A Letter From a War Zone
(Note: During a campaign stop on August 2, Donald Trump said that from his plane, Harrisburg, PA looked like a “war zone”)
Mr. Trump, I’d like to tell you a few stories. I’ll try to keep it short, because I know you’re not much of a reader.
Somewhere in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania last night, a couple probably went out to celebrate their anniversary. They found a babysitter for the kids and made a reservation at one of the great new restaurants that continue to pop up in the city thanks to the hard work and financial daring of local entrepreneurs. Maybe they strolled through midtown after dinner and stopped for a drink. It was a special occasion, after all. They went home, paid the babysitter and sat down to the glow that comes with that kind of evening. Not seismic memories, but the small ones that are part of a contented life.
Another couple celebrated a birthday. They didn’t have the cash for the fancy restaurant, but they bought ice-cream, admired the sunset & wandered down the riverside, holding hands. The Susquehanna is beautiful here. You probably had a great view of it from your plane. It arcs around the mountains to the north and spreads itself into an expanse of nearly a mile dotted with islands and spanned by long, looping bridges.
In an office in downtown Harrisburg, a young designer sat at his desk until 10:00 p.m., cranking out work for a San Francisco start-up.
At the end of the evening, each of these people went home, pulled out their phones and discovered the full measure of your disdain for them. You told them that their happiness was invalid. That it was small.
Mr. Trump — I would rather vote for a particularly shapely potted jasmine before I supported your candidacy. And not just for the aforementioned offenses but for the countless others before these. But, I know there are many people out there who think you are the answer to their problems. I cannot imagine how they felt going to your rally in Mechanicsburg one night and waking up to your comments the next morning.
Ultimately, you don’t care about them. If you did, you’d let them have some dignity. Just like you’d let our veterans have some dignity. Just like you’d let countless, hardworking immigrants have some dignity.
How could we make Harrisburg more appealing to you, Mr. Trump? Should we paint the dome of the Capitol gold? Should we slap your logo on one of our hotels? We’ve already declared bankruptcy, which makes us brothers-in-arms.
You have run a campaign built around the message that people living in places like this are insufficient. People call you a populist, but Mr. Trump, you are a terrible populist because you keep offending, well, everyone. You tell the people of America that the East Coast elites don’t care about them, but there are two East Coast elites in this race and only one has called the place that I live and used to work a war zone.
The City of Harrisburg has fought like hell to be what it is today. It cratered in the 1980s, but it showed the steel and ingenuity necessary to rebuild itself. It cratered again, after decades of progress, when those we trusted to lead us betrayed our trust. Then the very state government that calls Harrisburg its home washed its hands of the city’s problems. But the city has bounced back remarkably. Unemployment in the region is low — a fact I’m sure a presidential candidate for one of our major parties knows since he was just campaigning here — and the region shows modest, but steady, population growth.
I’m filled with deep empathy this morning for the people of the Midwest and the deep South. Harrisburg is a two-and-a-half hour train ride to New York City. One-and-a-half hours from Philadelphia; even less than that from Baltimore and a mere two hours from our nation’s capital. In short, we are smack dab in the middle of arguably the most powerful region on the planet and yet you can barely hide your disgust. Regardless of the many traits that recommend our locale, I suspect I could be writing this same article from Des Moines or Wichita or Boise or Akron, were I a fly on the wall in your plane.
I travel all around the country for work, and I always try to find the best in the places I go. I want to understand why the people I meet love the places they live. Pride in place is part of what creates pride in country & from that, a civil, united society. But you? You tell them how ashamed they should be. Of their town. Of their job. Moreover, of their life.
But I predict there won’t be much of a stink, because we’re used to it and because by the time I publish this (in the hope that 15 people will read it), you’ll have said something else more outlandish and everyone will have moved on. We’re used to it because we have to defend the place we chose to live all the time. I’ve gotten to the point where I barely let it sting, but for some reason, I’ve allowed you, of all people to rankle me.
My hope is that, come November, you’ll go back to being a B-list reality star and I’ll get back all the productive time I spend fretting about you. Until then, I’d like two things. First, dredge up the regard inside yourself to allow the people of the places you visit in the remaining months of your campaign to consider where they live and work without shame. Second, don’t bother coming back here. Shouldn’t be too hard—you have an excellent track record of avoiding war zones.
