This election, struggling rural whites looked at struggling urban blacks and decided their racial differences were more relevant than their shared economic struggles.
So they hitched their wagons to a billionaire who is filling his cabinet with more billionaires who wouldn't know economic anxiety if it bit them on their pampered behinds.

This is the politics of divisiveness, played to perfection by conservatives who condemned a campaign to stop the police killings of black youth, and who now demand special compassion for whites in the Rust Belt. Remember how quickly Black Lives Matter conversations turned to All Lives Matter?
I can pinpoint the exact moment I felt the narrative turn. It was this summer, when a friend was being interviewed about the best-selling book Hillbilly Elegy, a memoir about white working-class Americans that without once mentioning Trump offered a fascinating window into why so many white working-class people would embrace him.

As I listened, I remember thinking how quickly the conversation had turned from communities of color - Remember when Black Lives Matter issues dominated the headlines? - to white people, again.
And now here we are . . . wringing our hands to empathize, to understand, turning ourselves inside out to come up with reparations for our dismissive attitude toward middle-America whites.