please don’t hate me

casualnepotism:

but i get it. i get why (some) people voted for trump. i don’t like it, and i don’t agree, but i get it. before you persecute me, consider the following:

i come from a deeply southern family. more than half of my family is in the oil mining business in texas, and the rest of them are in equally low-education, relatively short-term jobs that are primarily being done these days by immigrants. i was just in a town called lubbock, where i have at least 50 family members alone working on the rigs. they all went to college and got degrees so that they could be oil rig engineers and support their families. those jobs are almost all gone now. besides the fact that the oil is drying up, the rigs that are left are actively not hiring people with degrees, rather going for (and no, before anyone says anything, i’m not endorsing any of this) uneducated workers (read: immigrants) who the companies can have take the fall when something inevitably goes wrong.

they’re scared. my family, the whole town, is terrified of the future. none of them know what they’re going to do when all the jobs are gone and the oil is dried up. they’re not racists, most of them aren’t even bigots, they’re just terrified. and trump is promising to bring back jobs, and they just want that. they want to be able to protect their families.

and honestly, if i hate anything about this election, it’s that i get that. having to talk to my family about the election and why they voted for trump was one of the hardest things i’ve ever done, but i get it. they get why i’m voting for hillary, and i get whey they’re voting for trump, and i hate it. more than literally anything. but i get it.

and i don’t know what to do with that.