I mention this because I am also reading Arlie Russell Hochschild's book, Strangers in their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right. I downloaded it because she seemed to offer a slightly different take on the question that has plagued me for some time, what she calls the "great paradox," how so many on the right can be persuaded to vote for a conservative party that does so little to represent their actual interests. One can illustrate the great paradox from just about any issue perspective, and the economic arguments are always compelling. As she writes, "many tea party advocates work in or run small businesses. Yet the politicians they support back laws that consolidate the monopoly power of the very largest companies that are poised to swallow up smaller ones." As, indeed, they have. Almost everyone recognizes that the advent of Walmart in Mountain Home brought in its wake the decimation of the "main street," which is, for the most part, a shabby partial ghost town. Almost everyone claims to despise Walmart, but we all shop there because, really, we now have no other choices. As another example, she writes "in 2008, reckless and woefully under regulated Wall Street investors led many to lose savings, homes, jobs, and hope" here in Mountain Home and elsewhere, but yet "under the banner of a 'free market,' many within the growing small town right defend Wall Street against government 'over-regulation.'" The list can go on indefinitely, but the capper, perhaps, is this: "virtually every Tea Party advocate I interviewed for this book," she writes, "has personally benefited from a major government service or has close family who have," and yet they support the party that would curtail, privatize, or abolish such services. I have pointed to this piece of the paradox, and while some are embarrassed by their "need" for the service, and respond with a shoulder shrug of resignation, "what can you do?" At least one person has said to me, "why not get in line with the niggers?"
Our friends, who will be away for the opening game at Wrigley Field, even offered their house keys to me so I could come over and watch the games while they were away. They are not mean spirited, or ungenerous people, and fed with a steady diet of Fox News, their appreciation of the issues behind the presidential election simply reflects an unreflective acceptance of a Fox News conservatism, without nuance and without sophistication, but not without "depth." It's the depth that Hochschild is trying to get at. Let me give another anecdotal, personalized example. Under the Affordable Care Act, our out-of-pocket health insurance premiums doubled from about $250 to just under $500. I would be the first to say that the law is deeply flawed. Who to blame? My impulse is to simply follow the money and ask "who benefits when a particular insurance company can simply drop one policy package and offer up another 'similar' package with a higher deductible and twice the cost?" The answer seems to be fairly obvious, the insurance companies, and I want to assign "blame" on the corporate structures that offer increasing inadequate health coverage solely in order to make money (not, as their advertising would have it, that make sufficient money solely in order to cover fully a smiling America's health needs). My anger, and I AM angry, is directed at the insurance provider. Our friend's impulse is to blame the government, in particular the suspect motives of one President Obama. I mention this for a couple of reasons. In commiserating with my wife on the increase, he took the standard Fox line, but then one such insurance provider ran an ad during the Series promoting their sunny and smiling altruistic concern for the health of America. Our friend mentioned that the particular insurance provider had dropped a family member's coverage right after they became significantly ill. Under the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, it would be illegal to drop the coverage. It was clear that the law, had it been in effect at the time, would have helped his family member, but when I mentioned this, it was clear he had no idea the law prevented insurance companies from behaving so rapaciously and I doubt that it impacted at all his support for the party that consistently and loudly calls for a repeal of Obamacare, to include the provisions that prevent the corporate providers from "dropping" unprofitable subscribers.
So it goes, without nuance or sophistication, but not without "depth." Our friends would oppose Clinton's position on abortion along with her position of "gay marriage" for religious and moral reasons, and they are suspicious of any curtailment of gun rights citing a slippery slope of "first assault rifles, then my handguns, then my hunting weapons." On the former, even if Clinton's proposals were enacted, I doubt that they'd even notice. in their day-to-day life. Few in their circle would get an abortion, and most of the gays would have long since moved as far as possible outside their circle. On the latter, they do have something of a point, but the only thing that would "really" put all gun ownership on the slippery slope would be a constitutional amendment, and the likelihood of that is virtually nil. Although I have no love of handguns, even I would protest extending outright bans to those weapons used for hunting. (As an aside, a favorite argument is to point to Chicago's strict gun laws, but high murder rates, without considering that guns might be easily "imported" into an illegal market at high profits from places like, well, Idaho with virtually nonexistent gun laws, all of which points to the insufficiency of local controls and the need for board-based federal laws.) Those issues, however, are what I've called "bread and circus" issues. They distract from the core economic issues, and there, without any real exception, Clinton's positions would benefit them and people like them. Rationally, they would vote for a democrat, while opposing specific positions on the "bread and circus" issues -- its not inconceivable that a core democrat could support "gun rights" -- but they still provide full on support of a conservatism that is playing economic havoc with their way of life.
