STOLEN PRIDE

Wounded feelings give way to nationalist, supremacist politics in Hochschild’s “what went wrong with Appalachia” autopsy.

Appalachia was once a region of union labor activism, progressive social programs, and an openness to working with people from other countries. Most of the region went for Roosevelt—and Carter, and Clinton. But then, sociologist Hochschild writes, something changed: the mines closed down, the small towns died, many of the remaining residents turned to self-medication, and suddenly Appalachia was Trump country. Hochschild traces this turn in part to what she calls the “pride paradox,” by which the satisfaction in hard work well done is replaced by existential despair over losing usefulness and meaning. “People devised various ways to respond: turn shame inward, project shame outward, or find a creative solution to the paradox,” she writes. The middle proposition turns out to have been the most widespread: people in the region, and by extension people in overlooked rural enclaves across the country, now blame others—immigrants, liberals, urban elites—for their woes. This manifests in racism and fascist displays: Hochschild’s opening set piece is a pre-Charlottesville march of white supremacist radicals in a little Kentucky town seething with resentment at being seen by the world as disposable yokels. The real perpetrators, the extractivist multinationals and big pharma moguls, go unquestioned, while Trumpism triumphs because in a psychologically wounded community such as Pikeville, Kentucky, as one counselor notes, “That guy’s selling white nationalism as a quick fix to make a guy who’s down on himself feel like he’s strong and going places.” Hochschild counsels a wide-ranging solution that could use more specific grounding, but that points to a useful direction, involving rebuilding rural America “both by revising the American Dream and by equalizing access to it.”

An insightful, troubling look at political resentments in the forgotten heartland.