I grew up in rural, small-town America -- I can tell you the real reason why people love Donald Trump

[Boomer]

45. I have family in rural America

We're no longer in communication because I realized there's just too big a gulf between their lives and mine. I'm liberal, atheist, gay, college-educated, and part Hispanic (not that side of the family). They don't approve of "my lifestyle" and from some of the racist "jokes" they sent my way over the years, it's obvious they don't approve of my mixed heritage either.

My nieces and nephews (who are actually older than I am) have high-school educations and low-skilled jobs. They're Evangelicals and they vote Trump. They rail that we need God in the classroom, and while Obama was president they wanted a Christian in the White House.

What I can see, that they can't, is how little they understand about the world around them. It's not their fault that they were raised in poverty, but it's an obstacle that has doomed them long beyond childhood. They don't grasp the full extent of what they've missed. It's more than just material goods like a decent income and a house instead of a trailer. It's an awareness and understanding of how the world outside their community works. It leaves them unable to accurately assess the validity of competing streams of information, what is credible and what is not credible. And there's the resentment against those -- like me -- who have a better life and appear to have turned our backs on their values.

So yes, the OP has nailed it. Even without racism in the mix, there's such a strong tribalism at work. I'm an Outsider even to blood relatives, because I don't fit into their view of who people should be. I'm the Other.