In her 2016 bestselling book Strangers in Their Own Land, UC Berkeley sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild proposed that everyone has a “deep story” — a narrative about one’s life and the world that’s based more on emotion than facts, a story that feels true.
For Tea Party conservatives who gave rise to Donald Trump nearly a decade ago, their shared deep story was focused on the American Dream. That dream was just over the hill, they told themselves. But the line approaching it was not moving. Then, refugees, women and people of color jumped ahead, and President Barack Obama’s policies encouraged them to cut in line. Meanwhile, white men without college degrees stood still and grew more resentful by the day.
Now, eight years later, Hochschild’s new book Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame and the Rise of the Rightproposes that the deep story explaining Trump’s continued support needs a new chapter.
In it are two bullies, she writes, recounting a more recent conversation with a mayor in the heart of Appalachia. There’s the ominous bad bully — a group that includes the Democratic Party, the Justice Department, CNN — that pushes around the downtrodden and encourages line-cutting. And there’s a good bully — Trump — who arrives to battle against an expanding list of enemies.
“The ‘they’ has grown larger,” Hochschild told UC Berkeley News last week, and Trump has taken on and embraced being their “shame shield.”