Hochschild's explanation "deep" explanation goes something like this: imagine a line of people, mostly male, mostly white, mostly middle-aged, mostly under-educated, mostly protestant, but with a few catholics. It's a very long line, and it leads up the slope of a fairly steep hill. On the other side of the hill, just out of sight, is the "American Dream," the promise of prosperity. As Hochschild describes it, people have been waiting in line for quite some time. It had been moving in the past, but recently it seems to have just stopped. Like a traffic jam, they can't really see the reasons why it has stopped, and so there is a lot of discussion and speculation, and even a few "official pronouncements" from the big wigs who seem to be in charge of things, but one thing is clear, they've been waiting a long time and the line has barely budged. In the meantime, there are people who are coming out of nowhere to take cuts in the line, and that wouldn't be so bad, except the line isn't moving and all those people taking cuts are pushing those who have been waiting further and further back. They weren't in line for the American Dream in the past, and even if they were, they should fall in line back there, at the beginning of the que, and wait their turn. Instead, they're taking cuts. First, there were the "blacks," then women began taking cuts, and now various new immigrants and refugees seem to be pushing their way into line ahead of those who have been waiting patiently for quite some time now. What's worse, the cuts seem to be "sanctioned" by the big wigs. It used to be the "officials" looked a lot like those waiting in line -- male, white, middle-aged, and protestant -- and so there was some assurance that they could keep things orderly and "in line." Recently, however, the biggest of the big wigs is black, and with a middle name like Hussain maybe not even christian, and he seems to be more "sympathetic" to those cutting in line than the people who have been waiting patiently for how long? And now a woman, a friend of the biggest of the big wigs, wants to "take over?" Things clearly will go from bad to worse.
As a parable, I think, this works fairly well to explain the emotional resonance that conservatism has with those who make up the "base" of conservative politics. To put the parable into policy terms, the line isn't moving for a variety of reasons. At one level of abstraction, the economic forces that have stopped the line are, among other things, the global "free-market" in "cheap" labor, improvements across a broad spectrum of technologies that decrease the need for semi-skilled and un-skilled labor, and a good deal of the need for semi-skilled and unskilled labor that remains is within a sector of the economy -- the so-called service sector -- that had been previously allotted to women and, as a consequence, under-valued and under-paid. To extend the parable, if one has been waiting in line to get through gate 1A of the American Dream, just out of sight over the hill, that particular gate is closed and has been for some time. If it opens, it opens briefly, seasonally, intermittently. People have tried to tell them that they're waiting in the wrong line, that it will never start moving again, at least not the way it did in the past, and it really doesn't matter a damn who cuts into a line that isn't moving. Gate 2T of the American Dream is open, but it no longer values being white and male and christian, all of which it considers more or less irrelevant, nor does it value the "life-experience" that comes with middle age. It values the "cutting edge" of youth, and "creativity," but even more, it values specific technical skills that can only come through "education," though not necessarily the more traditional sorts of education, and especially not traditional public education. One can get in line, but one will be quickly turned away at the gate without the right tickets, which are available, even readily available, but most people waiting in line 1D either have no idea how to get one, or the wherewithal to get one, or the native ability to get one, and so they continue standing in line 1D hoping for the best, with a growing resentment for the blacks, the women, the immigrants who are cutting in line and apparently pushing them further back.
