Trump is an asterisk in Pickens SC

    Ive seen six Presidents in the flesh, Carter, Ford, Reagan, Bush 41 and 43 and Obama. And was in church with George McGovern 4th Sunday in August of 1983. Today I was gonna make Trump my 7th in Pickens SC and may count him anyway. I was downtown but never saw him. Almost did as Lee Norris son, distant relative by Marriage, came running around a corner as if he had just got the Holy spirit shouting I saw Him , I saw Him; but I never did.

     Norris saw him getting out of a car in an alley near a grouping tent but I was outside the barricade when young Norris got his "divine" intervention. Good kid, spotted me a five dollar lemonade for which I intend to pay.

    Come back later. The news reports are full of photos of the throng, thirty thou plus that came to Pickens. I plan to speculate on what more educated, savvy folks from the region may be thinking of this worst example of demagoguery since WA Criswell in 56 who said he wouldnt call a chigger a chiggerow.

     Weather was oppressive.

      Mona Charen in her column published in the Seneca Journal a week ago says the latest indictment of Trump is devastating. Even Trey Gowdy thinks his goose is cooked. But about 75,000 people in Pickens yesterday according to the local Sheriff count, hadnt read the column, too stubborn or limited in some other way to comprehend.

     Had an interesting chat with a person this morning who wanted to bet 500 dollars Trump is the next President. Its tempting to take their money from this god fearing church going individual. Mark Powell who was raised in nearby Wahalla , with Degrees from the Citadel and Yale Div School says folks in the region of Pickens County feel threatened and hold tighter to their traditions. Like the tee on sale in Pickens yesterday, Jesus is my Saviour and Trump is my President. In an interview with the University of Michigan he also said about the folks he was raised with: "There were a lot of wonderful things and a lot of terrible things about that culture. At its best, it was a culture of hard work, stoicism in the face of poverty or in the face of all sorts of terrible things. At its worst it was homophobic, it was patriarchal, it was racist. But I knew it was also disappearing very rapidly, this kind of rural life. My grandparents were all farmers who, most of their family lost their farms and had to go to work in textile mills. And then the textile mills left in the 1980s to seek cheaper labor, right? So, this culture was disappearing, and I wanted to record that. To some degree I was recording not just the disappearance of that generation and of that culture, I was recording the disappearance of my own idealistic belief that was grounded in that world. So it was a sort of eulogy for that time, that place and my childhood understanding of that place. "

  I doubt his fellow novelists of the region Ron Rash, David Joy, George Singleton and Wiley Cash disagree with him. They will not be voting for Donald Trump; maybe somebody of the likes of William Hurd from Texas, but not Trump and I doubt the darling of TPUSA and Moms for Liberty, Nikki Haley.

     The more you talk to Trumpers the more unreasonable and threatened they become. Trump knows this and that's why he is so sinister.

    Folks in Pickens county were nice to me yesterday even spotting for a five dollar Lemonade and a golf cart ride back to my car which I desperately neeeded in the heat. Gonna be interesting to see how the next seven months play out in South Carolina.

    Any journalists who see this, also talk to Joni Tevis at Furman, Pat Anderson in Boone NC, and John Pierce in Gainesville Ga.