The Decibel - Riding the Greyhound through America’s swing states

Episode Date: October 29, 2024

The U.S. election is a week away, and tensions are running high. Polls show Harris and Trump as more or less deadlocked. America’s Electoral College means the presidency is won one state at a time ��� and in a country that vast, it’s hard to capture the nuances of the race in the snapshot of a poll.That’s why the Globe’s feature writer, Ian Brown, got on a Greyhound bus in downtown Los Angeles, and headed east for New York City. He and photographer Barbara Davidson traveled from the deserts of the Southwest to the dairy farms of Wisconsin to try to understand what people were thinking about the election. Ian’s on the show to talk about how taking the bus shaped his thinking about American politics, and he shares some excerpts from his feature on the trip.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

We're a week away from the U.S. election, and the polls show the race is close. Pollsters use surveys and phone interviews to get a snapshot of how people are feeling. But it's harder to capture why people feel the way they do. Those feelings change a lot depending on where you are in the country. And it's a big country, about 4,500 kilometers from Los Angeles to New York. It takes a long time to drive across America, and even longer if you're taking the bus. Ian Brown is a feature writer for The Globe. He spent 16 days this summer riding a Greyhound bus across America to get a sense of why people are thinking certain ways ahead of the election.

And he wrote about the conversations he had with them. Once you dare to break the ice, everyone wants to talk, to tell the stories of their lives that few people ever ask to hear. It's a generous impulse, even humbling. Today, we'll hear excerpts from Ian's piece about that bus trip, and I'll speak with him about how conversations with people across the country shaped his thinking about politics. The people I rode with on the bus reminded me that whatever happens, I can never say I have not been lucky. I'm Mainika Raman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail.

Ian, thank you so much for being here. A pleasure. I just want to start by asking you, why did you want to ride the bus across America? Like instead of driving or flying across the country, what did you want to take the bus? I'm a masochist at heart. I think that's no. The real reason is that we were trying to find a different way to write about politics. You know, so much is written about politics by so many brilliant people.

I mean, and yet, despite the volume of it, so little of it actually makes a difference or seems to get through. And what I wanted was to try to find a sort of backdoor into writing about politics. You know, you get on a bus, you go from L.A. to New York. You know, the usual way is east to west, right, towards openness and freedom. But this election seems to be going backwards, back to the beginning. So you wanted to go west to east. Yeah, so we wanted to go west to east. And you just meet people. And politics is a secondary issue that allows you to back into politics and makes people less defensive. And so that's what

we were attempting to do, to have a story and then attach the politics to it as opposed to having the politics and attach a story to it, which feels a bit more artificial. Did you feel that being on a bus or a few buses as you went across the country there? Many buses. Many, many, many buses. Did you feel that being in those spaces actually let you meet a different sector of people than you would have otherwise, I guess? Oh, totally different. One of the things I realized early on is that about 30 percent to half the bus, they weren't unhoused or homeless, but they were the next step down from that.

You know, you'd say, where are you going? Oh, I'm going back to New Mexico. Well, where have you come from? I've been in Dallas. What were you doing there? I was visiting my sister. Well, how long were you there? A year. And you realize how precarious so much of American life is. You realize that once people start talking, there's this real uncertainty and fear. You know, it looks like the election is split right down the middle, you know, left and right, Democrat and Republican. But once you start talking to people, you realize how complex their view is. The longing for civility is much deeper than you for the story, which is different than, you know, the way politics is normally discussed. Ian started his trip in downtown Los Angeles, and then., I'd arrived in Las Vegas and was having a conversation about the recoil from an AR-15 rifle. It's one of the easier ones.

