Trump Country

My girlfriend lives in Trump Country, which means I often find myself in Trump Country as well. I live in Orlando, Florida, which has its fair share of Trumpsters. Before the election, a group of people was at a busy intersection, waving signs and encouraging drivers to “Honk for Trump!” There was far too much honking going on for my taste.

Joe Biden won 61% of the vote in my county to Trump’s 38%. Trump won the State of Florida, so it only stands to reason there are large portions of the state where Trump supporters make up the majority. Flagler County is one such place where Trump won 60% of the vote.

Like counties all over the nation, Flagler County is experiencing a second wave of COVID-19. Cases and deaths are going back up, yet it’s hard to tell people are even concerned. There has never been a mask mandate as local politicians have stayed in lockstep with the Governor and the ex-President. Flagler County was aware of the severity of the virus, which they outlined in a resolution, which ended up having a lot more Whereases than Therefore’s, all talk, and no action.

Before the election, there were many Trump signs and flags and evidence with just a few Biden/Harris signs. Most of the Trump signs came down immediately after the election except for my girlfriend’s neighbor, who added signs to his front yard. He reached twelve at one point plus two in his windows. One of those signs read, “Christians for Trump,” which seemed a bit of an oxymoron, but I wasn’t planning to argue because some of those same people use Second Amendment solutions to resolve disputes. The same home is now down to two Trump signs in the yard and two in the windows. I’m not saying that an anonymous call to code-enforcement had anything to do with it but maybe?

I don’t want to mischaracterize the people here. Most of my dealings with the locals have been in retail establishments and restaurants. The employees of these businesses almost always wore masks though their patrons not so much. The public seemed to buy into the premise that COVID-19 wasn’t a serious endeavor. At the time of this writing, 48 people have died in Flagler County from the coronavirus. This is a community where most people moved here from somewhere else, usually “up north.” People are neighborly without getting close to their neighbors.

My girlfriend’s community is divided into alphabetical sections where all the street names in a section begin with the same letter. It doesn’t take long for even an outsider to know which letters are to be avoided. While redlining was outlawed in 1968 with the Fair Housing Act. I’m sure people with any familiarity with the system know to ask to look in certain letters and avoid others.

On a recent trip to Miami, I got different impressions, Miami voted for Biden overall, but the numbers weren’t as strong as they were four years ago for Hillary Clinton. It seems Republicans did a better job of targeting the Cuban-American community and peppering them with the message that Biden was a socialist. They know something about socialism from their Cuban heritage, and it was enough to convince some voters. It’s probably also true that the Democratic assumption that one Spanish-speaking ad covers all the diverse backgrounds, including Puerto Ricans, Columbians, Venezuelans, and more, didn’t get the job done. Establishments in Miami and South Beach were strict about mask-wearing, probably reflecting the high case and death numbers.

Florida has been regarded as a swing state, but the past several years suggest wishful thinking. Former Governor and now Senator Rick Scott used to be the biggest Medicare fraudster in history. Trump just pardoned the guy that edged him out of the top spot. It seems to be a crook, and fraud wasn’t enough to keep Republicans from voting for him. The current Governor Ron DeSantis showed early signs of independence from Trump on environmental issues yet soon became the ultimate Trump devotee on matters regarding COVID-19 and opening up the state no matter the repercussions. Floridians weren’t told of the federal task force recommendations to keep some things closed, and more of us died or got sick as a result. It took Freedom of Information requests to learn the Governor had gone his own way, ignoring the scientists.

People don’t talk about politics much in the workplace anymore; it’s too divisive. Trumpsters generally don’t attempt to defend their positions because there are mostly few facts to support them. Non-Trumpsters, those that believe in science, facts, and truth-telling, are tired of bumping their heads against the wall, so they aren’t saying much. In-person arguing has been replaced by fighting it out on the Internet; the peace is mostly kept.

My son and his family just bought a home in Polk County. It’s a nice development like you might find in a big city. I’m hoping none of them have a run-in with colorful Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd. In a 2006 incident capturing a man suspected of killing a Polk Deputy, nine officers fired 110 shots, hitting the suspect 68 times. Asked about why so many shots, the sheriff responded, “That’s all the bullets we had, or we would have shot him more.”

Sad to say, but you get used to living in Trump Country. Strangely, it helps that so few people know Florida’s racist past that well. I live five miles from Ocoee, Florida, where the entire Black population was killed or burned out, and it remained white only for over forty years after two men tried to vote in the 1920 Presidential election. That was part of a state-wide voter suppression effort in the same year women got the right to vote.

I’m about fifteen miles from Groveland, Florida, where Sheriff Willis McCall orchestrated the Groveland Four trial. Police killed one during his initial capture; another was killed by McCall himself while transporting him and a second member back to Groveland for a second trial after Thurgood Marshall successfully argued the first trial was flawed. They were charged with the rape of a white woman who we later learned had lied. Governor DeSantis finally pardoned the Groveland Four in 2019. Governor Scott refused to pardon them earlier, even after the City of Groveland and Lake County formally apologized in 2017. Between 1877 and 1950, Florida had more lynchings per capita than any other state, so I wouldn’t have to go as far as Ocoee or Groveland to find other examples.

Florida has the redistricting you hear about in Wisconsin, except we aren’t quite as obvious. We will likely have a Republican-controlled House and Senate for the foreseeable future. Given the recent appointees to the Federal bench and Supreme Court, relief from the judicial branch isn’t expected. The big cities, Miami, Tampa, and Orlando, are much like cities everywhere. Jacksonville is like South Georgia, and the rural towns are what you’d imagine them to be if you just watched “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

People get along until they don’t. I’m a little warier when in Flagler County than when I’m home, but just because I know the Mayor of Orange County and a couple of past Orlando Police Chiefs doesn’t mean I forget that I’m a 6’6″ Black man that through no fault of my own but existing might cause someone to be in fear of their life. In a way, it’s a blessing that Trump was President for four years. It made things clear that there is still a great divide along racial lines in this state and this country. Equality won’t come easily, and the fight isn’t nearly over. Voters in the state voter to restore voting rights to non-violent felons who had completed their sentences via a Constitutional Amendment. The Republican-controlled legislature found a way to keep most of them from voting anyway—still Trump Country.

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This post was previously published on Medium.

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