I’ve been toying with several ideas for writing today, but they all went out the window when I saw Bruno Maçães’s “Letter from Michigan,” published in The New Statesman, an outlet that even Wikipedia identifies as “far left.” Maçães’s essay presents a shattering view of America. And through that view, he ably explains why increasing numbers of Americans are looking to Trump, who promises to restore our nation’s former greatness, rather than to Kamala, who promises more of the same decay that’s been the norm in Democrat-run cities and that Harris and Biden have brought to America as a whole.

Sidney and Beatrice Webb, two of the best-known British Fabians (they wanted pure socialism via a slow-roll through existing institutions rather than a bloody revolution), founded The New Statesman in 1913. In the 111 years since then, the publication has never deviated from its commitment to socialism.

Bruno Maçães is a regular columnist at The New Statesman and was Portugal’s former Secretary of State for European Affairs. He is a creation of and devoted to elitist leftist ideas. That means the essay I’m about to discuss comes from a hard leftist writing for a hard-left British publication that will be read by a hard-left audience.

Image by AI.

The essay, published on October 21 and updated on the 24th, is entitled “Letter from Michigan: No one I know is voting for Kamala Harris”: Will Donald Trump win the struggling swing state?” Because Maçães believes, correctly, that Trump is a known quantity, so there’s little left to learn or say about him, he went to Michigan because “I was mostly curious about his supporters.” He wanted to know why people would vote for someone that the Democrats have so thoroughly demonized, right down to making him a convicted felon (for a non-crime, I might add).

What Maçães discovered in Warren, Michigan (a Detroit suburb), is that Trump supporters are people who have been given the short end of the stick. After speaking briefly to about a dozen people, he learned that their lives were very tough, indeed:

Factories keep closing or laying off workers, and inflation has wiped out a large chunk of their income and savings. Drugs and alcohol are everywhere.

This is an America with no visible signs of wealth. From downtown Detroit to Dearborn and Warren, and then the rural counties north of Flint, there is rampant poverty, dwindling opportunities and an ageing population. By next year, more than 40 per cent of Michigan counties will have more than a quarter of their population older than 65. Many attendees told me they were unemployed. All complained about grocery prices. They spoke with little ambition for their jobs, careers, and even for their children.

That’s bad, but it’s not just Michigan. Further in the article, Maçães delivers a devastating indictment of America, which has become tarnished beyond recognition:

It may be difficult for Europeans to understand how dysfunctional much of America has become. Nothing works. Bathrooms in bus stations and fast-food joints have often been closed for months. Public facilities are invariably old. Streets are spectacularly dirty. Service workers may go on small, local strikes no one hears about. Supermarket shelves may be empty because of shoplifters. In Erie, Pennsylvania, two days before the Warren campaign event, I took a train in the middle of the night. Outside the station, the homeless begged to enter the waiting room, only to be denied by the station master, who promptly fell asleep on the floor. I was told that many people try to jump on moving freight trains as they have no money for tickets. Once the station master woke up from his drunken slumber, he told me a “bum” had been run over by a moving train while sleeping on the tracks just a few days before. Now he worries because no one is checking the tracks every night.

We Trump supporters know this is true—and that it’s especially true in regions that have been under Democrat control. The more Republican a city or state, the less likely it is to suffer from the terrible decay that Maçães describes.

No Democrat will—or can—admit this. However, Trump does admit it, and he bluntly promises to reverse the Democrat and RINO policies that have brought America to this pass.

Moreover, writes Maçães, because Trump has been so brutally attacked by the left, America’s downtrodden have a sense of fellowship with him. Rather than running away, Trump speaks his mind and fights back. This is a selling point for young black men. (Maçães, of course, paints this as Trump being an a-hole and giving license to others to be a-holes, but it’s worth remembering that it’s not Trump supporters who are attacking toddlers.)

And while Maçães can’t make himself come out and say it, his short riff about Arab voters in Michigan reveals that they believe that Trump will bring peace to the Middle East. Harris and Biden have become the chaos and war administration:

After the town hall, I went to dinner at a Lebanese restaurant in Dearborn, the hometown of Henry Ford, today a city with an Arab majority. I was told that Dearborn residents regularly attend funerals for loved ones or friends killed in the Middle East. I do not recommend asking them if they plan to vote for Harris. “No one I know is voting for her,” was the chilly response at an Yemeni [sic] coffee shop on Schaefer Road that evening.

Ultimately, looking at the rally, Maçães concluded that “Trump is doing well.” Actually, Maçães’s real conclusion is one that should make Democrats weep and hearten every patriot: “I left Michigan convinced that he will win the state and likely the election as well. Michigan may prove decisive.” I sure hope he’s right.

You can do your bit to make Maçães’s prediction come true by voting in person before November 5. The hope is that early voting returns will so overwhelmingly favor Trump that there can be no chicanery. If he’s already won by election day, no one can stop the vote count and go out and manufacture new votes. Trump said, “Fight, fight, fight.” I say, “Vote, vote, vote. Do it as soon as possible and bring your conservative friends to the polling location, too.”