Arlie Russell Hochschild wanted to write a book about the environmental devastation of Louisiana. This is the subject that matters to her, that she knows on a profound level and that she writes about in a way that can leave nobody indifferent.
But nobody would buy such a book. Or at least, not enough folks to make it a bestseller. So Hochschild decided to sneak in the subject she cares about by hiding it in the ever-popular genre of “Why Are These Damn Rednecks so Stupid That They Fail to Vote in Their Own Interest?” Her book Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right attempts to “scale the empathy wall” between the brilliant, svelte, trendy Berkleyans, such as herself, and the conservative Louisianans whom she studies with the kindly condescension of an entomologist approaching a boring and common species of insect.
Hochschild’s self-absorption and her capacity to congratulate herself on almost every page of the book for being superior to the dumb, primitive country bumpkins she believes she is interviewing are scary to behold. The infinite patience and kindness of her interviewees offer a great contrast to Hochschild’s complete lack of humility.
The reason why Hochschild never manages to answer her own question about the reasons why her interviewees are repelled by Liberalism is that she is incapable of seeing herself as anything but pretty damn perfect. She is blissfully unaware of how annoying the self-righteous, supercilious Liberals like herself are to everyone but themselves. The very premise of her book is based on the poorly concealed belief that “those people” are stupid and don’t know what’s good for them until a much smarter Liberal arrives from elsewhere to enlighten their dumb, barbaric souls.
Of course, the majority of Liberals are like me (or the readers of my blog) and not like Hochschild. But people like her are so loud, so smug and so ready to place themselves at the center of attention that they manage to repel many more people away from the movement than the more reasonable Liberals can hope to attract.
The genre of “What’s the Matter With Kansas and Everywhere Else People Are Not Like the Wonderful Me?” needs to go. Hochschild should write about the environment and learn to see herself just a tad less seriously. Anger and mourning are better than condescension and smugness because genuine human feelings will always win in the end.
Clarissa's Blog 
Yes, I have seen excerpts of this book and it is pretty bad.
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The chapters on the environmental disaster of Louisiana are amazing. But everything else- oh, Lordy.
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Yes. If one is not familiar with the environmental disaster, or even if one is, yes. But it is not going to convince anyone here, it is so thick with condescension.
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\ Along the way she finds answers to one of the crucial questions of contemporary American politics: why do the people who would seem to benefit most from “liberal” government intervention abhor the very idea?
How does her answer differ from yours?
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She doesn’t give her answer directly because even she realizes that it will sound bad but it’s pretty clear what it is: “these people” are stupid, uneducated, easily manipulated by Fox News.
My answer is that the question is posed incorrectly. The kind of intervention people abhor doesn’t benefit them. Or anybody. The governments of nation-states are increasingly impotent to solve globally produced problems. So they compensate for that by staging outlandish shows of activity to hide this impotence. And that’s what angers people. Hell, it angers me, too. Our state government can’t figure out how to honor my health insurance but last week it sent me another dumb ethics training that I have to undergo. For 8 years, I have to watch an hour-long video telling me not to take bribes and steal paper. This is what our government is good at.
How can anybody be supposed not to abhor this setup?
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El, did she interview any black people (I didn’t read the whole book)? Or any decently or well off people?
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Most of the people she interviewed were quite well off. Like the wife of a leader of one of those megachurches. Or a blue-collar worker who makes $180,000. Hey, do you make $180,000? ‘Cause I’m guessing not. 🙂 And neither am I
So the downtrodden are not that downtrodden.
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I thought as much. I do know less rich white people in oilfield services who claim to fear a Clinton victory would kill the industry and lose them their jobs. Black people in the same job and with the same educational level know that is not true. And it is true that there are white people of all income levels freaked out about losing status white supremacy gives them. But mostly the Trump vote is racist – sexist – antitax – etc. – and the befuddlement is the obfuscation these people have engaged in to represent themselves as oppressed
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At least, the book is useful in showing that before Trump there was the Tea Party and it’s not like he just came out of nowhere. He is a culmination of a process that’s been going on for a while.
