world. He's quite rich, which is part of it, but more to the point he inhabits a particular substrate of New Yorkers who sincerely think there is no reason whatsoever to venture off the Island Manhattan, because everything you could possibly want is there.
With all due respect, anyone who thinks that way is a fucking idiot and needs to learn a lot.
I've lived in more than one part of the country (to wit: northern NY State, Tucson, AZ, the DC area [several different places in Maryland and Virginia], Minneapolis, Phoenix, Overland Park KS, and Santa Fe NM. I also have friends and relatives in lots of different places, so I'm reasonably acquainted with most parts of this country.
People who live in NYC are by far the most parochial and insular folks I've ever met. They honestly think that simply because they have immigrants from everywhere, have restaurants of all ethnicities, that they know everything, experience everything, and cannot possibly learn anything at all by leaving the city. Well, they are full of shit.
There is a real difference between NYC and most of the rest of the country. I will offer two examples, but they are very indicative of the NYC insularity: Both involve writers from the midwest. One had written a novel that took place in the midwest, and an important part of the plot had to do with the guest room in the house. The NYC editor rejected it, because she could not imagine that someone could own a home and have a room that was set aside totally for guests. Guess what? That's common outside of NYC. The other was an author who'd written a novel involving teens who hung out in the local mall. The editor rejected it, because it didn't seem realistic to her. She'd never been to a mall, having lived her entire life in NYC, and having never been to a mall.
Perhaps those examples seem trivial, but they are not. Those who have lived their entire lives in New York City (a wonderful place, and I keep on trying to figure out how I could manage to live there for a year, or maybe even six months) simply haven't a clue what the rest of the country is like.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. He grew up in privilege. He got his start in business because his father loaned him, what was it, a million dollars? to start his first business. Just like Mitt Romney, who thinks kids can borrow multiple hundreds of dollars from parents to get their start, the Donald has no clue what life is like for ordinary people. And I'm not even talking about the lower dregs of society. I'm talking about normal, working or middle class people who can manage some of college costs, but who can't begin to underwrite a serious business venture.
Someone like Donald Trump lives inside a bubble, and in his case he has no clue whatsoever that it's a bubble. Hillary Clinton likewise lives inside a bubble, but she always wasn't inside it, and we could hope she gets that, but she doesn't. She's forgotten what it was like when she grew up. She thinks that most people end up in the upper reaches of society that she's in, but she's wrong.
Anyway, to the Donald climate change isn't entirely real. It's something people out there talk about. So if he can find someone who tells him it's not something to worry about, he'll buy that. Because for him, it isn't something to worry about. If sea level rises, it won't affect him. If there are more forest fires in the west, he won't care.
The genuinely scary thing here is that he might actually become President, and if he does it will be with this horrifying lack of understanding of the real world out there.
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