Book completed

[eve_prime]

Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, by Arlie Russell Hochschild. In this 2016 book, a Berkeley sociologist shares the results of her extensive interviews with residents of the Lake Charles area in Louisiana, where people have mostly learned to ignore the heavy levels of pollution inflicted on them by the petroleum industry. I was interested in the book because she repeatedly uses the phrase “deep story,” which I’ve used in my own research to refer to the story-shaped beliefs groups tell themselves, like a need to make America “great again” or to invest in progress, etc. She uses the phrase differently – rather than societal meta-narratives, she’s focused on personal meta-narratives that gradually became ripe for others to turn into a group identity. At the time of her research, the Tea Party was that group, but of course many of these folks got excited by Trump and probably now identify as MAGA. Hochschild uses the analogy of waiting in line for the American Dream, and tells us that many of these people feel that other groups have gotten to cut ahead of them in that line, often (they believe) at the expense of their own tax dollars. They see the federal government as the villain and are probably delighted now that Trump is trying to gut it – oddly, many of them think that 40% of Americans work for the feds. Also, apparently it’s a big thing to them that Northerners want all Americans to be more sympathetic to groups that have historically struggled; they see this as an attempt to shame them, resent being told how they should feel, and apparently are thrilled that Trump says it’s fine to ignore or dismiss the needs of these groups. I especially enjoyed the short Appendix C, in which the author debunks many beliefs that were common in the community (like that 40% thing). Her goal was to create empathy for these people among her readers, but it was pretty exasperating to hear how they’ve embraced their own exploitation by multinational corporations and the super-rich.