WINTER has arrived in Arkansas, but still it is warm enough to sit outside on the porch to eat. Our lunch is traditionally, deliciously southern: baked ham with mashed potatoes, collard greens, yams cooked with marshmallows, green bean casserole and pumpkin pie, all washed down with iced tea.

Beyond the chicken coop, stables and pasture that comprise this little ranch just outside the town of Heber Springs sits the dam opened by President John F Kennedy a month before his assassination. To the north and west are the stunning Ozark mountains and vast forests that cover much of northern Arkansas and play such a big role in the imagination of its inhabitants.

Look at the map of this area and in the names of the towns and counties you see evidence of the Scots immigrants and their descendants who became influential: McCrory, Crawford, McNab, Fordyce, McDougal.

I’ve accompanied my American-born partner home for a visit and four generations of his extended family have gathered for lunch. As we eat, conversation moves between family gossip, the animals on the ranch and the duck-hunting season, which is now under way.

In my experience Southern hospitality is indeed the warmest you will find just about anywhere, and everyone goes out of their way to ensure their Scottish visitor is having a good time. This area doesn’t get that many foreign tourists and they are interested to hear my thoughts on Arkansas, to compare life here with Scotland.

As I’ve come to expect from Arkansans, their chat is peppered with the sort of pithy, deadpan humour many Scots would recognise, and that doesn’t change when we eventually – inevitably – get round to the topic of President Donald Trump.

“Aren’t you proud to have a Scot in the White House?” asks Richie McLean with a cheeky grin, referring to Trump’s Stornoway-born mother. “I hear you guys love him over there.” There are hoots of laughter. The majority of the assembled company voted Trump, including the 58-year-old, who owns the ranch with his partner Marnie Lee.

No one here is the least bit surprised when I tell them most people in Scotland – and indeed beyond – think Donald Trump is mindbogglingly awful, his policies and rhetoric increasingly extreme and dangerous, his grip on reality waning, his popularity baffling. Some of them even nod along in agreement.

But still they voted for him. And one year on there appears to be few regrets among these folk, some of whom also voted for Arkansas native Bill Clinton, a Democrat, to be Governor – and President – in the 1990s.

“Imagine the US as a huge pile of horseshit with a giant tarpaulin covering it,” says McLean, who works as a contractor in the oil fields of North Dakota and also runs a successful duck-hunting business. “Bill Clinton had a peak underneath and walked by. [Barack] Obama just turned his nose up at it, and so did Hillary [Clinton]. But here’s the thing – Trump didn’t do that. He ripped the tarpaulin off and made people look at what was there. And it wasn’t pretty.

“Trump has made some bad decisions, he hasn’t done some of the things he said he was going to do. But he’s right on a lot of things – immigration, Government corruption – and that’s why people still support him.”

McLean's neighbour Grant Williams says he has little respect for Trump personally, but like many he wanted a change from the “Washington elite” and voted for him anyway.

“The Government never solves the issues that really matter to people,” explains the 55-year-old. “They just kick the can down the line. People voted for Trump because they didn’t think he could be any worse than the others. They knew Trump and Hillary were liars, but they were willing to take a chance on him.

“One difference with Trump is that at least he isn’t in anyone’s pocket. He has billions in the bank so he doesn’t need to make promises to big corporations. That really resonates with people. And a year on I don’t know anyone who wishes they had voted for Hillary.”

When I ask about the scandals that have engulfed Trump’s presidency, the accusations of Russian collusion, the racist and misogynistic tweets and proclamations, the inconsistencies and contradictions in policy, there is agreement around the table that the President “says some really stupid things”. But there is also a strong feeling that “liberals” and the media are playing dirty to get rid of him. Indeed, it is striking that no one I talk to wants their real name to be used in this article.

“The media is totally against Trump,” explains Williams. “They won’t give him credit for anything, even the fact that the stock market has risen significantly since he became President. But all the bad stuff is falling on deaf ears – the way people consume news has changed. I don’t even bother watching the evening news for the first 20 minutes these days because it will all be anti-Trump propaganda.”

This appears to be backed up by the figures. Trump got 60.6 per cent of the vote in Arkansas at the 2016 election and the latest research suggest he is still extremely popular here. A state-wide poll carried out by researchers at the University of Arkansas last month gave Trump an approval rating of 42 per cent – the highest for any President in the last 12 years. And his influence can already be felt in the run up to this year’s mid-term elections, where self-confessed “female Donald Trump” Jan Morgan, who opposes tighter gun legislation and gained local fame for barring Muslims from her garage (and throwing out a Hindu father and son), will run in this state.

Those who follow US politics closely have heard much talk of disenfranchisement over the last few years, of white working class voters feeling left behind, of an increasingly bitter culture war being fought between northern and southern states, liberal and conservative, black and white, rich and poor, town and country. But it’s perhaps not until you visit the South that you start to understand the complex reasons why such divisions have come to be manifested in support for populist right-wing figures like Trump and Morgan.

Arkansas, a state of 2.9 million people, sits at or near the bottom of just about every deprivation list you can think of, be it health, education, employment, earnings or infrastructure; they have a running joke here that at least they’re not from neighbouring Mississippi, which is even worse off. Arkansas voted Democrat in the 23 Presidential elections up to 1964, then flitted between the two main parties for 30 years. Following 9/11, however, it turned red and the margin of victory for Republicans has increased in each of the last four elections.

McLean's father Nathan, 84, lives in Pine Bluff, a town of 45,000 around an hour’s drive from Heber Springs. In the 19th century it was the biggest cotton producer in the state, based on the fact it had the biggest slave population. Later it supported a thriving paper manufacture industry.

