By now, you might have heard: Virginia Heffernan, a Los Angeles Times opinion columnist, previously considered level-headed, wrote a column about Trump supporters who cleared snow from her driveway at her COVID getaway dacha, and how the routine act of country-people kindness left her utterly befuddled, grateful for their work yet unable to accept it because of ‘who they are.’
Struggling for comparisons, she compared them to Nazis, to Hezb’allah, to French collaborators, to Louis Farrakhan, unable to recognize that the kind deed had absolutely no conditions. Unlike those creatures, the country neighbors never asked about her politics, and now that they must know, given the stir the column caused, probably still don’t care. They just helped her, because that’s what neighbors do. And to Heffernan, it was all so utterly foreign.
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”This is also kind of weird. Back in the city, people don’t sweep other people’s walkways for nothing,” she wrote, unable to fathom the ordinary country kindnesses, neighbor looking after neighbor in extreme weather, which had been going on.
And having lived in the South Bronx, I’ve got news for Virginia: Yes, people in the city do sweep each others’ driveways and expect nothing in return. You have to be poor and Puerto Rican or Dominican or Nigerian or Guyanese immigrants, though, to understand that one. The whole concept of neighbor helping neighbor, is what’s called ‘community.’ It doesn’t really happen among the elites, because gobs of money is their substitute.
Byron York’s tweet sequence was when I first saw it, the whole thing is worth a look:
Dilemma for writer Virginia Heffernan. When it snows at her ‘pandemic getaway,’ helpful neighbors plow her driveway unbidden. Do a ‘great job.’ What a nice thing! They don’t do this in the city! Only problem: Neighbors support Trump. 1/10 https://t.co/cwwBY3oK1Q
— Byron York (@ByronYork) February 7, 2021
The disgusting part is when Heffernan tries to reconcile her desire to show gratitude with her hatred for Trump and his voters. Instead of saying ‘thank you,’ like normal people do, she’d instead preach to them her political views and offer them atonement if they convert to them, something she’s sure they’d appreciate.
