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A review by paladintodd
Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right by Arlie Russell Hochschild
4.0
(Oops, the author is a her, not a him.)
4 stars because the book is well written, he starts from a very earnest and logical premise, and the author tries hard. I think he also makes a very good explanation of the views of the Strangers, but that explanation makes me mad though that's not his fault.
In short, he seems to say the Right has two major motivating factors:
1) White Grievance. He dresses this up and tries to give it some heft by calling it a "deep story" and dedicating a chapter fully explaining this (fraudulent) belief. At the core though, it's simply angry white people who have decided to blame the brown people for their problems rather than maybe giving an honest thought to their own actions in causing their malaise. (And by "own actions" I mean who they vote for, the policies they support. Not that they generally cause their own bad circumstances.)
2) These people are, and I wish it wasn't the case, just plain dumb. The book has:
-- The guy who says he'd be a millionaire if it wasn't for social security taxes
-- The gal who, living in one the most polluted hellholes in the country, thinks that industry can regulate itself
-- The folks who think that the latest oil plant to come to town will be their economic savior even though that scheme has failed for the last dozen oil plants to come to town
-- The mayor that says, in the same sentence, that unemployed blacks are just lazy but that employed blacks must have got there via affirmative action.
-- That the "experts" don't know anything.
I had to quit at the 2/3 point as I just don't feel it was going to go anywhere informative.
4 stars because the book is well written, he starts from a very earnest and logical premise, and the author tries hard. I think he also makes a very good explanation of the views of the Strangers, but that explanation makes me mad though that's not his fault.
In short, he seems to say the Right has two major motivating factors:
1) White Grievance. He dresses this up and tries to give it some heft by calling it a "deep story" and dedicating a chapter fully explaining this (fraudulent) belief. At the core though, it's simply angry white people who have decided to blame the brown people for their problems rather than maybe giving an honest thought to their own actions in causing their malaise. (And by "own actions" I mean who they vote for, the policies they support. Not that they generally cause their own bad circumstances.)
2) These people are, and I wish it wasn't the case, just plain dumb. The book has:
-- The guy who says he'd be a millionaire if it wasn't for social security taxes
-- The gal who, living in one the most polluted hellholes in the country, thinks that industry can regulate itself
-- The folks who think that the latest oil plant to come to town will be their economic savior even though that scheme has failed for the last dozen oil plants to come to town
-- The mayor that says, in the same sentence, that unemployed blacks are just lazy but that employed blacks must have got there via affirmative action.
-- That the "experts" don't know anything.
I had to quit at the 2/3 point as I just don't feel it was going to go anywhere informative.