To say this election cycle has been interesting is an understatement. One of the things that has upset me the most is how we have treated each other; I have heard and seen some of the nastiest things since high school. But the thing that made me the angriest is what I heard the media saying on election night.
The media was stunned at what was happening. They never in a million years saw Donald Trump winning. Which, to be frank, I didn't expect it either. The rural voters came out in droves to choose who they thought should run the country. I don't necessarily agree with the choice, but at the same time I didn't really like any of the candidates. So, putting my personal thoughts aside, I still think the rural voters got completely railroaded by popular media.
On election night, all the media could talk about was how they couldn't believe this was happening and it was the uneducated, rural population that was voting. Well, let me tell you, I am one of those "uneducated" people living in a rural area.
I have two degrees from a Big 10 school, I have traveled the country and the world, and I choose to live in an area that isn't a city, and I have friends that live in our area who have degrees from various elite universities. Calling us an uneducated group of people is exactly the way this election should not have been summed up. Some of the most successful people I know have a high school diploma, at the most. This election was full of assumptions and prejudice against people they don't know. Then the media continues to call the deciding population uneducated. This completely blows my mind.
The people in rural America are small business owners, farmers, hard-working blue-collar people. We are the people who are affected every day by the political decisions made. We are the people that watch these news shows every single day. We are the people in “flyover states” because we don't matter. Only the East Coast and the West Coast matter, right? Yet we are the people that decided this election, and they still continue to demean us and make us feel like we don't matter.
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I am so happy this election is done. Now we just accept what has happened and we move on and make the best with what we have. But, I still think it's completely unacceptable to demean the blue-collar people in this country. We are the people that make this country run every single day and we deserve more than to be grouped into this population called uneducated.
Editor’s note: Messing-Kennedy lives on her family’s third-generation farm with her husband and daughter in central Michigan. She is a mom, millennial, runner and dairy farmer. Visit her blog by clicking here .