To unpack the parable a bit more, it suggests a couple of things. First, that the differences are principally economic and class based. In my extension of the parable, there are two clear (and perhaps three) classes -- those waiting in line 1D and those waiting in line 2T. We can invent various names for the classes. In past posts, I have called those waiting in line 1A the disposables, those in 2B the technocrats. The third class might be called the big wigs, the "monied elites," a more traditional Marxian class. It is comprised of those who manage the gates. The value differences between the classes are irreconcilable. Here again, to give just one example -- "work." The disposables tend to value "hard" work and honor those who work "hard." There is a biblical base for this in the Eden parable, which runs through much American thinking, to include the American Dream. To wit, Adam and Eve were in paradise, but disobeyed God. As a consequence they were banished from paradise with the injunction found in Genesis 3:19 -- that is, "by the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return." If one endures God's punishment, works "hard" and maintains one's faith, one will be rewarded, if not by a return to paradise on Earth, then the next best thing, the prosperity promised by the American Dream. Ostensibly, one moves up in line and enters the pearly gate of prosperity through this "hard work," and those who "cut" in line are worthy of resentment, in part because they have breaking God's injunction to work hard and cheating those who do. The technocrats, on the other hand, tend to value "smart" work and honor those who work "smart." Insofar as one is "working smart" when one avoids "working hard" altogether, whether by the direct employment of technology or by the deployment of a finance scheme, there is at worst a sort of arrogant dismissal, at best a sort of paternal noblesse oblige implicit to a value scheme that "looks down on" the poor clods who honor themselves with hard work and must work "harder and harder" for ever diminishing returns.
The conservative party, it seems, is comprised mostly of those waiting in line 1D, the hard working disposables, the progressive party most of those waiting in line 2T, the smart working technocrats. This division has been elaborated by Thomas Frank in his book Listen Liberal, and I won't replicate the whole of his argument here, only suggest that he did not fully appreciate how increasingly "disposable" the disposables have become. Many of their jobs -- the venues where they could "work hard," provide for their families, and bring "honor" to themselves in doing so -- have been outsourced to cheaper labor elsewhere. The "outsourcing" has been facilitated by a number of factors, in small part by the trade agreements that have come into question during the recent election cycle, in larger part by the technical and financial innovations of those "working smart." Although one might nurse a fantasy (or demagogically exploit a fantasy) once the need for a particular type of labor has been "disposed," there really is no "bringing it back," unless one takes the position of the Amish, saying "here we draw the line" and prohibit any further innovation. It is unreasonable to expect a 50 year old man to learn new skills, and so what to do with the disposables who have been or are threatened with disposal? Here, anecdotally, one can point to "disability"if one can show that the "disability" was the result of "hard work" -- a construction or industrial accident. "Disability" is a sort of purple heart conferring some residual honor as one retreats into the roles of the "takers," line 3W over there. At the end of that line, there is no pearly gate of prosperity, only a cadre of dispassionate bureaucrats in greasy aprons ladling thin soup into tin cups, a fate for some worse than death.
In some respects, the conservative alignment with the disposables seems in retrospect the cumulative result of short sighted reactions to inevitable changes -- a sort of "WTF! how did that happen?" Class marks and differentiates itself as a class, and one of the clear markers for the disposables has been what Marx called "the opiate of the people." At one time in my life, I used to lecture on the two forms of "truth," and I lived up to my self-image as an "equal opportunity offender" because I didn't reveal (or tried very hard NOT to reveal) my personal take on the matter to my students. On the one side, there is what might be called "observed truth," which forms the basis of our day-to-day common sense. The epitome of "observed truth" is science, and its representative man in the scientist. On the other side, there is what might be called "revealed truth." The epitome of "revealed truth" is religion, and its representative man is the prophet. A perceptive reader will recognize this as a variant to C. P. Snow's Two Cultures, and I am simply suggesting that, as a class, the technocrats tend toward "observed truth" of science, while the disposables tend toward the "revealed truth" of religion. This shows up in our political discourse in a variety of forms. An acquaintance in town, clearly a member of the disposables (a fifty something construction worker, injured and on disability) and clearly someone who thinks of himself as well informed on the issues (a watcher of Fox News and listener of Rush Limbaugh) once tried to convince me that "climate change" was a hoax by quoting the Bible. His demeanor suggested that the argument was over, done, I won, "stick a fork in it," and I had to agree there was no continuing. He could not accept the scientific consensus, but equally I could not accept the authority of the bible on such matters inconceivable at the time of its authorship. For the most part, there is no bridging that divide.
