An acquaintance who hails from the same New Jersey town as I do spends his free weekends crawling through the woods on his stomach as part of a firearms training course, green camouflage paint on his face and a revolver in his hand. He considers this both a way to have fun in his free time and to prepare for the supposed threat from immigrants everywhere. (“You never know when something could happen,” he tells me.) He’s never gun-less. He brings his weapon to diners and dinners, to work meetings and always on walks in his quiet neighborhood, where he grumbles, “This is America!” whenever he hears Spanish spoken by neighbors or passersby. The implication, of course, is that the United States has become both less American and, to him, by definition, less safe in these years.
He spends his other weekends right-swiping on dating apps to try to find a new partner (he’s being divorced) and watching — yep, you guessed it! — Fox News. He can be counted among a growing population of white rural Americans who are lonely, lack people to count on as confidants and feel poorly understood, not to say excluded from this country (at least as they imagine it).
