Your Place or Mines?

“Many of the policies he promised never panned out. As James Browning, a thoughtful drug counselor and grandson of a coal miner killed in a mining accident, recalled, he never brought back coal or ‘great, new jobs.’ He did ‘nothing about drugs.’ But Mr. Trump’s story of stolen pride did take hold. With the fall of coal and American manufacturing, he told his followers, you lost your pride. That’s because others stole it from you, just as they stole the 2020 election, and they still want more — your guns, your families, your way of life. I’ll take revenge on them, he declared: on the pet-eating immigrants, uppity women, spying international students, idle government workers, and the institutions behind them — the universities, the mainstream press, the judiciary, the deep state.” A very interesting look at what attracts voters to Trump (and whether that attraction is weakening) from sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild. NYT (Gift Article): My Journey Deep in the Heart of Trump Country.