In 2016, Trump signs decorated the sides of rural Minnesota highways like Christmas lights on December 24th in Manhattan. Why wouldn't they be there? The democrats and regressive leftists supported NAFTA, gutted labor laws, threatened to take away a rural person's firearms, all while calling them deplorable, horrible, repugnant, based on their race, sex and sexual orientation. What the fuck did you think was going to happen? Why would any human, unless suicidal, want to follow a path off a cliff like a lemming, into the abyss? It's not at all difficult to understand why so many rural white males would vote for Trump, and why their wives would overlook Trump's misogyny in order to be loyal to their husbands and sons, instead of following some batshit crazy SJW screaming for their deaths. What the actual fuck? No, Trump's victory was not at all a surprise to me while I was in Mankato. Any human being to have been surprised by Trump's victory is dangerously tone deaf to the suffering of many millions of working people who they share a country with. It'll probably happen again later this year too, now that Bumbling Biden's tone deaf supporters successfully toppled our only hope-- Bernie Sanders. It doesn't matter that Trump is a pathological liar who is not loyal to his supporters. Before the election, I had to drive to Nevada and back to Mankato. I also drove to Illinois and back to Mankato. There were no Hillary signs anywhere in rural America, just like there are no Biden signs today.

Trump Country is more or less what Mankato is. There was something about Mankato that reminded me of my home town of Romeoville, IL, in an eerie, echoing way and touched the depths of my inner child's heart like I hadn't felt in a long long time. A lot of the architecture and buildings looked like they hadn't changed since the 70's or 80's. The social attitudes and behaviors of the residents had a similar vibe, and I liked it. Every Mettler's customer who I spoke with leading up to the election was Trump supporter. There's a lot of manufacturing jobs in the area, as well as construction and farming. On Halloween night, there were lots of sexy redneck twenty-somethings wearing MAGA hats and behaving as caricatures of die-hard Trump supporters, except they were also actual Trump supporters when it wasn't Halloween. They wore flannel and had beards and smelled like wet dog and were unapologetically themselves. It was hot as fuck.

On Saturday nights, Mettler's was full of college students and gorgeous Northwoods redneck men with stunningly perfect Viking bone structure. Mankato was home to many beautiful nature trails, a hobby lobby, scenic views, wild bison, potential for art culture. I never met more virgins in their thirties and forties than I did at Mettler's, who barely left the family farm except to go to the strip club.

Michael Moore knew what was up before the election. It's too bad Hillary didn't know it. I had to work on election night, because I was out of money after returning from a mandatory business trip to Las Vegas. I wore a red dress on election night, because I hadn't done my laundry in a long time and it was the only thing that was clean. It was a slow night, but I made a lot of money, because not a lot of other dancers were working. My manager Woody was bartending. Lilly was working too, along with a fifty year old dancer who went by Cara. Stupid Bitch Lilly (real name Lizz) pleasantly stated, in her perky bullshit Minnesota way of speaking, that it really didn't matter who won because they're all bad. I started freaking out when the state by state election results started rolling in on the TV. Lilly can't handle genuine emotion, so she looked panicked and scurried out of the dressing room. I knew Trump's win was coming, but it was nonetheless nauseating to see. The club closed before Trump's victory was announced.

At Perkins, I surfed the internet with my fries and coffee, repeatedly pressing refresh on the CNN front page until a large headline read that Trump had won. My favorite waitresses were hoovered over their laptop in a corner booth, and both immediately started crying. I cried too. We all cried in Perkins that night. As predictable as his victory might have been, Donald Trump is a rapist misogynist who we knew would eventually destroy our lives.

It was very easy to identify Trump supporters the day after the election in Mankato, by their jolly victorious demeanor. I hated all of them. I went to a local Mexican restaurant to eat lunch that day and never experienced such a palpable, grim pain in the atmosphere from workers and patrons alike.

I didn't vote for Hillary in the general election. She won Minnesota, but not by much. She won my home state of Illinois, but only because of Chicago. When the women's march happened in Minneapolis, I was laying in my Budget Host Inn room, groggy on ibuprofen and suffering from debilitating menstrual cramps, laughing and wondering what the next four years would be like. What I never would have predicted four years ago was that democrats would be stupid enough to elect Joe Biden as their guy to beat Trump.