Why small towns love Trump: They live a different story

We've been looking at how conservative media is treating major issues, from healthcare to the investigation of Russian meddling in last year's...

"Strangers In Their Own Land" aims to understand the "anger and mourning" on the American right. Arlie Russell Hochschild went deep into the culture that has embraced Donald Trump, hoping to understand their motivations and their worldview. Photo: UC Berkeley Sociology Department

We've been looking at how conservative media is treating major issues, from healthcare to the investigation of Russian meddling in last year's presidential campaign. These days there are often stark differences in the way Americans, including people right here in the North Country, see and experience the same events.

One of the thinkers grappling with this complicated reality is Arlie Russell Hochschild, a sociologist at the University of California Berkeley. She spent five years in rural Louisiana researching a book about conservative culture called "Strangers In Their Own Land: Anger And Mourning on the American Right."

We spoke with Hochschild about her book and her experiences.

Jumping into the other America

A lot of times these days, American politics can feel a little bit dream-like. Talk to people about a political figure like Donald Trump or Barack Obama and you get such radically different responses. It’s like our views of America don’t even overlap much anymore.

This split-screen narrative is what Arlie Russell Hochschild wanted to explore when she left Berkeley – one of the most liberal places in America – and started meeting families in small towns in conservative Louisiana. "It was an extraordinary journey for me for five years," she said. "To really get to know some amazing people who live in a diffrent truth."

Hochschild came to believe that a lot of conservatives in America exist inside a really powerful story, a coherent narrative different from her own. "I came to call it the deep story. A deep story is a story that feels true to you. You take the facts out of a deep story, you take moral judgments out of a deep story. It's just what feels true," she said.

People cutting in line, while small towns fall behind

Marcia and Dennis Bauchle are farmers from Watkins Glen, NY, who think the Russia story and other media coverage reflects an effort to tear down Donald Trump.  "Progressive liberals are just whining about everything," Marcia said. Photo: Brian Mann
Marcia and Dennis Bauchle are farmers from Watkins Glen, NY, who think the Russia story and other media coverage reflects an effort to tear down Donald Trump. "Progressive liberals are just whining about everything," Marcia said. Photo: Brian Mann
Hochschild’s conclusion was that white rural America sees a couple of things slipping away. Remember, for the moment we’re not talking facts here. We’re talking about this lived reality, this story. 

The first thing they want, she argues, is new opportunity, "not government help but good jobs. And they were willing to make great sacrifices to get them," Hochshild said.

Hochschild thinks the other idea conservatives embrace in this deep story - and this is where the narrative becomes more embattled, more bitter - is the idea that they’re being cheated. All kinds of people like immigrants and people of color and gay people are taking advantage.

"Many people [in conservative culture], it's been two decades since they got a raise at work. And then you have somebody else cutting in line. And who would that be? That would be blacks and women."

Trump and Limbaugh views as validation of the deep story

President Donald Trump Photo: Trump campaign
President Donald Trump Photo: Trump campaign
In the midst of her research, getting to know and also getting to like and developing human connections with rural conservatives, Hochschild stumbled across this new force in American politics: Donald Trump.

"Getting to really know people, I felt like I had been looking at the dry kindling. When I went to the primary rally in New Orleans of Donald Trump, I thought, 'Oh, now I see the match.'"

Hochschild says for many of the people in her book, many small town conservatives, Trump offered the only real hope, the only choice. Democrats, she says, just aren’t a viable option anymore. "They don't see the Democratic Party as offering them answers to their very real concerns."

Hochschild also found a lot of people turning to conservative media, like Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, not only for information, but also again for validation, for a sense that this deep story is valid and real. She describes a conversation with one of her sources.

"You know why I really like Rush limbaugh [the source recounted]. I like him because he protects me from what I know the coastal liberals think about people like us. They think we're prejudiced and backwards and ill-educated. He protects us from that."

If Hochschild is right, it’s not just that we’re seeing the same political events differently, through different media. We’re not just rooting for different politicians the way we root for different sports teams. Instead we’re fitting ideas and events and views of our elected leaders into fundamentally different stories, different patterns that define who we are.

Related Topics

NCPR is supported by:
Comments
Feel like talking about this? Join the conversation on Facebook.