I Went On Vacation To Trump Country And It Was Worse Than I Thought

[Celerity]

We figured it couldn’t be that bad. Yeah...

https://thebanter.substack.com/p/i-went-on-vacation-to-trump-country



Last summer, my extended family and I (Deb and the kids, Claudia and Lila), took our first family vacation to Great Wolf Lodge and it was awesome. The kids had a great time. The adults had a great time. It was a lot of fun and low stress. Not every family vacations well together but we do and we were immediately excited for our next summer vacation. We were going to rent a cabin down in the Outer Banks one summer. We were going to go up to New York City and show the kids the sites another. We were going to go to Disney. Finally! We’ve all been dreaming of taking the kids to Disney for years but didn’t have the money and we would, at long last, be able to go. And then the coronavirus nuked the entire summer. We had actually made plans to go to NYC at the end of June, right after school ended and before it got too hot. We were going to go to the Statue of Liberty, the top of the Empire State Building, see a Broadway play, visit some family, eat a lot of NYC food, it was going to be a rather busy week. We might have needed a vacation from our vacation. But, no. We’ve been stuck mostly indoors for months. So when Claudia mentioned going to see the Natural Bridge here in Virginia, we said, “Pack your bags! We’re going!” We figured it couldn’t be that bad. Yeah...

Deep In The Heart Of Trump Humper Country

Claudia had warned me that we were heading deep into Trump country. Natural Bridge (it’s both a town and a landmark) is well into the Shenandoah Valley area, about a three and a half hour drive from where I live in Alexandria. If you have not had the chance to visit Shenandoah Valley, you should. It’s lovely; especially in the Fall when the trees turn into a parade of colors. A little less lovely was the number of Trump/Pence 2020 signs peppering the lawns of pretty much every other house as we drew near our destination. Curiously, I didn’t see a lot of bumper stickers but I also didn’t see a lot of cars, either. I also didn’t see a single MAGA hat the entire time we were there. This lends some support to my pet theory that MAGA hats are performative. People only wear them to get a reaction. If you’re in a town where 90% of your neighbors are also devoted Trumpers, why bother announcing it? It’s one thing to have a yard sign for traffic passing through the city, but walking around town? Meh. Not so much. Speaking of the town, Natural Bridge and the town next to it, Glasgow, are quite small. Between the two, the population is about 2600. By way of comparison, the three elementary schools within four blocks of my apartment have about 2000 students. If you add the middle school a few blocks further, we have a larger population of school kids under the age of 14 within a mile of us than the entire population of both towns together. So, not heavily populated. And yet, it’s towns just like this that are the most at risk. Sure, they don’t have the population density of a New York City or Houston or Los Anglees, but they also don’t have the resources to deal with an outbreak. Worse, the political attitude of the MAGAs all but guarantee the spread of Covid-19. And that’s exactly what we saw while we were there.

Natural Wonder And Manmade Stupidity



First, when all of this is over and the coronavirus is under control, definitely go see the Natural Bridge. It is goddamn amazing. Also walk the trail under it that leads to the waterfall. It’s a nice ¾ mile walk and a lot of beautiful scenery. I would post pictures but, frankly, they don’t do it justice. Fortunately, the Bridge and trail were not heavily trafficked so we were able to have our masks off most of the time. We only put them on when we talked to the people working the concession booth and when we got to the waterfall, which was a small cul-de-sac with a group of people. On the other hand, we took a tour of the nearby caverns and that didn’t go quite as well. When we arrived at the caverns, a sign said that tours would be half capacity due to Covid concerns and everyone had to wear masks. Only one of those things turned out to be true. If you have not had the opportunity to go on a cavern tour, put it on your bucket list. Especially if you have kids. They’re unlike anything you’ve ever seen and well worth the effort. Usually. The caverns at Natural Bridge were a bit...underwhelming. They weren’t boring per se, they just weren’t as good as the other caverns I had been to. To be fair, the Luray and Skyline Caverns are magnificent so what are you going to do? If you’re considering touring all the caverns in Virginia, Natural Bridge is one of the ones you start with and work your way up to Luray, which is the top of the line. But the caverns being kind of eh wasn’t the problem. They were kind of small. And that turned into an issue very quickly. When the group started down the path into the caverns, we had no way of knowing what a full size or half size group looked like.

