The politics of counter-resentment
I promise I'll stop writing about the election… soon
The story we've been told goes like this: Over the past three or four decades, globalization and free trade fractured the United States by leading to the decline of domestic manufacturing, the elimination of high paying working class jobs, and the hollowing out of the interior of the country. Once-prosperous middle American towns fell into decline as their economic prospects dimmed, white unemployment rose and disability claims increased, and fentanyl started to pick off the children of those who remained. All the while, big city liberals sneered as they cheered for woke policies that further punished the white working class by vilifying them as racist, backwards hicks. Eventually, enough resentment at this mistreatment built up for Donald Trump to become the 45th President of the United States.
That is all quite true, at least up until the last two sentences. Those I'm not so sure about. No, I don't mean the part about the resentment; that's obvious. I'm talking about the sneering.
During the 2016 election I was living in San Francisco with no shortage of liberal Democrats in my social circle. Perhaps the following statement is tainted by hindsight bias, but this is really how I remember it at the time: Of the many dozens of people I knew at the time who were the kind of outspoken Democrats who taped "I'm with Her" posters onto their bay windows, I can only think of two who actually fit the overt sneering stereotype1. Most of us were focused on the normal Democratic stuff — climate, reproductive rights, healthcare, gun control — not class warfare. As far as the two sneerers went, the rest of us usually avoided talking politics with them because their opinions seemed so unfair and toxic. The sneering stereotype, while it did describe a small extreme minority, was quite obviously a Rush Limbaugh-calibre smear2.
Now I don't doubt that the media contains many such depictions of the over-educated smug cosmopolitan liberal, and I recognize that since many people in certain parts of the country don't get to interact with Democrats much, they might take their impression of liberalism from Rachel Maddow the same way many on the left conflate everyone in MAGA with the QAnon Shaman. That's how it works now in the era of social and mass media, right? We learn about the world by consuming digestible propaganda from our little devices?
But it's a fact that many Democrats in 2016, including “elite” tech workers I knew in San Francisco, voted that way (perhaps against their own economic interests) because they felt in their hearts that poor and lower middle income people should have healthcare coverage3. I mean, shit, Bernie Sanders almost won the Democratic nomination in 2016 and at least half of my friends liked him more than Hillary. So I really struggle with empathizing with this stereotyped narrative because, as a center-left Democrat who thinks that Trump might be good for me personally but will harm his own supporters, I feel grouped into a “sneering” cliché that I legitimately find offensive.
To state the obvious, people tend to grow resentful when they feel stereotyped. If I were a construction worker in a red state who saw slick talking heads calling me a dumb deplorable every time I turned on the television, I'd probably be mad enough to vote for Donald Trump.
But I’m not; I’m me. And I’m starting to feel resentful anyways. I resent the fact that every time I log onto Twitter I see somebody call my political tribe a bunch of child molesters and communists. I'm tired of people telling me that I hate America, that I hate my own race, that I am the enemy. And I can't be the only one who is starting to feel this way. Is there a rule that only Caucasians in America who are allowed to grow resentful at their media portrayal are the rural white working class? The rule might need updating.
You might be thinking "Well, they didn't really tell you, did they? You just saw them say that to other people on the Internet." Okay, and how many New York liberals have walked up to a Kentucky farmer and told him to his face that he's an inbred bumpkin? Virtually all of these impressions are generated indirectly4 by a media apparatus that wants to divide us into groups so they can more effectively sell to us. It's not that urban liberals hated rural conservatives more in 2016 than they did in 1996. It's that in 2016, there were myriad more avenues for rural conservatives to be informed just how much liberals supposedly despise them. I can't begin to tell you how many election retrospectives I read post-2016 that included a quote from a Trump voter claiming "they hate us," they meaning people like me. I do? Are you sure?
Here's my prediction. If Trump wins the election in 8 days, the next four years will see the rise of a new Democratic nominee, a "Democrat Trump", who wields grievance rhetoric and a loose attachment to the truth just as well as his counterpart, except this time from the left5. And this will truly be the end of "establishment politics.” From now on the only political tool that works anymore will be the politics of resentment.
Evidence of this would be saying things like "Those people in flyover states are all racist" or "Why don't they all just move to California and take a coding bootcamp?"
Basically, it's the mirror image of the trope that all conservatives are racist.
You do know that one of Trump’s first acts as President was to attempt a repeal of the ACA that would throw 32 million Americans off health insurance coverage, and that he will likely attempt this again as President, right? Just making sure you’re paying attention.
It's not like you or I have ever met Donald Trump, despite all the opinions we have on him. Although, we were both in attendance at last week's Steeler game against the Jets. If Aaron Rodgers’ performance that night was a bellwether for Trump’s upcoming election results, Harris is going to win Texas.
Imagine a mashup of Bernie Sanders and Mark Cuban, but with an enormous meth habit.