Does This Help Clarify "Those" Attitudes For You?
I just read a few paragraphs of my New York Times "On Politics" feed that actually spoke straight to my puzzlement of "HOW?" and "WHY?" could/do so many American citizens have ANY Faith whatsoever in Our National Embarrassment and his overall nonsense. Although I still don't agree with that particular mindset and absolutely not with the Spoiled Brat in the White House, I can almost understand why some other people might make the mistake of doing so.
Check this out and tell me what you think:
"From Opinion: The status food fight underlying Trumpism
Imagine a white guy - perhaps one ZIP code away from a booming gentrifying city - who grew up in an economically mobile household but who also hasn’t seen his real wages increase since he entered the work force, like the typical American male worker who earned less in 2014 than in 1973. These days, he can’t even really afford to take his wife on a fancy dinner date. Yet ever since the Obama administration, from what this guy can see - or lets himself see and is pushed by a conservative media-sphere to see - minorities who make more money than him or have higher status are plentiful but claim that they’re oppressed.
Of course, we don’t have to imagine this guy, or his views, because those views are a very rough approximation of how many people feel. And it’s not surprising that President Trump appealed to them. As Thomas B. Edsall wrote in his column this week, the president’s campaign “and the Republican Party have fought to enhance the status of white Christians and white people without college degrees: the white working and middle class.” However lacking in context or empathy their grievances may be, “rising anxiety over declining social status tells us a lot about how we got here and where we’re going” in American politics. In the coming years, it could become, as the headline for the piece puts it, “The Resentment That Never Sleeps.”
“Diminished status has become a source of rage on both the left and right, sharpened by divisions over economic security and insecurity, geography and, ultimately, values,” he writes.
As Cecilia L. Ridgeway, a professor at Stanford, told him: “Status has always been part of American politics, but right now a variety of social changes have threatened the status of working class and rural whites who used to feel they had a secure, middle status position in American society - not the glitzy top, but respectable, ‘Main Street’ core of America. The reduction of working-class wages and job security, growing demographic diversity, and increasing urbanization of the population have greatly undercut that sense and fueled political reaction.”
- Talmon Smith"
Check this out and tell me what you think:
"From Opinion: The status food fight underlying Trumpism
Imagine a white guy - perhaps one ZIP code away from a booming gentrifying city - who grew up in an economically mobile household but who also hasn’t seen his real wages increase since he entered the work force, like the typical American male worker who earned less in 2014 than in 1973. These days, he can’t even really afford to take his wife on a fancy dinner date. Yet ever since the Obama administration, from what this guy can see - or lets himself see and is pushed by a conservative media-sphere to see - minorities who make more money than him or have higher status are plentiful but claim that they’re oppressed.
Of course, we don’t have to imagine this guy, or his views, because those views are a very rough approximation of how many people feel. And it’s not surprising that President Trump appealed to them. As Thomas B. Edsall wrote in his column this week, the president’s campaign “and the Republican Party have fought to enhance the status of white Christians and white people without college degrees: the white working and middle class.” However lacking in context or empathy their grievances may be, “rising anxiety over declining social status tells us a lot about how we got here and where we’re going” in American politics. In the coming years, it could become, as the headline for the piece puts it, “The Resentment That Never Sleeps.”
“Diminished status has become a source of rage on both the left and right, sharpened by divisions over economic security and insecurity, geography and, ultimately, values,” he writes.
As Cecilia L. Ridgeway, a professor at Stanford, told him: “Status has always been part of American politics, but right now a variety of social changes have threatened the status of working class and rural whites who used to feel they had a secure, middle status position in American society - not the glitzy top, but respectable, ‘Main Street’ core of America. The reduction of working-class wages and job security, growing demographic diversity, and increasing urbanization of the population have greatly undercut that sense and fueled political reaction.”
- Talmon Smith"