Across the world right now, charismatic leaders are defying expectations and polarizing fragile democracies. Claiming to represent ‘The People’, populists harness fear, hate and lies to pursue their personal agendas, neatly packaged as contempt for ‘The Elites’. Of course, it is ‘The People’, often poor, less educated and fed up with a system that concentrates power in the hands of a few, who end up bearing the brunt of their actions. What is so baffling, is how the people who are most in need of government support, end up turning to far-right groups who seek deregulation and minimal government intervention. How let down must people feel before they decide to elect a multi-billionaire reality TV star? Why would a multicultural, modern economy such as Britain, want to close its doors to the world's largest trading block?
Progressive liberals in the cities hold their heads in their hands as the unthinkable happens and society collapses around them, unable and perhaps unwilling to empathize with the not-so-silent majority. So disengaged are the opposite political camps these days, that in 2010, in a pair of surveys asking Americans whether they would be “upset” if their child married someone from another party, 40% expressed dismay. Contrast this to a similar survey undertook in 1960, where the result was only 5%, and questions soon arise.
In her new book, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, the renowned sociologist, and academic, Arlie Russell Hochschild, attempts to see, and more importantly, feel life from the viewpoint of the American right. As professor emerita of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, she is continually immersed in the liberal lifestyle. To get the full picture, she travels to the Dixie state of Louisiana to soak up the culture and interview members of the Tea Party, a grassroots, conservative movement that promotes Judeo-Christian values and low taxation by reduced government spending. Over a total of 5 years, she accumulates 4,690 pages of transcripts based on interviews with 40 active Tea Party members and 20 more non-members who broaden her perspective.
In part 1 of her book, Hochschild tries to come to terms with why the Red States, with their high poverty rates, poor education and, most alarmingly, shorter life expectancy, “the gap in life expectancy between Louisiana (75.7) and Connecticut (80.8) is the same as that between the United States and Nicaragua.”, are so averse to federal aid. She refers to this as “The Great Paradox”. Indeed, it seems bizarre and contradictory that many Tea Party members, being small business owners themselves, get behind politicians who seek to push policies that would allow conglomerates to devour their own.
In his piece for the New York Times, Who Turned My Blue State Red?, Alec MacGillis argues that disadvantaged citizens of Red States who use democrat-style “safety-net programs” like Medicaid, don’t turn up to vote, but those who are of a slightly higher class, typically seeking lower taxes, do. It's an interesting perspective, but as Hochschild outlines in her book “This “two notches up” thesis gives us part of the answer, but not most. “. Thomas Frank's theory is also brought into question, he suggests that the rich dupe gullible conservatives by targeting their social issues, serving them as a kind of side dish to the main economic policies they truly want to pursue, for example, Frank writes “Vote to stop abortion: receive a rollback in capital gains taxes. . . .”. Hochschild argues that this is too simple an idea, backed up by likes of people like Mike Schaff, a tea party member she met with in Louisiana, a well-educated man who “consulted a number of news sources” and didn’t feel like he was being "duped".
In her research for the book, Hochschild reads over many an academics’ answers to the Great Paradox, but finds they all lack in one thing, “a full understanding of emotion in politics.”. Through her interviews and encounters with citizens of the deep south, one can safely assume that these are people who feel left behind by Washington, tired of being told how they are supposed to feel by liberals a thousand miles away, whether it is around Gay Marriage, or the suffering felt by a Syrian refugee. When you are consistently being labeled by the establishment as trailer trash and a redneck, it becomes easy to see how Donald Trump, with his anti-government rhetoric and bluster, can be so appealing.
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