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551 reviews for:
Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right
Arlie Russell Hochschild
4.09 AVERAGE
551 reviews for:
Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right
Arlie Russell Hochschild
4.09 AVERAGE
would have been better to explain why deep stories differ in different places or how to use deep stories to changes minds.
challenging
informative
slow-paced
Content Warnings
Moderate: Classism
Minor: Ableism, Cancer, Chronic illness, Racism, Slavery, Xenophobia, Religious bigotry, Abortion, Alcohol
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Definitely makes you want to bang your head against the wall. Exceedingly sad and frustrating. Thorough in exploring the deep motivations behind the "great paradox" of why people in the most polluted states vote entirely against regulations. I'm glad I read it, though it was not fun. The author is extremely patient and understanding and on some level, I really aspire to be the same. But also, Louisiana is totally ruined. Super tragic.
I'll be honest - I started and stopped this one and skimmed around. I'm sure it's an insightful read, but I just don't have it in me to force anymore empathy right now with the kind of voter who uses 'economic anxiety' or religion as reasons to vote not only explicitly against their own interests, but in ways that are bigoted, hypocritical, and that are at this moment tearing families apart. I just don't. I was born and spent most of my life around it. I 'get' these people; I know this story, but not how to move past it, and, frankly, I am more concerned with the vulnerable. Maybe I'll come back to it another time.
Hochschild’s examination of the south adds perspective and empathy to the great paradox of needing government while despising its existence. She doesn’t “solve” the south, but explores and explains the contradictions in an intelligent way.
Those who loved Hillbilly Elegy will enjoy this.
Those who loved Hillbilly Elegy will enjoy this.
I've read multiple books trying to understand the plight of the far right folks, yet I've never found any to be fully satisfying. This one attempts to bridge the author's so-called "empathy wall" by trying to understand a group of Tea Party Louisianans. Instead of having any greater understanding of them, I'm left even more outraged, dismayed and puzzled than ever. The subtitle of this book is "Anger and Mourning On the American Right," but more aptly this causes anger and mourning on the American left, because we're now living through the triumph of the imbiceles, as the current occupant of the White House so thoroughly reminds us every single day.
The people profiled in this book are filled with self pity, a 'woe is me' attitude, coupled with misdirected outrage at anyone different from them. The self-pity and culture of victimhood they embrace is ironic, given that that attitude is exactly what they constantly decry in others, yet it is not at all surprising given the astounding levels of hypocrisy they display.
It is mind-boggling to read about the countless instances of corporations and the state govenment working together to literally destroy the homes, the communities and the livelihoods of these people, who, while recognizing that these corporations and governments have done them wrong, continue to support them and vote for them. They suffer real, tangible, objective harm, including such things as losing a beloved family pet to a horrible death caused by one of their corporate neighbors, yet they continue to decry regulations, the federal government and those horrible environmentalists. I have less hope than ever that these people can ever be reasoned with or will come to their senses. They DO NOT CARE that their government harms them. They will not care when Donald Trump fails to deliver on his ridiculous promises of better lives and economic success for these folks. They will continue to vote for him and others like him forever, until they die, regardless of how much ruin they endure -- they will never stop. They don't care that their lives are destroyed and don't care that the country will be destroyed. I do feel badly for them -- I have empathy for their experience of loss. But their refusal to do anything to prevent it from happening again and again, and their constant rewarding of the bad actors makes it hard to feel too badly for them for very long.
Our only hope is to get out the votes from people who have not been brainwashed. These folks are irredeemable. They're proudly deplorable, and it's one thing that they vote to make their own lives miserable, but what they do affects the entire country. When we lose Louisiana to horrible pollution, the effects go beyond state borders. It affects the Gulf of Mexico. It affects the animals who live in the swamps. it affects the seafood and the animals that eat that seafood. And I'm sad to realize they're hopeless. While on a micro level, I'm sure they can come across as nice people, and they're willing to help you if they know you individually and especially if you're a part of their community, their willful ignorance is simply inexcusable. And it is a real problem that anyone who actually cares about the country has to reckon with.
I'm so thoroughly disgusted. This is an important read if you can stomach it. It won't make you feel better.
The people profiled in this book are filled with self pity, a 'woe is me' attitude, coupled with misdirected outrage at anyone different from them. The self-pity and culture of victimhood they embrace is ironic, given that that attitude is exactly what they constantly decry in others, yet it is not at all surprising given the astounding levels of hypocrisy they display.
It is mind-boggling to read about the countless instances of corporations and the state govenment working together to literally destroy the homes, the communities and the livelihoods of these people, who, while recognizing that these corporations and governments have done them wrong, continue to support them and vote for them. They suffer real, tangible, objective harm, including such things as losing a beloved family pet to a horrible death caused by one of their corporate neighbors, yet they continue to decry regulations, the federal government and those horrible environmentalists. I have less hope than ever that these people can ever be reasoned with or will come to their senses. They DO NOT CARE that their government harms them. They will not care when Donald Trump fails to deliver on his ridiculous promises of better lives and economic success for these folks. They will continue to vote for him and others like him forever, until they die, regardless of how much ruin they endure -- they will never stop. They don't care that their lives are destroyed and don't care that the country will be destroyed. I do feel badly for them -- I have empathy for their experience of loss. But their refusal to do anything to prevent it from happening again and again, and their constant rewarding of the bad actors makes it hard to feel too badly for them for very long.
