That love of country doesn’t have to be, and shouldn’t be, uncritical. But the faults you find, the critiques you offer, should be about the ways in which we don’t yet live up to our own ideals. If what bothers you about America is, instead, the fact that it doesn’t look exactly the way it did in the past (or the way you imagine it looked in the past), then you don’t love your country — you care only about your tribe.
And all too many influential figures on the right are tribalists, not patriots... What this tells you, I think, is that all the flag-waving and hawkish posturing had nothing to do with patriotism. It was, instead, about using alleged Democratic weakness on national security as a club with which to beat down domestic opponents, and serve the interests of the tribe... Now comes Mr. Trump, doing the bidding of a foreign power and inviting it to intervene in our politics — and that’s O.K., because it also serves the tribe.
Trump: Tribune Of Poor White People
Heroin addiction is rampant. In my medium-sized Ohio county last year, deaths from drug addiction outnumbered deaths from natural causes. The average kid will live in multiple homes over the course of her life, experience a constant cycle of growing close to a “stepdad” only to see him walk out on the family, know multiple drug users personally, maybe live in a foster home for a bit (or at least in the home of an unofficial foster like an aunt or grandparent), watch friends and family get arrested, and on and on. And on top of that is the economic struggle, from the factories shuttering their doors to the Main Streets with nothing but cash-for-gold stores and pawn shops.
.. Whatever the merits of better tax policy and growth (and I believe there are many), the simple fact is that these policies have done little to address a very real social crisis.
.. His apocalyptic tone matches their lived experiences on the ground. He seems to love to annoy the elites, which is something a lot of people wish they could do but can’t because they lack a platform.
.. these people, his voters, are proud. A big chunk of the white working class has deep roots in Appalachia, and the Scots-Irish honor culture is alive and well. We were taught to raise our fists to anyone who insulted our mother.
.. Unsurprisingly, southern, rural whites enlist in the military at a disproportionate rate. Can you imagine the humiliation these people feel at the successive failures of Bush/Obama foreign policy?
.. the barely-banked contempt they — the professional-class whites, I mean — have for poor white people is visceral, and obvious to me. Yet it is invisible to them.
.. “We”–meaning hillbillies–“are the only group of people you don’t have to be ashamed to look down upon.”
.. humans appear to have some need to look down on someone; there’s just a basic tribalistic impulse in all of us.
.. By looking down on the hillbilly, you can get that high of self-righteousness and superiority without violating any of the moral norms of your own tribe. So your own prejudice is never revealed for what it is.
.. A lot of it is pure disconnect–many elites just don’t know a member of the white working class.
.. this condescension is a big part of Trump’s appeal. He’s the one politician who actively fights elite sensibilities
.. this condescension is a big part of Trump’s appeal. He’s the one politician who actively fights elite sensibilities
.. they’ve been looking for someone for a while who will declare war on the condescenders. If nothing else, Trump does that.
.. what elites see as blunders people back home see as someone who–finally–conducts themselves in a relatable way. He shoots from the hip; he’s not constantly afraid of offending someone; he’ll get angry about politics; he’ll call someone a liar or a fraud. This is how a lot of people in the white working class actually talk about politics,
.. all the talk about “political correctness” isn’t about any specific substantive point, as much as it is a way of expanding the scope of acceptable behavior.
.. the meta-narrative of the 2016 election is learned helplessness as a political value
.. Believing you have no control is incredibly destructive
.. The first time I encountered this idea was in my exposure to addiction subculture,
.. there’s a recognition of the role of better choices in addressing these problems. The refusal to talk about individual agency is in some ways a consequence of a very detached elite, one too afraid to judge and consequently too handicapped to really understand.
.. I think that’s the only way to have this conversation and to make the necessary changes: sympathy and honesty.
.. One of the things I mention in the book is that domestic strife and family violence are cultural traits
.. I had to learn, with the help of my aunt and sister (both of whom had successful marriages), but especially with the help of my wife, how not to turn every small disagreement into a shouting match or a public scene.
.. They’re right that it’s a cultural problem: I learned domestic strife
from my mother, and she learned it from her parents... “They want us to be shepherds to these kids, but they ignore that many of them are raised by wolves.” Again, they’re not all wrong: certainly some schools are unfairly funded. But there’s this weird refusal to deal with the poor as moral agents in their own right. In some cases, the best that public policy can do is help people make better choices, or expose them to better influences through better family policy (like my Mamaw).
.. two of the biggest predictors of low upward mobility were 1) living in neighborhoods with concentrated poverty and 2) growing up in a neighborhood with a lot of single mothers.
.. I’d make one important point: that not drinking, treating people well, working hard, and so forth, requires a lot of willpower when you didn’t grow up in privilege.
.. for a kid like me, the Marine Corps was basically a four-year education in character and self-management.
.. The other thing the Marine Corps did is hold our hands and prevent us from making stupid decisions. It didn’t work on everyone, of course, but I remember telling my senior noncommissioned officer that I was going to buy a car, probably a BMW. “Stop being an idiot and go get a Honda.” Then I told him that I had been approved for a new Honda, at the dealer’s low interest rate of 21.9 percent. “Stop being an idiot and go to the credit union.”
.. On the one hand, he criticized the elites and actually acknowledge the hurt of so many working class voters. After so many years of Republican politicians refusing to even talk about factory closures, Trump’s message is an oasis in the desert. But of course he spent way too much time appealing to people’s fears, and he offered zero substance for how to improve their lives. It was Trump at his best and worst.
.. It’s not just that he inflames the tribalism of the Right; it’s that he encourages the worst impulses of the Left.
Trump As Tribal Leader
The thing that frustrates me, though, is that so many of the anti-Trump people seem to think that Trump is some kind of aberration, that the system was more or less fine before he barreled in and started tearing it up. Not true. He was only able to accomplish this because the Republican Party, and indeed the entire edifice of our political system, has grown weak at its foundations.
.. it will never fail to astonish me, the degree to which the Left is blind to how its own principles and illiberalism strengthens Trump. We all see how Black Lives Matter and related leftist groups trample all over institutional authority in colleges with race-based special pleading, some of it flatly racist, and administrators yield.
.. Given that reality, how long did they think it was going to be before a white candidate emerged who would defend white tribal interests, and who didn’t care what any of them thought about him? If Trump is the champion of white identity politics — and he pretty much is — then the Democrats should think about how their practicing tribal identity politics has contributed to his rise on the Right. I’m not blaming Trump on the Democrats, but I am saying that their “diversity” rhetoric, and the way they have mobilized their own tribes, has helped to create the social and cultural conditions that brought us Trump.
.. “Total ostracism and shame.” If you lived and worked in a cultural environment in which you were at risk at every moment of saying the “wrong” thing, and being made to pay a severe price for it — even when you are merely stating a conventional conservative opinion — well, wouldn’t you be emotionally attracted to a man like Trump? Again, many liberals haven’t the slightest idea how their own behavior has fueled the rise of Trump.
.. If black lives matter (for example), then why don’t white lives matter? That sort of thing. For a very long time, much liberal rhetoric has been focused on left-wing identity politics, not appealing to what unifies us as Americans, but on our tribal divisions.
.. I expect Hillary Clinton to use a lot of unity rhetoric this fall. But here’s the thing: if she wins, I fully expect her to govern as someone who treats my own tribe — conservative Christians — as the enemy.
.. the nation is fractured and fracturing. Both political parties have benefited from the ideological divide they have created, and that historical circumstances have created. What’s new about Trump is that for the first time, many whites are seeing themselves the way Democrats and the liberal media have encouraged blacks, Hispanics, and gays to see themselves: as a tribe.