cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/20930689
My job is doing outside sales in Ohio and my customer base is very much blue collar manufacturing. There is an obvious overlap in manufacturing and Trump supporters. A lot of places I visit have Trump memorabilia posted around - signs, stickers, flags, whatever.
The other day I was in a spot southeast of Columbus, near the Ohio River. I pull in to this smaller machine shop and see Trump signs in the windows and Trump stickers on the only car outside.
Go in and start chatting with the owner. Within 5 minutes he had already hit me with 3 hard Rs, going on a rant about the "criminals in office" and "if everything goes the way it's supposed to November 5th" and "if it doesn't there's gonna be some problems on November 6th". Had a Biden-Harris Target List hanging (idk if it was a list of people he wanted to kill or if it was one of those "people judge me for my shitty actions and I feel attacked" things).
He was carrying a Glock (not uncommon in a lot of these places that people open carry) and I'm not unfamiliar with firearms (I grew up in Kentucky and was in the Marine Corps), so in order to turn the conversation back to business and away from the racist pro-Trump conversation, I mentioned that the company I work for makes gun barrels for a couple high-profile gun manufacturers. Conversation went that way for a minute (he says it's "bullshit that they try to take guns away from people like you and me (I'm a white dude so I guess we are the only ones supposed to have guns) when everybody knows the hard Rs and illegals are the ones committing all the crime"), then he says, "yeah, if you were a hard R, you'd be seeing this pistol up close"
Idk what my point is other than this guy is the type of dude that's gonna vote for Trump and if that's the people Trump supporters want to side with idk y'all need to look at yourself in a mirror or something.