I understand the appeal of populism; I am experiencing the pain and loss, the desperation and fear that accompany late-middle-age unemployment.

I walk down the deserted Main Streets of dying towns in Washington, Somerset, Waldo and Aroostook counties, drive past the empty mills and factories in Waterville, Dexter, Pittsfield, Millinocket and Bucksport. This is rural America, where schools are closing from lack of students, deaths outnumber births, where the Great Disappointment drives many to seek escape in narcotic oblivion.

We who live here are the remainders, the reminders of better times, the redundant workers. We have arthritic hands, ruptured discs, hearing loss, high blood pressure and carpal tunnel from years of working in buildings now occupied by industrious spiders. Our lives, once filled with dreams of a comfortable retirement, are defined by loss.

We went to work at all hours, in all weather, with aching feet and tired eyes. We paid our bills, went to town meetings, bought 50/50 tickets and Girl Scout cookies and helped our neighbors.

Wall Street and Washington sold us down the river; we cannot even call ourselves the working class – there is precious little work left for us, aside from selling low-quality goods with foreign labels to others in the same boat.

The post-Recession world is the Great Disappointment of our generation, the worst of times that history proves drive resentment, fear, and mistrust of those we suspect have had a hand in our fall from most modest prosperity to dire straits.

Bernie Sanders understands my world. Donald Trump has promised that he is our salvation. America is not divided down the center of right-left politics; the important divide is economic, and the people on the bottom have spoken.

When you understand this, you understand what happened at the ballot box Nov. 8, 2016.

Donna Twombly

Eagle Lake

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