Why the Anger?

Tea Party Patriot

For quite some time the Hermit Philosopher has been trying to wrap his mind (and his keyboard) around why the “American Right” is so angry. Why they feel like outsiders. Why, for example, a Congressman would tell people, “We have to take our country back from a government that has ignored our Constitution, dismissed our Conservative values, and spent our tax dollars like drunken sailors.”

Really? From the HP’s viewpoint, this is nonsense and political pandering. The country wasn’t taken away, it merely detoured through the Great Recession. But since then unemployment has fallen by half, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has doubled, and 11.3 million jobs were added to the economy. “Red America” should have been happy.

But Mr. Tea Party Patriot and his friends remained disgruntled. The HP wondered, what have they lost? What is it they “want back?” What are they so angry about?

Recent Book Has Some Answers

Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, provides some interesting answers to these questions. 

For a number of months, sociologist and author Arlie Hochschild traveled a stronghold of the conservative right—Louisiana bayou country—and interviewed dozens of people. She consistently found stories of lives ripped apart by loss of the American Dream, stagnant wages, and fear of cultural change. Contrary to the liberal idea that these folks have been duped into voting against their own best interests, she concludes that their views make sense in the context of their lives and their emotional—albeit not their economic—interests.

Having read Strangers on the heels of Deep South (see the post of April 30), the HP is finally beginning to understand that the resentments of "red" Americans flow from what Hochschild calls a “deep story,” one that goes beyond facts or rational judgment and supports the conservative world view.

Red America’s Deep Story

The deep story 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 and worked hard, and the line is barely moving.

Then: Look! There are people cutting in line ahead of you! Who are these interlopers? Some are black, others are women, immigrants, refugees. They get affirmative action, sympathy, welfare—benefits for the listless and idle. They are the “takers,” and the government wants you to feel sorry for them.

And who ran the government for eight years? The biracial son of a low-income single mother, and he’s cheering on the line cutters! In fact, he and his wife are line cutters too, you think. And while all of this is happening, the liberal, fake news media mock you as racist or homophobic or stupid. Everywhere you look, you feel betrayed. The American Dream is slipping farther and farther away.

A Uniting Force

When Hochschild described this story to the people she interviewed, they related strongly to it. “You’ve read my mind,” one said. “I live your analogy,” said another. And last November we learned that 63 million other people also resonate with the Deep Story.

To paraphrase Leonard Pitts, Jr. of the Washington Post, these are people who dislike foreigners, oppose same-sex marriage, and were offended that the White House was occupied by a black guy with a funny name. Rather than vote for a woman and continue to feel threatened by cultural change, they united behind “a lying, narcissistic, manifestly incompetent child man” (Pitts’ words) who hasn’t a clue about how government works. 

The HP doesn’t buy into the racial finger-pointing and class resentments that underlie the Deep Story for some folks. Rather, he thinks unchecked corporate power and technological transformation are largely to blame. (Consider Amazon versus the corner grocery, and solar power versus coal mining.) Nevertheless, it’s clear that demographic and cultural changes have taken from Mr. Tea Party Patriot and millions of others the status they once enjoyed and the dream they sought. 

The Great Paradox

But here is the Great Paradox of our age, as Hochschild sees it. The people she met have poor economic, educational and health indicators and are the ones among us who could benefit most from government programs in those arenas. But they abhor the very idea of government help and view as suspect almost everything the government does. “It has gone rogue, corrupt, malicious and ugly,” one Tea Partier complained. “It can’t help anybody.”

When confronted with facts, people living the paradox are not disabused of their biases. For example, contrary to some of the common beliefs Hochschild’s subjects held: 

   - Only 8% of the federal budget goes toward “welfare”; 

   - Most people on welfare have jobs ; 

   - Fertility rates of minorities and whites are virtually identical; 

   - Government employees are not overpaid—they get less than their private sector counterparts; and 

   - Unemployment and GDP numbers are usually better under Democratic Presidents

But despite cracks in its factual foundation, the Deep Story persists as a matter of the right’s perception. And, as we all know, perception is reality to most of us.

Blue America’s Deep Story

Hochschild posits that liberals have their own Deep Story. In it, they are standing around a large public square that contains theaters, libraries, museums, schools, and similar institutions available to everyone. They are proud of this cultural infrastructure because it’s all-inclusive. People who were once “outsiders” are freely welcome. This feels to them like the American values represented by the Statue of Liberty.

But then something alarming happens. Marauders invade the public square, recklessly dismantle it, and steal the bricks and concrete from the public buildings. Those who were so proud of what they had built watch in horror as the elites who dismantled it erect McMansions with the building materials they had just stolen, thus privatizing the public realm.

Hochschild sums up the moral of Blue America’s story by saying, “The right can’t understand the deep pride liberals take in their creatively designed, hard-won public sphere as a powerful integrative force in American life.” Then she adds that ironically, the right may have more in common with the left than they imagine, for “many on the left feel like strangers in their own land too.”

Not Red vs. Blue

We won’t see an end to this culture clash any time soon. In fact, it may get worse given the impulsive and divisive temperament of the current President. But ironically, the Tea Partiers and the liberals/progressives face some common challenges—extreme automation and global capitalism, for example—and both sides call for some “activist” responses by government.

Trying to “make America great again,” the Red side wants to circle the wagons around family and church and have government provide incentives to shore up traditional industries like auto manufacturing and coal mining. The Blue side calls for government help to restore our crumbling infrastructure, invest in schools, and support newer industries like autonomous cars and solar power.

Somewhere in this great land there must be a few unifying personalities who can find common ground and restore the American Dream for everyone. It’s not a binary, zero/sum, win/lose game. We’re all in this together. 

The Deepest Story should be neither red, nor blue; it should be purple.

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