Living in the land where President Trump is supported

The day after the election, the flags came up and cheering started.

It was weird that you could almost see it in the way people were carrying themselves and just in their overall attitudes toward life.

We started to write articles on what the outlook for coal and oil and gas was.

The newspaper seemed busier than we had been even before the election. That break we were hoping for didn't happen until after the Christmas. Things seemed to finally slow down for us in January. Now they've picked back up.

It wasn't so much that Trump was for coal, which he hasn't really mentioned a lot about until the days leading to his inauguration and the steps he took quickly thereafter, but it was more so that he wasn't out to limit production of fuels like the stances that the Democrats usually take.

Now, I'm going to be honest here.

Sometimes I cannot see it. Why does everyone up here support him so much?

But I do now understand what it is like to have someone be coming after your job. And it doesn't exactly feel great. In fact, it's nothing less than terrifying.

I sit in meetings where county, city and town leaders praise Trump and offer words of hope now that Obama is gone and restrictions on coal have been lifted.

That's quite possibly the hardest part of my job: not reacting when I hear these praises of a man who I cannot stand.

But because I write for a community newspaper, our articles reflect just that: the community.

I never thought I would be using the words "Trump" and "Hope" in the same sentence, but it wasn't long after the election that those words came up.

The weeks that followed where packed with protests across the nation.

Not here.

We were definitely less busy than papers in a lot of places. There were no protests like the ones New York and Los Angeles and even Fort Collins were seeing. There was some coverage of the Women's March nation wide protests and one was taking place in Cheyenne and, I believe, another one in Cody, but they were small.

The political atmosphere in Wyoming was quite unlike the constant road that has, and still is ripping through the nation.

People were pretty happy that things had gone the way they did. This is just how it is on coal country.

Let's just say, I've learned how to keep my mouth shut on my own opinions and just let those I am interviewing talk. It has opened up a new realm for me, though.

It's one of understanding.

Some up here didn't vote for him because they loved him and what he wanted to do. They just viewed him as a less crappy alternative to Hillary Clinton. At least he wasn't out to get the jobs that create the economy in northeastern Wyoming. The economy had truly struggled up here once all the regulations of the Obama Administration too affect.

It made me realize why we can be so disconnected with one another as citizens of one country.

The economy of one place is always struggling while the one of another succeeds. Now it's the coal heavy places that are celebrating.

The rest of us can point to scientific data as much as we want, but when hundreds of coal miners lost their $85,000 annual incomes, that created a great distaste for Democrats. And when it comes to having to put food on the table, you're going to vote for whoever is personally going to be the best for your livelihood.

Shortly after the election, I remember seeing a sticker in the window of a truck that was in front of me. That sticker read "proud to be a deplorable." And at that point, I definitely knew what land I was in. It was the one of Trump supporters, but most importantly, a land of Hilary haters.

People still wonder "how could it have happened? What is going on."

Sometimes too much change can be too hard. A coal miner in Wyoming is not going to be able to find a job that pays the same in a town like Gillette or Wright. It's simply not going to happen.

Democrats had distanced themselves from the working class, and a lot of the workers lost faith.

Trump won Wyoming with 84 percent of the votes. Now, granted that Wyoming's seven electoral college votes are rather insignificant, it's seven more than Clinton had.

Only about 2,000 Clinton votes came out of Campbell County, if that gives you any idea.

Talk of a rigged election doesn't exist here. Talk of Trump for eight years does.

We'll see what the future holds, but Campbell County sees a bright one in Trump and that's quite different from how a lot of the country feels right now.