There is no shortage of writing on what people in the heartland are feeling and how that affected their vote in November 2016. We’ve been asked to empathize with them; we’ve been asked to condemn them.
I have nothing to add to this debate. Or certainly not in the way of “facts” about Trump supporters on the ground in red states or regions (or the exurbs, or the Rust Belt, or the Upper Midwest, or whatever). I simply want to point out one motif that runs through all the ink I’m reading and all the verbiage characterizing them.
So they’re angry at liberals and “out of touch elites.” My question is this.
Why do red voters in red states care so much what people in blue states think of them? Or what they think they think of them?
Here are some typical motifs where this perceived condescension comes into play. These are my paraphrases of what they are saying (or what pundits and reporters say they are saying in any case.)
“They see us as fly-over country.” The expression “fly over” means the flier passes someone by on the way to something else. The implication is that people on the coasts or urban centers do not stop to visit, because, as is tacitly acknowledged, they see no reason to. Were the people in the heartland looking forward to receiving visitors from blue states?
“We don’t get any respect from Washington.” (or their own state capitol, or “the media” or “liberal elites.” Note that “elites” are always “liberal elites.”) I’ve never been entirely sure what more “respect” would mean. Just more attention? More positive portrayal in TV and movies? Or policies more effectively geared toward rural or declining industrial areas’ concerns? Those are very different things. But the main thing I hear that these voters’ expectations of help or regard, whatever kind, were not met. Not met, that is, by someone else who is not them, who is based outside their community or milieu, who seems to have owed them something. Just sayin’.
“We are tired of being told that [X marginalized or oppressed group] deserve better treatment, or that they have rights, or that their plight is our responsibility.” For this post, let’s not get into why these rights or grievances might in fact really be important and valid. (Of course they are.) I am simply trying to point out the element of perceived condescension and excessive reaction to it, which is conveyed in the phrases “I don’t want to be told” or “they are tired of being told.” Are they really reacting to the facts about social conditions out there? Or is the problem having someone inform you about them, period? Why is “being told” something so hard to accept? If you believe something, why not simply stand by it? The concern is with what someone else is telling them, preempting recognition or discussion of the original grievances.
So I want to ask observers in the media who seek to parse attitudes in the heartland: Were the subjects of your article or post looking for approval or recognition? Why? Is it really fair to characterize what the “typical” people in the heartland are saying, regardless of geography and class, even if they are white? Can we really “know” them in all their variety and individual profiles, at least until comprehensive and broad studies have been done? Your article or editorial should at least address those questions.
Do Trump voters or fellow travelers really form their entire political identity or civic self not around what they want, nor around some action they want to take place, but around how they think they are defined by others? Do they give educated, cultivated city dwellers more power than they want to or ought to have?
Let’s say we can all agree that they are angry about something, and that their anger is misplaced. I’d love to put these questions to some of these voters and find out what and why. (But, full disclosure, I live in a big city and don’t fly much.) I think there is something else going on, though, behind all this verbiage about the “forgotten heartland.”
I would suggest that that something going on is in the heads of the commentators rather than people in the heartland themselves. And I feel sure it’s really not about liberals, or elites, or against something liberal elites do. It’s about liberalism itself.
It is a time-honored, classic conservative strategy to turn liberal or left-wing sensibilities against themselves. “You have forgotten the little man, whose champion you otherwise claim to be.” It is intended to take the moral high ground away from altruistic leftists. It is also an attempt to demoralize them. And it works. Many do seem to be troubled by this meme of “liberals have forgotten . . .” something.
I myself am not buying it. (And many commentators, notably on Daily Kos, have said in no uncertain terms that they need not, and will not “apologize” for something liberals have supposedly wrought on the heartland. I am hardly the first).
I would venture to say this meme is coming, at some level, from right-wing think tanks (and New York Times, we see you and we know you well) and their billionaire sugar daddies. Or perhaps even Russian political engineers seeking to sow discord, making red hate blue and blue in turn fed up with red. I cast my vote, so to speak, for this latter alternative.