I’ve been wrestling with thoughts about what it means to be a progressive in MAGA country who saw it coming. The inner conflict, the feelings, the divided loyalty… You just can’t win.

Someone recently asked Beau of the Fifth Column if he expected Trump to win in 2016 . Beau, who lives in Florida and is as rural a Southerner as they come, said no, he “didn’t think it could happen here.”

I was a little surprised, because I did know. I didn’t know at first, but by November 2016 I knew.

One night I jolted awake thinking, “Oh my God, we’re gonna do it again aren’t we?” Horror, dread and grief washed over me.

“Why must we always sign up to be the bad guys of history?” I thought. “They use us for power and money and leave our culture in shambles? Why do we do it?”

Shame over the past masquerading as pride…

Interesting that I thought “we.” I spent most of my life trying not to be country, or Southern, or redneck – as if I wasn’t raising hell on the back roads as a young man, just like my snuff dippin’ beer drinking friends. Who exactly did I mean by we?

Like Beau, I came up in the country. Not as country as him, but close. Texas isn’t exactly “The South,” but we’re kissing cousins. We once waltzed into a meatgrinder together on behalf of The South.

I knew Trump was going to win. Maybe because I was a newspaper reporter who covered small towns for 20 years.

Or perhaps it was because I’d quit wanting talk to people I considered close as brothers over the hateful things they said on Facebook, and got the cold shoulder from others over my anti-Trump memes.

I had an inkling that we were headed in a bad direction during Obama’s presidency. I was hearing more racist jokes. Infowars turned up at a boring ass economic development meeting, shouting conspiracy theories. Tea Party members almost scuttled plans for a college campus our poverty-stricken town needed desperately.

I felt dread when Hillary got the Democratic nomination, Hillary who was synonymous with Coastal Liberal disdain in my part of the country, going way back to Rush Limbaugh. Rush used that very hook to fool me at first: “We’re nothing but ‘flyover country’ to them.”

I knew because Coastal Liberals who chose Hillary over Bernie didn’t know how badly the well was poisoned against her or didn’t think it mattered.

I knew when Hillary made the fatal mistake of uttering the words, “basket of deplorables.” And didn’t seem to know it was a mistake – or care.

I still voted for her in the general. She would’ve been so much better for America – and the South, whether they knew it or not. Almost anyone would’ve been better. But I knew my neighbors.

I knew because wealthy Coastal Liberals who have controlled the Democratic Party, as well as naive city liberals who supported them didn’t understand how they are perceived and don’t know how to talk to us without stepping on every cultural tripwire.

I knew because Trump might be a buffoon, but he’s a talented conman. I interviewed a local conman once and I learned how it works: Find out who your mark hates and you can take him for every penny.

Liberals were sure they were going to win because they had a better candidate – they did. Anyone would have been better. But future MAGA knew the Democratic Party didn’t care and Trump (who also couldn’t give a shit but pretended to care) got to them first.