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It corresponds, but its interesting to note how they portray rather opposite judgmental tones on the people in question -- TFA betrays the now-popoular left-leaning view of "seeking comfort in irrational things", a.k.a conservatism as a pathology of stupid people. It's not respectful and it's not a good way to really gain an understanding of people; simply writing them off as incapable out-group members. On the other hand, the motherjones paragraph quoted by parent portrays the people in question as basically being forced to pit their desire to help people against their desire to see proportional rewards for proportional work, the classic "personal responsibility mantra" (ignoring of course the situations those 'line-cutters' were in before they got helped. Two different kinds of "fairness" being pitted against one-another). The jump that TFA makes between "America has a lot of poverty" and "Therefore, that's the only reason people could choose Trump (a.k.a nazi germany)" doesn't really make any sense. The author just says "people sought comfort in myths". That's pretty weak. Not really sure what the point of this article was, was it group signaling? Was it trying to convince people of something? Does the author care to hear from people who don't view conservatism as a pathology? I don't think poor whites think purely with their wallet in Homo-Economicus terms. I think they just have a different set of values, one of which might be worded as "getting what you deserve/earn", which ironically, the author does touch on, but he writes this as a broad-swaths American thing:
"You see, in America, poverty was seen — and still is — as a kind of just dessert. A form of deserved punishment, for being lazy, for being foolish, for being slow. For being, above all, weak — because only the strong should survive."
He writes it as if brutal social-darwinists designed our economy, but really I think it's less malevolent than that. Self-reliance is a strong tenet of american culture, but it has some predictable outcomes when pushed as the solution to everything. |