What changes should the Rust Belt have made that would have prevented the gutting of their communities when financiers and board rooms decided to ship their livelihoods to third world countries?

There isn’t a “progress” switch to turn on. The current state of the Rust Belt isn’t because they are full of knuckle dragging idiots inferior to the coasts. It’s because they were dealt the economic equivalent of a traumatic brain injury, and have spent decades trying to recover. Meanwhile, the areas of the country that inflicted this injury on them are now trying to convince everyone that it was their own fault.

I’m as disgusted by Trump as anyone, and would never vote for him. But I am from the Rust Belt and absolutely sympathize with the anger that would make someone want to burn the system down.

Half my family is from the south and I lived in Ohio for years. They could have stopped giving tithes to churches on every corner and giving away their land and resources at pennies to massive corporations that have no allegiance and invested in education and social programs for the long term instead or in addition. The Rust Belt and the South were WEALTHY economies don't ever forget it. You can see the remnants of that wealth in the slave quarters adjacent to every house in certain neighborhoods, the massive plantations, the rusting industrial areas. They HAD money to invest in the past for securing a better future.