Why Trump deserves to lose the Pa. Dutch vote
Both of my Pennsylvania Dutch great-grandparents died in the 1930s, in the throes of the Great Depression.
My great-grandfather lost his life in a tragic auto accident on Route 100, north of Fogelsville; his wife, my great-grandmother, promptly shot herself in the family barn upon finding out. Her body was first encountered by one of her young children.
Prior to this, my great-grandparents had lived on the small dairy farm they ran in rural Pennsylvania. After my great-grandmother’s suicide, the sad story goes, a milkman arrived on that farm to find the cows unmilked and the milk tins empty.
Looking around, he found the four orphaned children, including my grandmother, whowas, at the time, just a baby. I imagine howhemust have found them: hungry and traumatized.
Of the four young siblings, my grandmother was the only child whowas adopted (by her aunt and uncle, who eventually raised her in Kuhnsville). The others were immediately separated and sent off to local farms to earn their keep as laborers — at that time, there were no social services to shelter and protect them.
Despite the horrid circumstances in which their lives began, these siblings became kind, industrious, generous and family-oriented adults. My grandparents passed on to their children a can-do outlook, a corresponding work ethic, and a spirit of sober humility, all rooted in working-class, Pennsylvania Dutch culture and their Depression-era survival skills.
I amsharing this painful family story because, to mydismay, many Pennsylvania Dutch communities are reportedly leaning toward Trump — and have even grown more conservative since 2016.
As the granddaughter of a woman whospoke the Pennsylvania Dutch
dialect as her first language, and as someone whowas raised to respect the Dutch country ethos of humility, hard work and restraint — even when I have failed to live up to these ideals in my personal life — I want to call attention to the ways in which support for Trump contradicts the stories and values of our ancestors whofought to make Pennsylvania their homes.
I won’t focus, here, on Trump’s controversial politics — enough has been said about them in other venues, and
our minds on these matters are already made up. Instead, I want to encourage Pennsylvanians, and particularly those of Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry, to ask themselves whothey are in relation to whoTrumpis.
Trump’s character, I shall argue, is fundamentally at odds with Pennsylvania Dutch values and Pennsylvania Dutch history, and he deserves to lose your vote.
Unlike myPennsylvania Dutch grandparents, whoworked tirelessly to raise
their families and the very roofs over their heads after growing up in poverty, Donald Trump is a privileged businessman who, despite inheriting vast riches, managed to bankrupt numerous businesses and hemorrhage exorbitant amounts of cash: reportedly more than $1 billion in losses during the 1980s. Henowpays almost nothing in federal income taxes due to financial losses. Despite all this, he has constantly represented himself as a flourishing businessman.
Unlike myPennsylvania Dutch grandparents, who, in accordance with Pennsylvania Dutch ethics, avoided boasting, bragging and great acts of vanity, Trump calls himself a “genius,” stated that he wonapopular vote that he very clearly did not win, and, as you know, so very muchmore.
All of this, I understand, is common knowledge. My aim is not to surprise you with newinformation; rather, I want to anchor the ongoing Trump discussion in a real Pennsylvania Dutch family story of hardship, labor and loss, so that we can come to see the absurdity of working-class Pennsylvania Dutch country going from red to redder as the 2020 presidential election approaches.
Trump is not one of us, and he does not wish to be. He is fighting to dismantle the sorts of social programs that could have kept myorphaned great-aunts and great-uncles from growing up as child laborers, and perhaps even shielded my great-grandmother from taking her ownlife out of personal and economic desperation.
In this election and beyond, Pennsylvania Dutch country should embrace its more progressive roots. And to those whodon’t believe wehave any: Lester Lehr, the manwhoadopted my grandmother, became a lifelong Democrat after Franklin D. Roosevelt’s NewDeal enabled him to finally get a respectable, well-paid job after suffering through the Great Depression.
These are the sorts of initiatives that we should celebrate as a community. If we are proud of whowe are, and proud of where we come from — as I am, even as I write from outside of Pennsylvania — wemust vote against Trump. Hewill always vote against us.
Amy Reed-Sandoval was born and raised in Allentown. She is an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Her writing has appeared in Salon, BBC News online, The Guardian and The Morning Call.