Anger about the wars isn't the only reason voters support Mr. Trump. But his willingness to say what other G.O.P. candidates won't reflects what people like most about him: his complete break with the party elite.Collection: Anger
We must have the courage to confront dreadful views even in the people we love the most. But that's difficult to do when we cast large segments of our fellow citizens into a basket to be condemned and disparaged, judging them even as we ignore that many of their deplorable traits exist in us, too.Collection: Courage
At a pivotal time in my life, Barack Obama gave me hope that a boy who grew up like me could still achieve the most important of my dreams. For that, I'll miss him and the example he set.Collection: Dreams
We're very good at talking about the individual in American politics and excellent at talking about the government. But we have little ability to even acknowledge everything that exists in the middle, and given how influential politics is on every other part of our life, I think that failure of discourse is pretty corrosive to our overall culture.Collection: Failure
My family has existed in eastern Kentucky for as long as there are records. If you're familiar with the famous Hatfield-McCoy family feud back in the 1860s, '70s and '80s in the United States, my family was an integral part of that.Collection: Famous
To serve in the modern military - or to be the uncle, parent or sibling of one who does - is to treat the necessary service and sacrifice of war with a sacred honor. In my community, we pile into cars and drive hundreds of miles to watch our children's graduation from basic training.Collection: Graduation
I almost failed out of high school. I nearly gave in to the deep anger and resentment harbored by everyone around me... Whatever talents I have, I almost squandered until a handful of loving people rescued me.Collection: Anger
We spend to pretend that we're upper class. And when the dust clears - when bankruptcy hits or a family member bails us out of our stupidity - there's nothing left over. Nothing for the kids' college tuition, no investment to grow our wealth, no rainy-day fund if someone loses her job.
There is a cultural movement in the white working class to blame problems on society or the government, and that movement gains adherents by the day.
I could never understand why our lives felt like a struggle while those living off government largesse enjoyed trinkets that I only dreamed about.
For decades, scholars have studied the ways in which implicit biases affect how we perceive other people in this multiethnic society of ours. The data consistently shows that about 90 percent of us possess some implicit prejudices - and, unsurprisingly, people typically favor their own group.
The evangelical Christian faith I'd grown up with sustained me. It demanded that I refuse the drugs and alcohol on offer in our southwestern Ohio town, that I treat my friends and family kindly, and that I work hard in school. Most of all, when times were toughest, it gave me reason to hope.
While faith need not be monolithic - it can motivate both voting behavior and character development - focus matters. A Christianity constantly looking for political answers to moral and spiritual problems gives believers an excuse to blame other people when they should be looking in the mirror.
Recently, a friend sent me the online musings of a televangelist who advised his thousands of followers that the Federal Reserve achieved satanic ends by manipulating the world's money supply. Paranoia has replaced piety.
Mr. Trump, like too much of the church, offers little more than an excuse to project complex problems onto simple villains. Yet the white working class needs neither more finger-pointing nor more fiery sermons.
At a person-to-person level, I think that there's always something to be said for having some empathy for the folks who really, really disagree with you about a given topic.
We need to think about how we teach working-class children about not just hard skills, like reading and mathematics, but also soft skills, like conflict resolution and financial management.
Folks like me have to feel a little indebted to the communities that they came from. And if they do, I think we'll start to see a little bit more of a geographic integration in the country because people will start to think, 'You know what? I owe that place something, and I should return to it in one form or another.'
Solutions are complex, and I continue to worry that Trump didn't fully appreciate the complexity of what's going on. Consequently, I worry about whether he's going to make the problems a whole lot better... But I am a Republican, and we really should give the guy a chance to govern and hope he's successful.
The most depressing part of the 2016 election is that the candidates often failed to show any cultural leadership: any recognition that the world of public policy was important but hardly the only good and necessary part of our shared society.
If it's hard for Blue America to see Red America as anything other than a bunch of dumb, racist rednecks; it's hard for Red America to recognize that many minorities are legitimately worried about what a Trump presidency means for their family.