Over the last 30 years, however, things changed for the worse in this formerly prosperous town, which is 75 per cent African American. The economic downturn that followed Hurricane Katrina in 2005 hit hard, then came the double blow of the banking crisis in 2007; it is now one of the 10 most impoverished places in the US according to Forbes Magazine, and saw 18 murders in 2012.

Arkansas is the third most heavily armed state in the US, with the average household possessing six guns; almost everyone at lunch today owns rifles and/or handguns.

“Pine Bluff used to be a place you could be proud of,” McLean Snr tells me sadly in his mellifluous southern drawl as he sits in a rocking chair on the porch. “People used to have jobs and hope. Now I wouldn’t walk the streets alone. It’s not the America I grew up in – it’s a different country and I don’t like it one bit.”

Healthcare is a crippling expense for just about everyone round the table, with monthly insurance premiums averaging around $700 each. Lee, who is in her early 60s and has ongoing health problems, pays $850 a month for medications alone. Radio advertisements for health insurers talk of “helping you buy the care you can afford”, while a billboard just out of town offers: “Amputation? Get a second opinion with us!”

When I explain how the NHS works, the fact that high quality healthcare is free to all at the point of delivery, there is genuine disbelief. Everyone here has heard of the NHS but they assume it is third-rate and used only by the poorest. There is real cynicism here about Government involvement in healthcare but also anger and despair at the US system as it stands.

There is surprise, too, when I mention Scots get free university tuition, nursery education and personal care for the elderly. There are alarmingly few public services in Arkansas, with even bin and recycling uplifts having to be paid for privately.

My Arkansan hosts, on hearing about Scotland’s public services, assume we must pay much higher taxes than they do. We do some comparative calculations and it turns out they pay only slightly less income tax than Scots, and when you take health insurance into consideration, it seems they pay a considerably higher proportion of their income for far fewer services.

Housing is relatively cheap in this part of the US, and fuel is less than half the cost of the UK. The roads are pretty good, too. But I can understand why people here might feel hard done by and attracted to Trump’s promises of tax cuts. Listening to the experiences of middle-class Arkansans I feel grateful for the social contract that still exists in Scotland.

“Between state and federal taxes and healthcare, I forfeit about 75 per cent of my income,” McLean says. “And what do I get for that? Diddly-squat. People in the US have become enslaved to this corrupt system – if you don’t pay, they shut you down. Meanwhile the politicians, lawyers, judges are crooks.”

According to Lee, Arkansans are used to being the butt of the nation’s jokes, having their strong southern accents mocked, being condescended to by wealthier, better-educated Californians and east coasters. She says many people have deep-seated confidence issues.

The health administrator, who works in Pine Bluff, went to college at 18 to study medicine but wasn’t able to finish her degree due to family commitments. She worked and saved hard, made sacrifices and sent her two sons, now aged 40 and 38, to private school, where they were encouraged to study hard, pass exams and tone down their accents. One is an artist, the other a writer, and neither now live in Arkansas.

But although she empathises with the disenfranchisement of so many people in her community, Lee cannot understand why they think Donald Trump has the answers.

“There’s a lot of generational, systematic poverty here and you really see that in places like Pine Bluff,” she explains. “It’s heartbreaking because unemployment, addiction, lack of education and aspiration affects every aspect of people’s lives, starting with their health. People need to help themselves, but they just can’t or won’t.

“The healthcare system is very unfair, but Trump is making things worse. I know lots of people who voted for him, but I can’t understand why they did. Trump hasn’t changed anything for the better, and people don’t blame him like they blamed Obama.”

And she’s not the only one who doesn’t think much of Trump in these parts. Earlier that day we had visited my partner’s grandmother, Cora Jones, a lifelong Democrat and the only one in her neighbourhood to put a Clinton placard on her lawn.

The 87-year-old, who grew up on a farm in northern Arkansas without electricity, said she had always liked the former First Lady – “a very smart girl” - whose career she has followed since the Clintons lived in Little Rock, the state capital.

Most of her neighbours displayed Trump campaign material, Jones told us, though she received an anonymous note through the door saying she wasn’t alone in supporting Clinton. As for her thoughts on the first year the Trump presidency, she is emphatic.

“He’s the worst President in my lifetime, and I remember Nixon,” she says. “Make America great again? I didn’t know this country wasn’t great.

“We are all Americans; Republicans and Democrats need to work together in Congress to solve this country’s problems. But it’s not going to happen under Trump and that truly vexes me. Some people didn't vote for Hillary because they didn't want a woman to be president and that makes me very sad.”

Back at the ranch the sun is setting, the chickens have roosted and it’s getting too chilly to be outside. We go inside and try to make sense of the situation America finds itself in.

What will happen, I ask, if and when Trump doesn’t deliver for all those folks here in Arkansas, in neighbouring states like Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas and Oklahoma, who already feel let down by politicians and the so-called liberal elite?

Williams expects to be let down. “All politicians are crooks and liars,” he smiles ruefully. “And Trump is no different. I guess we’ll just move on to the next one.”

McLean, however, believes a different, more violent reaction is likely.

“Lots of people have been hoarding guns and ammunition,” he says. “Now more than ever. Many of my buddies have machine guns and ammunition. Sooner or later it’s going to come to the crunch and there is going to be a war in the United States – the people against the Government. And, let me tell you, the Government is not going to win.

“They won’t be able to stop the American people when they revolt. I don’t know when it’s going to happen, but I believe it will. The people are tired, and they’re getting ready.”

The words of the great American Civil War historian Shelby Foote echo through my mind as McLean speaks. “Any understanding of this nation has to be based on an understanding of the Civil War. It was the crossroads of our being, and it was a hell of a crossroads.”

It feels like the US is at a crossroads once again.