The Luray Caverns are quite large and a group our size (about 20 of us) would have enough room to spread out. That was not the case in Natural Caverns. There, even in the larger areas, we were mostly forced to be within a foot or so of each other. In the smaller rooms, we were shoulder to shoulder. It was a fucking nightmare. I haven’t been in a crowd of people in an enclosed space since before the pandemic started and thank god no Trump humping asshole decided to make a scene about his “freedumbs” and wearing a mask. Still, even with masks, being that close to so many people indoors was horrifying. There was absolutely no way the group was half sized because a group twice the size could not possibly have fit. Basically, the people who run the caverns chose profit over safety. Lovely. Things didn’t get any better when we got to the hotel. Despite a sign on the door asking all guests to wear masks, maybe one or two were. There was a wedding or some such event taking place and none of the 20-somethings in their dresses and suits were wearing a mask while they gathered close together. But that wasn’t the part that really made us want to run screaming from the Natural Bridge Historic Hotel & Conference Center. No, that was the fact that literally not one single member of the staff was wearing one, either. Welcome to Trump Humper country.

This had to be a combination of two things. One, wearing a mask opens you up to abuse by guests. Debbie went down to the dining room in the morning to pick up our breakfast because we surely were not going to eat down there. We assumed it would be packed with people, none of whom would be social distancing, and we were right. But while she was waiting for our take out, one of the Trump Humpers couldn’t stop himself from demanding to know why she was wearing a mask. He did this because, at the very core of their being Trumpers are bullies and he saw a woman standing by herself. Imagine what they would do to a hotel worker who, fearing for their job, would be forced to smile (behind a mask) and remain polite? The second thing is that, this far into Trump Humper country, people simply don’t believe in wearing masks because something something George Soros, Bill Gates, and Qanon. Between Fox News, OANN, and Sinclair spewing anti-science propaganda to support Trump’s talking points, social media allowing crap like Plandemic to spread to millions, and Republican governors openly fighting against masks, taking basic precautions has become political. As in, if you do it, you must hate Trump, manliness, and ‘Murika. What are you, some kind of Commie sissy boy? One wonders if any of the hotel workers have insurance. Virginia is not currently a hot spot but keep having weddings without masks or a care in the world and it won’t matter how rural or loyal to Trump that part of the state is, sooner or later, the Red Death comes like a thief in the night. There were a lot of other issues with the hotel (nice view from the balcony but, seriously, stay somewhere else) but that’s not relevant to this article. What is relevant is just how much being in Trump country impacted our trip.

It Really Shouldn’t Have Made A Difference. But It Did

I’ve been to deep red parts of the country before and it didn’t matter. Even after Trump was elected, I’ve been out to the Skyline Caverns in Shenandoah Valley and down to Williamsburg. I’ve been out in the middle of absolutely nowhere to visit my aunt in North Carolina. And when I say “nowhere,” I mean it. A mile from her house, my GPS stopped working. Not because I didn’t have a signal, but because the roads weren’t on the map. But over the last four years, it’s been harder and harder to ignore the growing violence and insanity of white Republican voters. A couple of them almost attacked my son here in deep blue Alexandria. I was not even slightly surprised that one verbally accosted my wife in deep red Rockbridge County. If I had had a Biden 2020 bumper sticker on my car, a flat tire in the morning would not have been much of a shock. As much as I tried to relax and enjoy spending time with my family, it was impossible to forget that I was, almost literally, in enemy territory; surrounded by people who actively wish me and mine harm. Did I expect them to drag us away in the middle of the night? No. But these are the same people cheering on Trump’s secret police illegally snatching people off the street in Portland. Would they personally put us on the cattle cars in a few years? Doubtful. But they would absolutely applaud as the trains passed through their town on the way to the gas chambers. Not every German wore a swastika, carried a gun, or personally murdered a Jew. But millions of them were more than happy to support the government carrying out atrocities in their name. Those were the people around us and it doesn’t matter how hard you want to believe otherwise. The signs in their yards tell you how eager they are to vote for the man who promises to bring white nationalist fascism to America. I think maybe I’ll steer clear of Trump country until Trump is a fading memory and the blood rage has burned itself out. There’s plenty of other parts of the country to visit where I won’t have to worry about an angry white Republican voter targeting my family because OANN told him we’re to blame for his shitty, hate-filled life.