Ketsu Bethia, the manager of the gun store on Tropicana Avenue, reassured me in the shooting range at the back of the store. It's designed to be ergonomic. It has the user in mind. He handed me the gun. It's designed to be ergonomic. It has the user in mind. He handed me the gun. Seven pounds. The weight of an infant or a small dog. The AR-15 is the most famous gun in America. The semi-automatic rifle. It shoots a bullet each time you pull the trigger without having to be reloaded. That was mostly banned for a decade, but has since been used in mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas, 19 children dead, Buffalo, 10 dead shoppers, Pittsburgh, 11 dead in the Tree of Life synagogue, and the July attempted assassination of Trump, to cite

only a handful of its recent appearances. The number of active shooter incidents in the U.S. has tripled since 2015, but gun rights are a foundation of the Republican platform. Even Tim Waltz, Harris' running mate, has touted his love of hunting, as well as his stands against the National Rifle Association. A Harris-Waltz camo hunting cap is a massive viral hit, as is Harris' appropriation of Trump's no-tax-on-tips idea, a popular issue here in Nevada where pocketbook economics really matter. All this for six electoral votes. No one I spoke to mentioned Nevada's statewide water shortage or climate change. It was 39 degrees Celsius by late afternoon. The Acculumen brightness index was 10, very bright, and the UV index was extreme.

Stepping outside was like being instantly and simultaneously peeled, flensed, baked, microwaved, and air fried. How do you feel when someone uses one of these guns to kill innocent people, I said to Bethia at the gun shop. I'm just angry, he replied, but you got to realize there's sick, nasty people out there. Owning firearms, there are pros and cons like everything else. I'm a good law-abiding person. I'm probably the one who's going to help you. I've stopped two armed robberies, and I took a bullet for it. Bethea quickly demonstrated proper gun shooting stance and how to hold the weapon. Just hold it tight to your body and cheek.

He was speaking directly into my ear. Use that red dot in the scope to aim with. Just take your time and pull the trigger gently. Safety's off. I took a half breath and held it as Bethea instructed. The shot went off. The first word out of my mouth was a profanity. There was no recall to speak of. You're a pretty good shot, Bethea said. The sound of the gun was momentarily deafening and created a sonic cocoon of isolation. Everything is anticipation and adrenaline, and then when you pull the trigger, you know you have committed an irreversibly violent act.

Taken the shot. Acted. You can't take that back. I was filled, oddly, with regret. By the time I got to my hotel, I was exhausted. From Las Vegas, Ian took the bus for more than seven hours to Holbrook, Arizona. From there, he spent nine more hours on the bus to Tucumcari, New Mexico. Then it was another nine hours to Oklahoma City. It wasn't until the next day at the American Quarter Horse Youth World Championship in Oklahoma City that I met the angry brand of Trumper. The championship is a fancy affair.

Three quarters of the contestants are girls. It helps them get into university, leading immaculately groomed and trained horses with names like Hottie and Slam-I-Am and Woulda Coulda Shoulda through their paces. The horses run anywhere from $20,000 to $250,000. A rancher in his 70s who would only go by the name of Jim told me he had a spread in Texas near Dallas. I asked him what one looked for in a quarter horse. It's a beauty contest, he said. It's just like humans.

You don't want the bow-legged girl with the pot belly. He made a couple more jokes like that, and then he said, Jim was furious, somehow personally betrayed by the Democrats. Kamala, he drawled it out, goes out with the same bucket as Biden. Condoleezza Rice, she's black and a lesbian. False, according to Rice's 2012 memoir. But I'd still vote for her over Kamala. Jim poked at his phone for a while and eventually pulled up a long debunked picture of a sex worker in a garter belt.

A woman who vaguely resembled a younger Harris. Does that look like someone you want as president? He was for Trump, 100%. He's not my preacher, but he's my best horse trader. The media were, quote, liberal pricks. The whole world was his enemy. As for January 6th, all I know is Trump said to go and peacefully protest. Sure, Trump did use that word, but in many other instances, egged the rioters on, telling them to fight like hell. I asked Jim whether he thought civility, a trait Trump disdains,

was important in the leader of a large democracy. No, he said. I'm the only person that counts in my life. You're the only person that counts in your life. And Trump hasn't lied to me. Then he tried to crush my hand in a handshake.

