and one referred to Michelle as "Aunt Jemima going to the White House." (I left the table and ate dinner in the kitchen.)
Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, I heard the "N" word frequently -- in places like Jamestown, ND; Brookings, SD; Ottumwa, IA; Columbus, NE. One banker in Yankton, SD, told me that "the blacks elected Clinton so they could keep their welfare checks coming."
While onstage in Hemet, CA, and Dallas, TX, audience members shouted, "Tell a nigger joke!" with no compunction.
During my comedy career, I played 417 different cities. There are many fine people in "flyover" America, but there is also a strain of prejudice and ignorance that haters and demagogues continually exploit. Right-wing radio and Fox have feasted on it for years. Urban areas and blue states have their share of bigots, too.
In a country that learns from its history and matures wisely and tries harder to live up to its stated values, you would expect core human decency to flourish. But that is not the United States of America in 2017.
Trump is the manifestation of a cancer that is eating us alive. A week from tomorrow, Alabama may very well elect a pedophile to the United States Senate, because "he would be better than a liberal." He might join the same chamber that just voted for a tax bill that will eliminate incentives for charitable deductions, make it harder for kids to pay off student loans and effectively deny healthcare access to millions of Americans -- all to pad the pockets of the super wealthy and large corporations that are already making record profits. And the trillions in resultant deficits will be used as an excuse to decimate Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.
If this is NOT the country you want to live in, speak up and push back and VOTE.