Introducing Hoosier Nation to Kokomo

The best part of this video isn’t me or my speech, but what you don’t see: Over a dozen ordinary Hoosiers giving our ideas an honest hearing. After the speech, the Q&A ran on for about an hour. I had anticipated getting tough questions—and we got a couple. I had also anticipated people expressing their frustration with the direction things are heading—and there was plenty of that. But what I hadn’t prepared for were the personal stories people started sharing, stories of how their children are being intimidated by their peers and taught to be ashamed by their teachers, stories of how factories they’ve worked in for decades unceremoniously replaced entire departments of American workers with migrant laborers, and of how uncontrolled immigration has made so many aspects of their lives harder and harder every year.

Kokomo is a smaller city in Indiana, one which once took the lead in automotive innovation and fulfilled the American Dream of good schools, safe neighborhoods, and solid jobs. It’s one more place in the rust belt where the dying American Dream is giving way to this cosmic American nightmare. People are looking for answers and we need to be out there in the community making our case for why we need to defend ourselves as White men and women: because we’re being attacked as White men and women. We’re being singled out, marginalized, and left behind not as conservatives, not as “Red Staters”, not as “Republicans”, not as “tea party supporters”, but as White men and women.