Astronomy and Politics Through the Lens of Epistemology
How do We Know What We Know?
What is Our Method of Evaluating Truth?

I live in Tucson Arizona and decided to attend a Trump rally not because of who he is or the offensive things he says, but because of what he does, including the policies he enacts and supports.  The rally was hastily announced on a Friday and took place on the following Monday.

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A friend of mine and I arrived at the closest parking lot still available even though the distance to travel was roughly 1-2 miles from the event.  That was a long line 2-5 people wide and moving in 2 directions.  That was because many people took the Shuttle which dropped them off all the way to the airport parking lot.  These people had to walk all the way back to the end of the line we had begun at.  Needless to say there were thousands of people in direct and obvious contradiction to press reports of just a few hundred people.

I am 73 and my friend had a walker with a fold down seat which I did not have.  So I would walk way ahead, find a rock or steps to sit on and wait for my friend to go by, get ahead of me and repeat the cycle since I have trouble standing for long periods.

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The point here is that I had an unusual opportunity to study the faces of many in the group.  Yes, it was obvious that there were many blacks and likely Hispanics there.  Granted it is often impossible to identify Hispanics or Mexican people much of the time.  On the other hand, many of these people did have obvious Hispanic features which makes them cherished people of God in my mind.  I was greatly encouraged by my developing observations and was really excited and thankful about them being there with every face that past by.

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The reason for my encouragement was that the media propagates the notion that Hispanics are a locked in Democratic voting block.  Despite this, I knew from growing up in Florida that many Cubans were very conservative politically.  The Cubans I knew were very conscious of the Freedom that they had lost in Cuba and therefore conservative here in the U.S.  Yet even I was brainwashed by the media that Hispanics west of Florida were in the Democratic political pocket.  Now many might think these observations of mine were just because of the very high Hispanic population here in Tucson.  That is undoubtedly true, but they were all there to support Trump regardless!

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Then, as I was waiting for my friend while sitting on a rock, one of them came over to me taking many pictures with his phone.  “I ask him if this wasn’t a wonderful sight with so many Hispanic attending”?  He looked back at the line before us and the up to the crowd ahead of us and said in response.  “I remember the days of Ronald Reagan and even he had no mass following like this!  This is truly a social phenomenon of historic proportions!”  Three cheers for Hispanic people!

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One thing that was equally obvious from the response of the crowd to Trump is that these voters would crawl on their hands and knees on broken glass to vote for this presidential candidate.

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More importantly, I called an old friend who was a pro-life attorney submitting many briefs to the Supreme Court.  He and I spent many years evening dinners talking about constitutional law.  I called him in northern Illinois afterward.  He had attended the Trump rally recently in Janesville, Wisconsin.  The devotion of very energized Trump voters there was equally striking.

Bill Anderson