NYT Poses a Question, PourMeCoffee Answers

In her book “Strangers in Their Own Land,” the sociologist Arlie Hochschild quotes a woman from Louisiana complaining about the childproof lids on medicine and the mandatory seatbelt laws. “We let them throw lawn darts, smoked alongside them,” the woman says of her children. “And they survived. Now it’s like your kid needs a helmet, knee pads and elbow pads to go down the kiddy slide.”

Hochschild’s humble and important book is a meditation on why working-class conservatives vote against more government programs for themselves. She emphasizes that they perceive government as a corrupt arm used against the little guy. She argues that these voters may vote against their economic interests, but they vote for their emotional interests, for candidates who share their emotions about problems and groups.

I’d say they believe that big government support would provide short-term assistance, but that it would be a long-term poison to the values that are at the core of prosperity. You and I might disagree with that theory. But it’s a plausible theory. Anybody who wants to design policies to help the working class has to make sure they go along the grain of the vigorous virtues, not against them.

  David Brooks @ NYT

Bullshit. They're happy to have Social Security and Medicare. They're also happy to have farm, dairy and gasoline subsidies and whatever tax breaks the government will deign to give them.

The answer is "rhymes with face jism" AND they've been prodded and nudged by the elites and the media to see the poor, often dark-skinned people, not as fellow countrymen in need of assistance, but as freeloaders who don't deserve a dime, and now a president who adds to that a charge of lawlessness and jobs theft.

They're not voting against their best interests, they're voting to stop what they think is an unworthy class of people getting something that would otherwise belong to themselves.

They think their lives would be better if only those other undeserving people were taken out of the picture. They don't see that they're the target.  The poor, dark-skinned people are merely the bait.