So we just heard this section about this man whose ideas about Kamala Harris, at least some of them, are just, they're not true. They're frankly not true, right? So I guess I wonder, when you're in those situations where you're encountering people who are making their decisions based on misinformation, disinformation, how do you handle those conversations? Well, with a guy like him, he's so furious and he doesn't even know why he's furious because he doesn't even have the facts. You know, he's showing around that famous meme of Kamala, not Kamala, as a sex worker. So people like that, you just sit there and listen to them, let them rant, and you go, well, you know, it's not true.

He's not even listening. But I think with most people, most people I met said, I'm not used to talking about politics. I don't talk about politics. People get upset about it. But when I asked them and talked to them and was not judging them, was genuinely interested in why they thought these things they thought, they open up more. I think if you don't judge, people open up.

I would say 99% of the political discourse that goes on these days is it's judgy. You know, it's right out of the butt. It's do you agree with me or not? And if you don't agree with me, you know, you're... You know what that argument's like. And it doesn't get anywhere. Whereas trying to figure out why a mother of six kids under the age of nine, who's 28 years old, who's living on, you know, the military pension of her deceased,

you know, 70-year-old husband, why she's voting for Trump, and why she changes her mind. I called her back weeks later, and she'd sort of changed her mind, she'd moved away. I mean, you can't... So you met her, she was voting for Trump, and then you called her back later, and she changed her mind. Weeks later, and she said, Yeah, I'm no longer voting for Trump. And she said, I don't know whether I'm going to vote, but she was moving, moving towards Harris. I mean, once you realize how complex people's thinking really is, how confused they are, it changes the way you talk about it.

We'll be back in a moment. We find Ian once again in Oklahoma City. Anger is everywhere in the United States these days. Fury is the national default. The Oklahoma City National Memorial commemorates what is still the deadliest act of domestic terrorism the U.S. has ever seen. The bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on the morning of April 19, 1995 by Timothy McVeigh. The memorial's reflecting pool is flanked by 168 bronze chairs that commemorate the people who died that morning. Nineteen of the chairs are small because nineteen of the dead were children

in a daycare center in the building. McVeigh set off his 4,800-pound fertilizer bomb on the second anniversary of the federal government's siege of Waco, Texas, where David Koresh and 82 members of his cult, the Branch Davidians, died in a fire and a standoff with the FBI. Oklahoma City was McVeigh's act of revenge for Waco. Trump kicked off his current presidential campaign with a rally in Waco. It too is a campaign of revenge. Trump openly insists he will rain down if he wins on everyone who opposes him, an intention he has stated many

times. This is how the fireball of American anger gets passed along. McVeigh and his co-conspirator Terry Nichols were members of the Patriot Movement that grew out of anti-bank farmer protests of the late 1980s. It's resurgent today in militias such as the Proud Boys. I walked through the Memorial Museum to the Survivor Tree, a now massive elm that somehow survived the blast. Its seeds have been harvested and planted all over the United States ever since. It was late afternoon. A couple in their 60s were standing under the Survivor Tree. Their names were Christy and Roger Valentine, teachers from Nebraska who'd retired in Houston. They were lifelong Republicans of the old school, and they seemed shaken by the memorial.

The school shootings at Columbine happened a couple of years later, Christy said. This is where the downward spiral began. The downward spiral, I asked? Of trying to destroy one another. We had just never seen someone be so brutal and so destructive to mankind. People destroying their own people just for the sake of whatever was in their head at the moment, Roger added. I asked them if they thought the bombing in Oklahoma City had any connection to Trump's incivility and the January 6th uprising three decades later. It's like we're very tribal right now, Roger said. We have two different schools of thought and it's very separate. But he didn't want to talk any more about it or say how he was voting. People are so tensed up that I don't really talk about this to anybody because I don't know what side they're on.

I don't know whether they're going to attack me. So, Ian, after doing this huge trip across the country, hitting a number of different states, I wonder, are there any lasting impressions that really stay with you that come to mind? I remember on the last bus ride from Pittsburgh into New York City, I met this guy. He was the second guy to be reading a book. Of all the people, he was the second guy to be reading a book. Of all these buses you took, the second guy. Second person. Everybody else is on their phone.