Our only hope is to get out the votes from people who have not been brainwashed. These folks are irredeemable. They're proudly deplorable, and it's one thing that they vote to make their own lives miserable, but what they do affects the entire country. When we lose Louisiana to horrible pollution, the effects go beyond state borders. It affects the Gulf of Mexico. It affects the animals who live in the swamps. it affects the seafood and the animals that eat that seafood. And I'm sad to realize they're hopeless. While on a micro level, I'm sure they can come across as nice people, and they're willing to help you if they know you individually and especially if you're a part of their community, their willful ignorance is simply inexcusable. And it is a real problem that anyone who actually cares about the country has to reckon with.
I'm so thoroughly disgusted. This is an important read if you can stomach it. It won't make you feel better.
Four stars for the compelling writing, and for Hochschild's ability to balance honesty and nuance in relating the stories of her interviewees. I think left-leaning readers who have delved into other good-faith discussions of Trump voters will find much familiar here, and while Hochschild includes details to flesh out the individuals she's meeting, the constant appeals to be understanding and sympathetic can be tiring. Personally, I found myself fairly emotionally exhausted after finishing this book and I don't know if the emotional work truly increased my understanding.
I think Hochschild never managed to fully climb over the empathy wall in a way that was able to bring me with her. I wanted greater insight into the right, and mostly just had my current understanding validated.
A valuable read if you don't know many folks on the right, but not much new here if you already rub elbows with them.
A valuable read if you don't know many folks on the right, but not much new here if you already rub elbows with them.
I, like many liberals, have struggled since the election of Donald Trump to understand just how someone like him can appeal to so many people, how people can accept, tolerate, even approve of his behaviour - his racism, his sexism, his lack of empathy, his stoking of aggression and division, his demagoguery, his lack of respect for the norms of the democratic process. How can people think like this? I wonder. How can anyone approve of this? I just cannot understand it.
That division, the lack of ability to scale what Hochschild calls the 'empathy wall', is the subject of this book. Using the issue of environment pollution as her keystone concept, something that affects the lives of everyone, not just left and right, blue and red, she spends time deep in Louisiana oil country, getting to know the residents of small communities often blighted by pollution. Her keystone concept is an attempt to understand how people can be made ill, forced from their homes because of pollution caused by massive corporations and yet still support the rolling back of environmental protections, the gutting of the EPA, the cutting of funding for programmes designed to improve environmental quality.
Is she successful? I don't know. Her reasons for why these people think the way they do, her 'deep story' of feeling left behind in the queue for the American Dream, of other groups like women, African-Americans, immigrants cutting in the queue ahead of them, certainly seems to resonate with her subjects. But personally I just can't get past the lack of understanding of white privilege in her subjects, their lack of understanding that the American Dream was always a myth, that they're 'entitled' to nothing, that they are focusing on what they feel they're owed rather than the privileges they already enjoy, that the only reason people like them are as far ahead in the queue as they are is by actively trampling on those below them throughout history, that all their privileges is on the backs of those they disdain now (said African-Americans, immigrants, women etc).
And the shortsightedness, the voting against their own interests, the willful blindness to the evidence in front of them - the fact that in the long run, the damage their elected officials will cause will impact them just as much as everyone else who didn't vote for it - I can't get past that enough to have empathy with these people. Or I empathise. But I still think they're wrong.
That division, the lack of ability to scale what Hochschild calls the 'empathy wall', is the subject of this book. Using the issue of environment pollution as her keystone concept, something that affects the lives of everyone, not just left and right, blue and red, she spends time deep in Louisiana oil country, getting to know the residents of small communities often blighted by pollution. Her keystone concept is an attempt to understand how people can be made ill, forced from their homes because of pollution caused by massive corporations and yet still support the rolling back of environmental protections, the gutting of the EPA, the cutting of funding for programmes designed to improve environmental quality.
Is she successful? I don't know. Her reasons for why these people think the way they do, her 'deep story' of feeling left behind in the queue for the American Dream, of other groups like women, African-Americans, immigrants cutting in the queue ahead of them, certainly seems to resonate with her subjects. But personally I just can't get past the lack of understanding of white privilege in her subjects, their lack of understanding that the American Dream was always a myth, that they're 'entitled' to nothing, that they are focusing on what they feel they're owed rather than the privileges they already enjoy, that the only reason people like them are as far ahead in the queue as they are is by actively trampling on those below them throughout history, that all their privileges is on the backs of those they disdain now (said African-Americans, immigrants, women etc).
And the shortsightedness, the voting against their own interests, the willful blindness to the evidence in front of them - the fact that in the long run, the damage their elected officials will cause will impact them just as much as everyone else who didn't vote for it - I can't get past that enough to have empathy with these people. Or I empathise. But I still think they're wrong.