News of the weird, part 4 (of four)

Well, this isn't exactly news, and I guess you'll have to judge for yourself whether it's weird or not.

But I thought both of these were pretty interesting.

• How Half Of America Lost Its F**king Mind

  There's this universal shorthand that epic adventure movies use to tell the good guys from the bad. The good guys are simple folk from the countryside ...

  ... while the bad guys are decadent assholes who live in the city and wear stupid clothes.

  The theme expresses itself in several ways -- primitive vs. advanced, tough vs. delicate, masculine vs. feminine, poor vs. rich, pure vs. decadent, traditional vs. weird. All of it is code for rural vs. urban. That tense divide between the two doesn't exist because of these movies, obviously. These movies used it as shorthand because the divide already existed.

• I Spent 5 Years With Some of Trump’s Biggest Fans. Here’s What They Won’t Tell You.

  Pervasive among the people I talked to was a sense of detachment from a distant elite with whom they had ever less contact and less in common.

  ...

  Trump has put on his blue-collar cap, pumped his fist in the air, and left mainstream Republicans helpless. Not only does he speak to the white working class’ grievances; as they see it, he has finally stopped their story from being politically suppressed. We may never know if Trump has done this intentionally or instinctively, but in any case he’s created a movement much like the anti-immigrant but pro-welfare-state right-wing populism on the rise in Europe. For these are all based on variations of the same Deep Story of personal protectionism.