Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America

by Kurt Andersen

I have a different way of dividing America that amounts to the same thing: Dollar General–Dollar Tree–Family Dollar America versus Starbucks–Target–Whole Foods America. All six of those chains started or exploded in the 1980s as we began making the political economy more unfair and unequal. In 2016 Trump won all 9 states where the density of dollar stores is highest, and 10 of the next 13 on the chart; Clinton won 15 of the 25 states that have the relatively fewest dollar stores. Of course most people in Dollar Store America responded to the candidate who sounded in 2016 like a Democrat of a very old-fashioned kind—rough, tough, promising to spend billions building new roads and bridges and never to cut and possibly to improve Medicare and Social Security, telling them that “big business and major donors are lining up behind the campaign of my opponent because they know she will keep our rigged system in place.”