I would suggest that unbridgeable divide "patterns" or "structures" much of our political discourse of late. When the two forms of "truth" come into conflict -- the divide between "evolution" and "intelligent design" being perhaps another obvious and persistent example -- those who adhere to "revealed" truth will double down on the authoritative source. The observable evidence is either discounted as a "worldly illusion," or even worse as a "deliberate deception," or a test of faith, in either case a satanic conspiracy to undermine faith in the "true" word of God as revealed by his various prophets. One would suspect that the big wigs, the economic elite, would have more in common with the agnosticism of the technocrats, and the recent defections of big money toward Clinton, the ultimate technocrat, is perhaps an indication of as much. The SNL parody of the third debate captured this brilliantly when they had the Clinton stand in engage the camera with a sly grin and ask, "between the two of us, who do you trust to be your president, the republican or Donald Trump." One also suspects that the big wigs, the conservative political elite, who have long vilified the Clintons, is caught in something of a quandary. Since Reagan began the consolidation of the evangelical vote for the republican party, it doesn't take wide strides to move from Billy Graham, to Jerry Falwell, to Rush Limbaugh, to finally a figure messianic in and of himself, Donald Trump. I have detailed this pattern in previous posts, but he has actually called Clinton the devil, and his recent claims that the whole of the election is "rigged" in her favor, that the media is engaged in a broad conspiracy to spread lies and undermine faith in his candidacy, that even the conservative elite have acquiesced to the work of the "crooked Hillary" -- all fits the pattern. It is all a satanic conspiracy to upend established hierarchies, or as Susan Faludi put it, "The 1990s produced a generation of men who felt (and still feel) left behind by a society redefining power and success in terms of ornament and celebrity and demoting the value of industry and brawn, while simultaneously challenging men’s value as family providers. Though women weren’t the source of men’s pain, the antagonist conjured up by aggrieved men I talked with in those years had a feminine face, and very often that face was Hillary’s." In short, among the faithful, Reagan served as John the Baptist to Trump as Christ. He will either be "crucified" at the polls, which will grant him the moral authority of having "sacrificed himself" for the cause. Or he will be "confirmed" at the polls, which, like the rapture, will provide him with the mandate to separate the faithful from the feckless, "shake things up," and make America great again in his image.
If the Trump campaign has served a purpose, it has been the revelation (pun intended) of the fault lines within the republican party, the fissure between the "disposables," who have waited faithfully in line to pass through the pearly gates of prosperity, and the economic "elites," who have closed off the gate. As I have suggested before, it is not a wide stride either between "being disposable" and "being deplorable," particularly when someone is there stoking a misplaced resentment at those "cutting in line" -- at the blacks, the hispanics, the immigrants, the feminists, and now god forbid the gays? As another SNL parody has also brilliantly revealed, there are few class differences between the long-standing class of black "disposables" and the emergent class of white "disposables," and there is a potential common ground to address their economic distress, but in the end, the long standing racial resentments prevail and the class interests dissolve into the identity politics of race, another unbridgeable divide. The conservative party of the past has been too much the party of self-serving economic elites, who cynically courted the votes of those who cling to "traditional" social hierarchies and evangelical values. The emergent conservative party, with Trump as its figure head, has become too much the party of the "disposables" and a misplaced resentment of those who seem to upset the "traditional" social hierarchies and dismiss religious values. It is a grand deception to suggest that acting on their resentments will in any way address their condition. They may "feel better," and they may move up a notch or two in line, but ultimately the line isn't moving because the gate at the end is closed.
The liberal party, as Frank points out, has become too much the party of the technocrat, more or less sharing the economic values of the economic elites, and with perhaps equal cynicism they have courted votes from the targets of conservative resentment. (Trump has a point there.) Their solution to the "problem" of the "disposable" -- more access to better education -- the creation of more technocrats -- does little to address the need of those who have already been pushed behind or out of line entirely, nor for that matter does it address those in immediate danger of losing their standing. They are simply no longer needed in any meaningful way. The social safety net might address immediate and temporary needs, but as it becomes permanent, as it becomes "welfare," as more and more wait in line 3W for a ladle of thin government gruel, it undermines the core value of "work" as something that gives purpose and meaning and honor to life. It is dehumanizing to see the "disposables" as a problem to be solved, but even more so to propose "solutions" that contravene their core values.
The solution lies in a new politics ...
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