So today, as I listened to the new NPR radio station (great!) and the music playing on the station at the restaurant I was eating at I had an epiphany. At the outset, I wish to say that I do not wish to offend any leftist fans of country music here. However, listening to this music, I felt for a moment that an entirely different world opened up to me and that suddenly I understood the conservative mind of middle and working class America. If you're an enthusiast of this music I am not accusing you of sharing such an ideology
So as I listened to this music, what did I hear? Well to make this point clearly, let's first compare the leftist stereotype of conservatives to this music. Let's face it, leftists, including myself, often think of conservatives as knuckle dragging neandrathals that hate other groups that aren't composed of white highly heterosexual men and subordinate women, and are people that think they are someday going to be millionaires through their hard work, special destiny (think Dumb and Dumber), and the sweat of their brow.
Country music, wildly popular among this segment of the population, tells a different story. The ballads I hear in the country music songs are composed of stories about people constantly suffering relationship breakups, job loss, scraping by, economic hardship, etc., etc., etc. This, I think, is significant. We should ask, why is this music appealing and what values does it reflect?
Listening to these songs, I get a sense of people who feel deeply abandoned, completely disempowered, and who are unable to rely on anyone but themselves to get by in the world. The narratives that we hear in these songs do not reflect an ideology where people expect to someday become millionaires, but rather reflect a worldview in which people expect economic hardship, broken relationships, unreliable jobs, and so on. These songs reflect a world without horizon or hope, where all that is expected is more of the same: landlords that will probably evict them, jobs that will be taken away, broken relationships and marriages, a government that is rigged to only protect the interests of the wealthy, etc.
The ideology that emerges out of this worldview is twofold: On the one hand, government comes to be seen as a rigged game that only protects the interests of a select few. The guy wearing his shit-kicking boots and dungarees thinks to himself that he's entirely alone in the world, that he's naked, that he has no protections, that he's profoundly exposed. His life will be, he thinks, one tribulation after another without respite or option. As a consequence, on the other hand, he thinks he can only rely on himself. I sense in this music a profound pride borne of a sad desperation where one thinks that one is a desparado like Mad Max, living from day to day, getting by day to day, surviving but never prospering. Indeed, prospering is, according to this worldview, impossible. As a consequence, one should focus on their squeeze (so long as it lasts), and small pleasures like hunting, cheap beer at the local bar, work when it's available, and, above all, friendships.
Government, this person reasons, is a rigged game for the wealthy and where it does help little people it only helps "undeserving" minorities. If anyone is going to save me, reasons this character, it will be God. Certainly not public institutions. These people no more love our lily white business and government leaders than many leftists do. They think they're all wolves in sheep clothing. As a result they end up hating all government, hating all politicians, because they could never rely on them anyway. They're willing to screw everyone else because they believe they themselves have been screwed, that the only pleasure and possibility open to them is the Saturday night honky tonk and the Miller Light beer, and that there will never be any respite to the hopelessness of their existence. If they sing "Ra Ra" at the greatness of "Amerika", then this is because at least the accomplishments of "Amerika" somehow transfer some greatness to them in an otherwise hopeless existence without horizon, possibility, or hope. At least, they say to themselves, they have that small consolation of "superiority" even though they contributed nothing to those achievements. "I'm an Amerikan, damn it!" and this declaration always means "I'm a hopeless person without possibilities or hope that nonetheless survives in a world without opportunity." They know the drill. The system is rigged against them so "fuck it". It certainly will never work for them.
They are demoralized and exhausted as can be heard in every pleat and sorrowful refrain in their music. All they have left is the pride of their self-determination or ability to get by in this awful world. I endlessly find myself wracking my brain as to why such people vote against their own self-interest, but all that's required to answer this question is listening to their music. They don't vote against their self-interest, but vote out of spite and hopelessness. They vote out of spite because they believe that they are voting against queers, women, minorities, and "liberal flakes" who they are convinced are getting unfair advantages forever foreclosed to them. They vote out of hopelessness because they believe that government will never be able to help them and therefore choose to at least screw those others who they believe to have more opportunity to them. They know they will never be millionaires but worry that these other groups might unfairly be millionaire and therefore seek to block them. They know the score: they're screwed.
The question is how these groups can ever be reached. How can pride in their self-reliance and ability to get by in the world be honored (and it is something that's mildly admirable despite all the ugliness that accompanies it) while opening them to the possibility that government can work for them? How can a space be opened where the circle can be squared and the issues of social and cultural justice can simultaneously be honored and this contingent of people can see that they too benefit from promoting these ideals? As ThereIsNoSpoon recognized yesterday, these people are right in their outrage against the economic machine that is America, but wrong in their theory of what produced their suffering. Is there any possible way this mistaken belief can be changed? Probably not. I at least feel a little bit better, however, in understanding what might motivate this mystifying psychology.