August 5, 2019--Strangers In Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning On the American Right

This seems to be the week I am recommending summer books. Not the usual sort for the season which are traditionally page turners. It's August, it's hot, who needs more aggravation. Sorry, but this is my way of having fun. So indulge me just once more and I promise to stop.

If you have been following my blog you know that for more than three years I've been struggling to dispassionately understand the Trump phenomenon (it is that), particularly the people who have been his most fervent supporters. Even when doing so, especially when doing so appears not to be in their own best interest. 

The best roadmap to these paradoxes is Arlie Hochschild's brilliant Strangers In Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning On the American Right.

Here is an excerpt from the New York Times review--

Hochschild calls this the “Great Paradox”--opposition to federal help from people and places that need it--and sets off across Louisiana on an energetic, open-minded quest to understand it.

A distinguished Berkeley sociologist, Hochschild is a woman of the left, but her mission is empathy, not polemics. She takes seriously the Tea Partiers’ complaints that they have become the “strangers” of the title--triply marginalized by flat or falling wages, rapid demographic change, and liberal culture that mocks their faith and patriotism. Her affection for her characters is palpable.

But the resentments she finds are as toxic as the pollutants in the Louisiana marsh and metastasizing throughout politics. What unites her subjects is the powerful feeling that others are “cutting in line” and that the federal government is supporting people on the dole --“taking money from the workers and giving it to the idle.” Income is flowing up, but the anger points down.

The people who feel this are white. The usurpers they picture are blacks and immigrants. Hochschild takes care not to call anyone racist but concludes that “race is an essential part of this story.” 

When she asks a small-town mayor to describe his politics, his first two issues--or is it one in his mind?--are welfare and race: “I don’t like the government paying unwed mothers to have a lot of kids, and I don’t go for affirmative action.”

In welfare politics, this is déjà vu all over again. It’s been two decades since Bill Clinton signed a tough welfare law aimed in part to end the politics of blame. “Ending welfare as we know it” would recast the needy as workers, he said, and build support for a new safety net. The rolls of the main federal welfare program have fallen by 80 percent from their 1990s highs--in Louisiana, by 95 percent. But reverse class anger is more potent than ever.

Liberals have long wondered why working-class voters support policies that (the liberals think) hurt the working class. Why would victims of pollution side with the polluters?

Theories abound. Thomas Frank in What's the Matter With Kansas? accuses the G.O.P. of luring voters with social issues but delivering tax cuts for the rich. Others point to the political machines built by ultra-wealthy donors like Charles and David Koch. Still others emphasize the influence of conservative media like Fox News.

Hochschild sees these as partial explanations but wants a fuller understanding of “emotion in politics”--she wants to know how Tea Partiers feel, on the theory that the movement serves their “emotional self-interest” by providing “a giddy release” from years of frustration. . . .

Many Tea Party adherents warn that more regulation will cost them jobs. (A small-town mayor says the pungent chemical plant “smells like rice and gravy.”) But Hochschild detects other passions and assembles what she calls the “deep story”--a “feels as if” story, beyond facts or judgment, that presents her subjects’ worldview.

It goes like this:

“You are patiently standing in a long line” for something you call the American dream. You are white, Christian, of modest means, and getting along in years. You are male. There are people of color behind you, and “in principle you wish them well.” But you’ve waited long, worked hard, “and the line is barely moving.”

Then “Look! You see people cutting in line ahead of you!” Who are these interlopers? “Some are black,” others “immigrants, refugees.” They get affirmative action, sympathy and welfare--“checks for the listless and idle.” The government wants you to feel sorry for them.

And who runs the government? “The biracial son of a low-income single mother,” and he’s cheering on the line cutters. “The president and his wife are line cutters themselves.” The liberal media mocks you as racist or homophobic. Everywhere you look, “you feel betrayed.”

Hochschild runs the myth past her Tea Party friends.

“You’ve read my mind,” Lee Sherman said.

“I live your analogy,” Mike Schaff said.

Harold Areno’s niece agrees, and says she has seen people drive their children to Head Start in Lexuses. “If people refuse to work, we should let them starve,” she said.

Actually, anger this raw may depart from the 1990s, when welfare critics often framed their attacks as efforts to help the poor by fighting dependency. The resentments Hochschild presents are unadorned, and they have mutated into a broader suspicion of almost everything the federal government does. “The government has gone rogue, corrupt, malicious and ugly,” one Tea Partier complains. “It can’t help anybody.”

Did welfare really “end”? Conservatives say no. Cash aid plummeted, but food stamp usage soared to new highs and the Medicaid rolls expanded. There’s room for debate, but the grievances Hochschild presents feel immune to policy solutions. As long as larger forces are squeezing whites of modest means, it’s going to “feel as if” people are cutting in line. In Lexuses.

None of Hochschild’s characters appear to have been directly hurt by competition from people of color. Their economic problems lie elsewhere, she argues, in unchecked corporate power and technological transformation. Still there’s no denying that demographic and cultural change have robbed white men of the status they once enjoyed. Hochschild doesn’t buy the racial finger-pointing, but she can see their pain.

