What Liberals Miss About Trump Country

Jacobin Magazine ^ | October 15, 2019 | Paul Heideman

[2ndDivisionVet]

The effects of Donald Trump’s presidency on the American economy are widely debated, but there’s at least one field of production whose boom is indisputably a result of his election: the conservative voter ethnography industry. Since Trump’s rise, article after article has tracked down Trump voters in some small town in a formerly Democratic state. The pieces vary in tone — some are journalistically objective, others are more personal — but they all seem to end with the author silently shaking their head, confounded by the unbreachable irrationality of these voters.

Monica Potts’s recent opinion piece in the New York Times is the latest in this genre. Her article focuses on the fight over a new position at a public library in rural Arkansas, which sparked opposition over the county’s ability to pay for the new salary. Potts uses this dispute as a window into the values of rural Trump supporters, and what she finds isn’t pretty. These voters have an ideological opposition to public services, she argues, opposing their extension even when they themselves would benefit. She’s remarkably blunt about the political upshot, making explicit what most of the genre leaves subtextual: “Economic appeals are not going to sway any Trump voters, who view anyone who is trying to increase government spending, especially to help other people, with disdain.”

This line of argument is widely embraced across the liberal commentariat: Trump voters are an impenetrable bloc, an irredeemable monolith motivated by racism and resentment. Yet what’s remarkable about this image is how thoroughly it’s contradicted by the empirical evidence on rural Republican voters. Far from a homogeneous group, the Republican Party is actually shot through with contradictions that center on what liberal journalists insist can’t possibly explain anything: class.

[2ndDivisionVet]

Comments?

[abb]

This phenomenon was further magnified after the passage of Obamacare. People in the private sector saw their medical coverage decimated, and their costs triple or more, while those who have a lip-lock on the public tit suffer no consequences.

Teachers, city clerks, government deadheads of all description still have gold-plated health care paid for by folks who work for a living.

Working people don’t like it.

[ReaganGeneration2]

Summary: the lower class Trump voters are more complex than the Libs think, and often resist voting Dem.

Doesn’t matter. Thick-skulled Dems will continue to think that if you oppose socialism, which is supposedly for your own good, you’re a deplorable racist hayseed.

So they’ll keep focusing on anti-Trump-tweets suburbanite women.

[Governor Dinwiddie]

Boy, do you have that right! Obamacare left me high and dry. I would have been better off being unemployed.
 

[21twelve]

I’m self employed. My premiums (family of five) went up 7x. Deductible tripled. FUBO. And I’m still waiting for Trump to get rid of it. But as other’s (Ted Cruz) said - once that thing passed, it was probably never going to git undone.

FUBO.

[piasa]

These voters have an ideological opposition to public services, she argues, opposing their extension even when they themselves would benefit

It never occurs to liberals, who, often lacking a sense honor or integrity and respecting only themselves, that getting free stuff is not a 'benefit' but may in fact be detrimental in many ways, one of which is human dignity, and another is individual liberty.

The reason rural voters are particularly wary of free stuff may be that they are closer to nature and work with animals or have to deal with them much more than urban liberals, and as anyone who interacts with animals knows, offering food, water, shelter and gently treating them from a young age changes their behavior, and thus gives you power which you can use not just in a somewhat harmless way to tame them for companionship but also can be used in a controlling way to tame them in order to exploit them for work, milk, meat, or eggs, or even to entrap and kill wild ones, when they are annoying pests or when you want to use their fur or meat.

Providing free stuff always involves taking away some or all of a wild animal's liberty by creating anything from minor dependence as in the case of a bird feeder or water source, or major dependence, as in the domestication of animals to make them easier to handle, causing them to lose more and more of their survival skills and instincts while they unwittingly pick up habits and traits that are desired by humans the longer they are bred in captivity- until like bulldogs or sheep, the animal is fully domesticated and so deformed or genetically altered they actually need management to survive.

[laplata]

Hear, hear!

FUBO FOREVER!!

[mewzilla]

Bureaucracy Kills: A Lesson from Rome

[Ann Archy]

Trump would LOVE to get rid of Obamacare but the RINOS and the VILE DEMOCRATS won;t let him!

[semimojo]

Comments.

He makes some good points about the economic diversity among Republican voters but he’s guilty of the same behavior he’s criticizing in liberal journalists - that is, a simplistic generalization of others’ behavior.

She’s remarkably blunt about the political upshot, making explicit what most of the genre leaves subtextual: “Economic appeals are not going to sway any Trump voters, who view anyone who is trying to increase government spending, especially to help other people, with disdain.”

This line of argument is widely embraced across the liberal commentariat: Trump voters are an impenetrable bloc, an irredeemable monolith motivated by racism and resentment.

That’s just a misrepresentation of Monica Potts’ argument. Her piece is actually pretty nuanced and doesn’t blame things on racism and resentment.

Attributing views to the “liberal commentariat” that they don’t all hold is intellectually lazy and what he accuses them of doing.

[CTyank]

“The pieces vary in tone — some are journalistically objective, others are more personal — but they all seem to end with the author silently shaking their head, confounded by the unbreachable irrationality of these voters.”

Ironic - coming from a writer that would most likely not question trendy gender theory.

[gogeo]

Too smart by half.

Those 'truths' that the left hold self evident...that more government, for example, would make their lives better...are viewed with contempt by the right.

We truly are two nations living in one land.

[JJ_Folderol]

The author completely ignores the concept of patriotism: that
“Make America Great Again” has a genuine, heart-felt meaning to Trump voters.

While the author drones on about class and economic condition he’s completely incapable of seeing beyond his liberal presuppositions to the core of traditional Americanism that binds Trump voters together.

[digger48]

Small town libraries aren’t exactly a small “investment” by those paying property taxes.

One near me probably doesn’t get 10 people a day walking through the doors

[Eric Pode of Croydon]

I wonder if the staff of a magazine called “Jacobin” ever has considered how the original Jacobins met their ends.

[Erik Latranyi]

Yes, the Dem voter base is attached to the teat of Mother Government.

Yes, Democrats get their votes....but only if the gravy train keeps rolling along and the free stuff increases.

They are parasitic in every way....continuing to consume the host until it is dead...

[foreverfree]

Bump

[SoCal Pubbie]

I thought it was called MAGA country?

[TexasM1A]

I would like one of these folks just once to show me an area of the country, where the majority of the inhabitants subsist/survive because of the governments largess, live good lives.
Just one is all I want to see.

[Desron13]

"These voters have an ideological opposition to public services, she argues, opposing their extension even when they themselves would benefit."

Oh how dreadful! These smelly Walmart shoppers are so stupid that they refuse to accept free stuff from our benign overlords. They must be forced to comply.