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Right; but that is not a new insight. Many things converged to produce him and one of the big ones was Nixon’s southern strategy.
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I know but there’s very little that’s redeemable about the book at all. I’m grasping at straws. 😆
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Well, there is the reporting on the ecological situation. As you said at the beginning, if only she’d just stuck to that…
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Seriously, that would a fantastic book. Wouldn’t be a bestseller, though.
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But should be promoted. To improve the general situation, she should write it and the Sanders people and others get together and make sure it gets onto Oprah, etc.
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“He is a culmination of a process that’s been going on for a while.”
The current culmination. Curently the political establishment is in meltdown mode and convinced that if they can just keep Trump from winning then the forces he’s (mostly accidentally) representing will go away.
I don’t think that’s going to happen at all.
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I haven’t read the book, but I can believe she comes across as condescending.
The low-skilled and blue-collar jobs that these people lost are simply not coming back; that is a price of the capitalist global economy. Of course the people are angry and have every right to be angry. I might hate everyone under the sun if I couldn’t find work, lost my house, and couldn’t feed my kids. But I don’t know what is to be done, economically. My understanding of these issues is far from complete, but these people would have to be retrained for the jobs that are here, and most these days are either in service (various medical field/care jobs) or white-collar jobs, for which they would need considerable and expensive additional education that they cannot afford and the government isn’t (yet) offering to pay. They would likely have to relocate, which is hard as you get older and your whole life was in one place.
I understand the anger and the frustration, and I understand lashing out in hatred to those who are even less protected (every major economic crisis comes with increase of all forms of bigotry, racism, and xenophobia). I just really have no idea what happens next, do we all just wait the next few decades as the nation-state dies by way of globe-sweeping economic seizures until we settle somewhere new completely, and hope we don’t have to die like dogs, in the way most poor people will?
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I am seeing a lot of “progressive man’s/wymyn’s/other’s burden” articles regarding poor rural white people recently. I am sure that the “progressives” if they had power would treat them just as well as the “progressive” Europeans treated their colonial subjects in Africa and Asia. The “progressive” and “tolerant” Dutch murdered hundreds of thousands of Indonesians after World War II when such crimes had aready been outlawed at the Nuremburg Trials.
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The power of Trump is being blamed on the uneducated/the poor, but the median income of a Trump voter is $72K and many of them have college educations. It is a blatant racist and sexist vote, and an anti-poor vote. And the poor are really harangued at to blame themselves for their situation and to identify with the man in the big house. And if only white men could vote, Trump would win every state except Washington and Oregon, according to some graphic I saw recently based on polls.
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Exactly! Every day I pass enormous luxurious houses with Trump signs in big yards. The smallish old houses in need of a paint job all had Bernie Sanders signs. Yes, this is anecdotal evidence but I don’t see any data to support the idea that Trump is the candidate of the poor.
I know some Trump supporters, and these are not poor miserable people left behind by neoliberalism, far from it. Everybody I know who comes from real hardship supported Bernie.
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“enormous luxurious houses with Trump signs in big yards”
Have you seen this?
http://www.interfluidity.com/v2/6632.html
Lot of interesting stuff, including the idea that looking at Trump voters as individuals means people miss the community aspect of his support: In short Trump supporters are more affluent members bothered by their communities not doing well.
There’s also a very good part about the dangers of automatically branding Trump supporters as racist.
The overall writing style is, however, best described as “tortured”….
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To anyone who’s been following the refugee/migrant debacle unfolding in Europe over the last 5 years or so, the following is kind of funny (a well worn joke that is still funny no matter how many times it’s told)
Social workers place a self-described 12 year old Afghan in some stupid and kind hearted people’s home. They all change their eating habits to accomodate him.
….And he’s a 21 year old jihadi whose last wods to them were a death threat… Another triumph of European social policy!
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2030373/migrant-foster-mum-reveals-her-horror-at-discovering-12-year-old-refugee-in-her-care-is-actually-a-21-year-old-jihadi/
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