October 19, 2013--Ladies of Forest Trace: Immaculate Generation

Approaching 106, there are days when my mother has less vitality. At those times, our conversations are brief as she struggles to take in the oxygen she needs. We talk only about the weather in Florida and New York and what we plan to have for dinner. If she hears we are cooking and eating at home she is happy that we are taking care of ourselves and not "wasting money eating out."

So I was pleased to find her in good form the other day when I made my daily call.

One of the ladies of Forest Trace, she told me, was having trouble with her eyes. "Gussie, poor thing, not only has to walk with a walker but now when she goes down for dinner she can't see where she is going and bumps into everything."

"Maybe she needs an aide," I suggested, "Like yours who would help her find her way and do whatever else she needs help with."

"I tell her that, but she is very proud and doesn't want to admit she needs any help."

"I understand that."

"There's nothing to understand. She's a danger to herself not to mention people in worse shape who she keeps crashing into. If she was driving a car, God forbid, they'd take away her license."

"You're probably right."

"But that's not the worst of it."

"What is?"

"I told you about her condition."

"To tell you the truth I don't remember. There are so many conditions to keep track of."

"Immaculate Generation."

"Immaculate what?"

"Generation. Generation. That's what she has."

"You mean, Macular Degeneration. Her eye problem."

"Whatever."

"What about it? How far advanced is it?"

"Plenty advanced. That's why she's running people over."

"I suppose she's too old to do much about it."

"That to. But her doctor is terrible."

"In what way?"

"He doesn't have time for her."

"He won't make an appointment to see her?"

"Not that. He makes the appointment, but when she goes she's in and out in five minutes."

"If there isn't anything they can do--"

"Still is this a way to treat people who are going blind?"

"I suppose not. What would you have the doctor do."

"You know Gussie's not shy."

"That I know from direct experience," I chuckled, recalling having dinner with her a few times. She has opinions about everything--generally sound ones--and isn't reluctant to share them. At full volume. My mother says she talks so loud because she can't hear and refuses to get hearing aids.

"So she complained to the doctor, telling him he shouldn't be running his office like a factory. Though Gussie knows there is nothing to do for her condition, she wants to feel the doctor knows who she is and cares about her. That he has time to at least talk with her. After the life she lived, she should be entitled to that. A little talking to. A little being paid attention to."

"That is not unreasonable to expect."

"But her doctor tells her he has no choice."

"No choice?"

"That with Medicare cuts he can't afford to stay in practice if he spends more time with patients. 'I couldn't pay my rent or my office staff,' Gussie quotes him, 'if I practiced the way I want. The way I used to.'"

"I've heard that from others," I said. "From doctor friends who are frustrated with the state of health care these days."

"Do you think Obamacares will make things any better?"

"I'm not sure it will for Gussie, but for millions of others, absolutely."

"They're making such a big deal on TV about the computer."

"You mean the Obamacare website?"

"I think so, though I don't know from computer webs."

"No need to worry about that."

"It's the least of my worries. I have plenty of other things to worry about. About why I take so many naps, why I--"

"I take naps too," I cut in before she went down her whole list. "It is not unusual for older people to take naps. And you are nearly 106."

"I never took a nap until I turned 100. I'm wasting my time sleeping the day away. You know what your father used to say about sleeping?"

"Yes, 'There's plenty of time to sleep when you're . . ." I couldn't utter the word to my ancient mother.

"Dead. Dead is what he said. I know what that is. You don't need to sugar coat me. I want to live. I'm fine. But I'm ready for whatever awaits me. That too."

"Anything else about Obamacare?" I was looking to change the subject, "By the way, I love that you call it Obamacares.

"Because he does. Care. And it will turn out to be wonderful. The same kind of people said the same kind of things about Medicare when that came out. How it wouldn't work. How doctors wouldn't take Medicare patients. How people would not be able to keep their doctors. How we wouldn't be able to afford it."

"True. Though I do worry about the cost going forward."

"There's plenty of money for other things like bombs so we shouldn't be so worried."

"Also true," I said.

"But now, ask anyone here what they think about Medicare and they will tell you, 'Don't touch my Medicare.' Even people from that Tea Party who want to get rid of the government. I tell them, 'What do you think the Medicare you love so much is? I'll tell you what--a government program. Socialized medicine.' That one they like. Food stamps, no. Welfare, no. But Medicare because it's for them, and they think it's free, they don't want you to touch."

"I hear the same thing. Don't expect people to be consistent when it comes to their self interest."

"They have what they want and now they want to deny the same thing to others. Like Obamacares."

"I agree with that. Among other things their attacking it feels so selfish."

I could hear her breathing becoming labored. "But you'll see--I won't be here to see it but please God you will be--two years from now everybody will be happy. All of this will be forgotten. Millions more will be healthier. Especially children. And like with Medicare no one will want to change anything. Including the Tea Party. If they are still around. Which I doubt. I see the beginning of the end for them. Which is another good thing."

"Don't overtax yourself," I said, concerned about her breathing.

"I'm not like this every day any more so when I am I want to get things off my mind."

"I'm for that. But I don't want you to overdo it."

"Poor Gussie," she said and hung up.