Marble Falls       There’s trouble in MAGA land.  The White House must know this, even if Trump is oblivious.  On a Sunday, along with my son, we immersed ourselves in the heart of Trump and MAGA land in the Arkansas Ozarks.  I’m not saying that the whole northwestern corner of Arkansas is scarlet red.  There are pockets, like Fayetteville.  There are people who claim that the Bentonville corridor dominated by Walmart, Tyson, and big trucking companies have brought others into the mix which make a difference, and they are right, but only as far as it goes.

Take Springdale for example, a medium-sized community between Fayetteville and Bentonville.  The city is as close as one can come to being a Tyson company town.  The company’s world headquarters is on Tyson Road, not far away from a sparkling multi-building, the Don Tyson Research Center.  Along this solidly middle and upper middle class set of neighborhoods farther along Tyson Road you get to the Tyson Sports Complex, a public amenity where construction was ongoing.  In a period of more relaxed immigration, Hispanics, Marshall Islanders, and others populated the chicken and beef plants for Tyson.  I can even remember in my time living in Arkansas when Archie Schaeffer, former Governor and Senator Dale Bumpers’ nephew, was working for Tyson and was huge advocate of immigration reform to fill their labor force.

The result has meant the population of Springdale is now 42% Hispanic, though largely concentrated in one side of town, as these things go.  We went to a ballgame between the Northwest Arkansas Naturals, a farm team for the Kansas City Royals, and another AA team from Wichita Falls.  A third to more of both teams were also Hispanic.  One local public elementary school brought several classes to perform between the doubleheader.  Another large crew of 100 or more sang the national anthem before the game.  If there were five total Hispanics between these two large groups, I’m probably over counting.  Same for the crowd.  Earlier in the year, we had an organizer in Springdale.  She reported on the fear of deportation that seemed everywhere.  We could see the evidence in the stands and from these young public-school children.  Why take a chance?  Deportation has made this a different city.

We stopped for gas and sat a while along the King River at a country store, halfway between Springdale and Harrison.  Next to us was a table of regulars, most of whom were older.  Their conversation was spiked with complaints.  One couldn’t believe that the City of Springdale had not allowed someone to take paid sick leave to donate a kidney to another worker.  We had seen gas as low as $3.24 a gallon at a Walmart in Springdale, but these fellows had also seen gas at $3.99 which is $4 bucks a gallon, and, boy, did they not like it.  Of course, neither did we!  One was just back from a multiple heart bypass.  There was a lot of interest from them on how that procedure worked, but it was overshadowed by various of these guys guessing at how much it might have cost.  Similar to an episode of “The Pitt”, they were grousing about Medicaid and Medicare changes and hospitals that might offer them a “deal” for a procedure where they paid 60% and the hospital paid 40%, but there would never be a way that they could pay 60% of $100,000 or more for such an operation.  Several of them were veterans, but there was no rah-rah for the war in Iran.

This eavesdropping and windshield survey was hardly scientific, but there was no way not to think that the White House, president, and Republican Congress are not in deep trouble on immigration, the economy, and the war, when this is what people are doing and saying in the heart of Trump country.