It's jarring to live in a world where every person feels his life will only get better when you came from a world where many rightfully believe that things have become worse. And I've suspected that this optimism blinds many in Silicon Valley to the real struggles in other parts of the country. So I decided to move home to Ohio.
It seems to me an indictment of the Republican Party that if you talk about issues of poverty and upward mobility, people assume you're a Democrat.
The person in New York City is showing too little empathy for the Trump voter. The Trump voter is showing too little empathy for the person who's very worried about the refugee ban. They're not spending enough time with each other to have a meaningful conversation.
I never wanted to be a public intellectual or a talking head.
I think running a small nonprofit to work on the opioid crisis and bring interesting new businesses to the so-called Rust Belt - all of these things are valuable, if not more valuable, than running for office.
I think what Trump will be judged on by the folks that voted for him... is whether things start to get a little bit better over the next few years. And ultimately, that doesn't depend on whether Jeff Sessions is the attorney general.
Church gives people a sense of community, a sense of how to behave... social support when times get tough. In a world where white working class folks are going to church less and less, they're losing that when they might really need it.
People in my hometown voted for President Reagan - for many, like my grandpa, he was their first Republican - because he promised that tax cuts would bring higher wages and new jobs. It seemed he was right, so we voted for the next Republican promising tax cuts and job creation, George W. Bush. He wasn't right.
We watch our sons go to war, disagree with the rationale for sending them, loathe the men who ordered them to battle, and then, when the veterans come home, beg and plead with the local V.A. to ensure they have access to proper care.
During my first round of law school applications, I didn't even apply to Yale, Harvard, or Stanford - the mystical 'top three' schools. I didn't think I had a chance at those places. More important, I didn't think it mattered; all lawyers get good jobs, I assumed.
On my first day at Yale Law School, there were posters in the hallways announcing an event with Tony Blair, the former British prime minister. I couldn't believe it: Tony Blair was speaking to a room of a few dozen students? If he came to Ohio State, he would have filled an auditorium of a thousand people.
I have never felt out of place in my entire life. But I did at Yale.
I happen to be a conservative, but one need not accept the Right's theories wholesale to acknowledge the sometimes negative effects of government action on health care.
The regulatory approach of the Food and Drug Administration and the Patent and Trademark Office has driven up the costs of generic drugs.
We'll rail against the way the government has destroyed our health care market in one breath and resist the support offered to the poor and middle class to navigate this brokenness with the other. This is not conservative; it is incoherence masquerading as ideological purity.
The subsidy for employer-sponsored coverage has tethered health care to employment in a way that virtually no economist endorses.
For two years, I'd lived in Silicon Valley, surrounded by other highly educated transplants with seemingly perfect lives. It's jarring to live in a world where every person feels his life will only get better when you came from a world where many rightfully believe that things have become worse.
Not every town can or should be saved.
Many people should leave struggling places in search of economic opportunity, and many of them won't be able to return. Some people will move back to their hometowns; others, like me, will move back to their home state.
Barack Obama was elected during my second year of college, and save for his skin color, he had much in common with Bill Clinton: Despite an unstable life with a single mother, aided by two loving grandparents, he had made in his adulthood a family life that seemed to embody my sense of the American ideal.
The military is arguably the most significant social institution in our country.
The transition after the Vietnam War to an all-volunteer force created the world's finest professional military. But it also reinforced geographic and cultural divisions that reveal themselves in our voting.
In communities like mine, we send our best and brightest to our armed forces. Our culture's elites, on the other hand, encourage their children to do just about anything else.
My grandma - we called her Mamaw - loved her country.
I am proud of my service and proud of those who served alongside me. But war is about more than service and sacrifice - it's about winning.
Undoubtedly, church fish fries and picnics help build social cohesion. It was at my dad's medium-size evangelical church - my first real exposure to a sustained religious community - that I first saw people of different races and classes worshiping together.
The sometimes-tough love of the Christian faith of my childhood demanded a certain amount of self-reflection and, occasionally, self-criticism.
It's difficult in the abstract to appreciate that those with morally objectionable viewpoints can still be good people.
I'm a big fan of Purdue as an institution and in its role of educating the next-generation workforce.