It's as though they're playing poker constantly, holding their cards out in front. Anyway, he was reading a book, and I started to talk to him. And it turns out he'd just come back from serving six months in the slammer, as he said, for a parole violation. But he was going back to his kids in New Jersey. And he's trying to start a business. He's got a real rough road ahead of him. But I said, are you proud to be an American? And he said, yeah, I'm still really proud because there are still opportunities. It might not be very equal out there, but there are still some opportunities for me. In general, the people at the bottom end of the economic spectrum were the most

patriotic people. The angriest people I met, the people who hated America, at least to judge by what they were saying, the angriest people were the people with more money, with more privilege, with an easier time. What do you think that's about? Why do you think it splits that way? I think we keep trying to understand politics in terms of power and money. And I think we should try and understand it psychologically. Everybody has a light and a dark side. And if you don't face up to the dark side, you push it down and it becomes kind of a, you know, your shadow self. I mean, this is true of individuals and true of nations. You have this shadow self. And Trump, I think, has released your shadow self. I mean, this is true of individuals and true of nations.

You have this shadow self. And Trump, I think, has released that shadow self. He's made it okay to be the shadow. So if you're, you know, if you're afraid of losing your job to a newcomer, you're afraid that your traditions will, I'm not saying those are long run legitimate fears, but people have those fears. If you press them down, you don't face them and don't try and sort them out.

Then when somebody comes along and says, you know, you can be the racist, misogynist, trash talking, foul mouthed, incivil, whatever, it comes out. And I think that's what Trump is. He's he is the shadow of the united states and he's fighting against the the non-shadow i mean then the democrats have their own shadow you know they try to be too progressive too quickly you know they think they can do anything blah blah blah but i think a psychological understanding of especially in the united states or the politics the united states might actually might actually free us from this constant back and forth of, you know, he said, she said, right and wrong, zero or one. I mean,

it's a complex problem, but we don't give ourselves enough time to understand it in an emotional, human, individual way. We keep generalizing and that's a mistake. Ian made his way through Wisconsin, Cashton, then Eau Claire, then from Tomah, he took an eight and a half hour bus ride to the swing state of Michigan. From Battle Creek, it was four more hours to Toledo, Ohio, then seven hours to Pittsburgh. His last bus ride takes him from Pittsburgh to New York City. My last conversation on the bus is with Nick and Stella Bakalas. They're from Athens, here to help their son settle into a master's program in AI engineering at Carnegie Mellon University in

Pittsburgh, and now on their way to New York and their flight home. They figure their son will stay in America. The salaries are twice what they are in Greece, and this is where all the new ideas are. But I would like Americans to be more caring for one another, Stella tells me. I think they are spending their lives for the getting of money. They are not enjoying life. She thinks this is a serious problem, with roots in an American education system that prioritizes success, the famous American pursuit of happiness.

Success is not money, Stella continues, or to have a big home. The goal is not to be happy. You have to be happy to reach your goals. Because if you are not trying to be happy and positive, you are going to be toxic. If they could vote, Stella and Nick would vote for Harris. I think about what Stella said most of the way into New York.

The long tradition of American journeying has always been westward, toward a new, freer, less restrictive frontier, toward California and the open unknown. But California is now full, and a lot of Americans think the frontier, with its proximity to the southern border, is busted. Half the country wants to fix the country's problems, its alleged misjudgment of who matters and who ought to matter, who is equal and who is not, who ought to be responsible for whom, if anyone, by going back to the old, comfortable order. The other half says that is no longer possible and wants to start over again with everyone equal.

The bus makes its way through the granite tunnels onto Manhattan and up 8th Avenue to the New York Port Authority bus terminal between 40th and 42nd streets. It's the busiest bus station in the world, sucking in and spewing out 200,000 human beings on 7,200 buses every single day of the week. It has its own police force and its own blood bank. The bus pulls up and we get off. There are more than 400 gates in the massive terminal at the end of the line, All of them waiting to send passengers out to whatever America they hope to get to. That's it for today.

I'm Mainika Raman-Wellms. Our producers are Madeline White, Michal Stein, and Allie Graham. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Matt Frainer is our managing editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.