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A look at Trumpworld from down on the ground in Oklahoma. What are America’s redlands really like?
Few places in the US are Trumpier than Oklahoma.
Admittedly, Wyoming and West Virginia are Trumpier than the place where the wind comes sweeping down the plains. But Oklahoma has been about as red as red can get for 20 years now. The sky may be blue but the voters sure ain’t.
I don’t have good memories of Oklahoma from my previous travels through the territory.
But…I’d promised myself a real road trip along Route 66 (now I-40) for almost as long as Oklahoma has been deep red. Oklahoma has been part of the Mother Road for a hundred years, so that meant I was going to drive through it.
What was it like? What’s the view from the interstate?
Well, Oklahoma was far more pleasant than I expected. The roads were no more poorly maintained in Oklahoma than anywhere else in America I drove through. That was not always the case. Oklahoma used to be a metaphorical viper pit of roads that just barely qualified for the term ‘paved.’ There may be parts of the state that are still like that.
But I accidentally drove through quite a bit of Oklahoma (thank you Google Maps for your decidedly quirky directions) and encountered none of the problems I recall from prior trips.
Furthermore, the vast expanses of dispiriting dust that I remembered from the former Dust Bowl state were not as vast, dispiriting, or dusty as I recall. The weather was not even what I consider hot, especially for mid-summer.
Oklahoma from the highway simply appeared to be a light yellow to light green expanse of decent highway, punctuated by Tulsa and Oklahoma City. Tulsa and OKC both looked like what I now consider the generic American city.
Generic American Cities in Oklahoma
A downtown with some skyscrapers. A tall building somewhere that attempts to be ‘architectural’ in some manner. As soulless, as generic, as corporate, and unoriginal as a McDonalds and about as cheerful. Utterly lacking in character but pleasant enough from the highway.
These generic American cities all have 7 lanes of freeway at some point, but what I would personally consider to be no drivers. It was possible to be in the far left lane and veer over to the far right lane with barely a look over the shoulder to see if there were any other drivers. Okay, I’m almost exaggerating.
I stopped in a couple of places to check out the vibe. The people were not unpleasant, which is also not what I remember from previous visits. They weren’t pleasant either.
They weren’t visibly political in Oklahoma. No need to be when there isn’t a single blue county to contend with. They had plenty of religion billboards. As religion billboards go, they were pretty mild. Signs that said ‘JESUS.’ Or more hopefully, signs about Jesus providing hope or easing anxiety.
I could see why there were so many billboards promising relief from life’s woes via Jesus. Cuz it sure looked like people need Jesus cuz they ain’t got no money.
I’m not saying Oklahoma looked poor exactly, not like it used to look poor. Instead, it looks like there just isn’t any money there. What it looks like is as though the people there try to swim through concrete in slow motion to get through unvarying but not agonizing days. Just the slow creep of boredom and stability.
And here is where I began to understand red America better.
Understanding Red America
From the highway, one begins to understand just how full of nothing and nowhere the United States of America is. Miles and miles and miles and hours and hours and hours of nothing, nowhere, no one.
In the West, the nothing, nowhere and no one stretch out into breathtaking and sometimes terrifying vistas. The nothing and nowhere stretch out in all directions into the horizon.
No wonder the titans of industry want to build data centers. Develop stuff. Build pollution-spewing industrial centers. Cut down trees. Do stuff. Money stuff.
Because it seems like you could build a data center the size of a Cimmaron County in Oklahoma and still the nothing, nowhere, no one-ness of the landscape would swallow it up with nary a trace. What does it matter if you spew pollution and noise, chew up the land and the towns. THERE’S NOBODY THERE.
The nobodies who live there look at it a little differently, but they are also amenable to a certain logic. If there’s nothing and no one in nowhere then anything that offers a job, even if spits fumes into your face allows you to stay rooted in your little patch of nowhere.
Here’s a thing about the vast red areas of the USA that is both obvious and undiscussed: no one wants to live in them.
Except for the few people who do. And those people do not want to be rich. They don’t want better services, healthcare or economic opportunities. They don’t want education, or museums or nice places to eat.
They want to live in places where THERE ARE NO FUCKING DRIVERS. They want to be alone. They want peace. They want low population density. People who live in places like Oklahoma value stability and the low cost of living (‘affordability’) that comes from no one wanting to buy a house there. They want space. They want nothing to change.
Oklahoma’s state motto valorizes work.
But Oklahomans don’t want to work hard and get ahead. They don’t want to get ahead period. They want to stay right where they are. They don’t want progress or immigrants or diversity or to have to go out of their way to don a friendly smile.
The other Oklahoma state motto states that the people trust in God.
They do. They trust that if they don’t lift a finger, nothing will change, and they won’t have to. They will survive just as they have for decades on oil, gas, fast food, and little else.
That may sound harsh, but I’m sympathetic. Now that I have experienced the charms of low population density, I can understand why people who choose it want to keep it. The people who don’t crave horizons of nothing, nowhere, and no one have already left or are desperately trying to before drug use, despair or prison drag them into the swimming pool of concrete their neighbors live in. (The state has very high rates of drug abuse and incarceration.)
Oklahoma voters, meanwhile, are still on the Trump train, but just barely.
Oklahoma watchers think the mood has shifted. The cost of living has gone up significantly for Oklahomans and that really hurts a state that relies on affordability. Trump’s approval rate is now below 50%, although more people polled still approve than disapprove (48% vs. 44% disapprove).
Trump’s war in Iran isn’t helping his popularity there either. Even in Trumpworld, a lot of people are getting pretty fed up.
Road Trip Through America and Canada Too: Route 66 and Beyond
Driving Through Texas: Thunderstorms and Surprises
New Mexico: America’s Land of Enchantment
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