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{"id":18511,"date":"2016-11-11T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-11-11T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=250"},"modified":"2016-11-11T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-11-11T00:00:00","slug":"strangers-in-their-land","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/11\/strangers-in-their-land\/","title":{"rendered":"Strangers in Their Land"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

N<\/span>athaniel Rich reviews<\/a> Arlie Russell Hochschild\u2019s Strangers in Their Own Land<\/em><\/a> in the NYRB<\/em>. Hochschild, a Berkeley sociologist, examined theories about the rise of the Tea Party and Trumpism, but, she writes, \u201cI found one thing missing in them all\u2014a full understanding of emotion in politics. What, I wanted to know, did people want to feel, think they should or shouldn\u2019t feel, and what do they feel about a range of issues? This is politics as advertising: emotion over common sense. Such an analysis is overdue at a time when questions of policy and legislation and even fact have all but vanished from the public discourse, replaced by debates about the candidate\u2019s character, \u2018temperament,\u2019 and brand.\u201d<\/p>\n

She found that the people she interviewed and listened to in southwest Louisiana felt \u201cangry, bitter, resentful\u201d but Hochschild traced their feelings to a \u201cdeep story\u201d about America and their place in it. In Rich\u2019s summary, \u201cIt begins with an image of a long line of people marching across a vast landscape. The Tea Partiers\u2014white, older, Christian, predominantly male, many lacking college degrees\u2014are somewhere in the middle of the line. They trudge wearily, but with resolve, up a hill. Ahead, beyond the ridge, lies wealth, success, dignity. Far behind them the line is composed of people of color, women, immigrants, refugees. As pensions are reduced and layoffs absorbed, the line slows, then stalls. An even greater indignity follows: people begin cutting them in line. Many are those who had long stood behind them\u2014blacks, women, immigrants, even Syrian refugees, all now aided by the federal government. Next an even more astonishing figure jumps ahead of them: a brown pelican, the Louisiana state bird, \u2018fluttering its long, oil-drenched wings.\u2019 Thanks to environmental protections, it is granted higher social status than, say, an oil rig worker.\u201d The result is that \u201cTea Partiers are made to feel less than human. They find themselves reviled for their Christian morality and the \u2018traditional\u2019 values they have been taught to honor from birth. Many speak of \u2018sympathy fatigue,\u2019 the sense that every demographic group but theirs receives sympathy from liberals.\u201d<\/p>\n

The deep story hit home with the Louisianians that Hochschild spoke to: \u201c\u2018You\u2019ve read my mind,\u2019 says one. \u2018I live your analogy,\u2019 says Mike Schaff.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rich concludes that \u201cTheir suffering is not merely a personal or demographic crisis but a national tragedy.\u201d He seems to think the tragedy is that they elected Trump and will \u201ccapsize the entire republic.\u201d The tragedy goes deeper: How did a sizable segment of the America\u2014a country whose founding documents speak of the dignity of every citizen\u2014come to feel this? And, what are the prospects for a country where a sizable proportion of citizens feels dehumanized by the system?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"