Quotations (20)

Strangers in Their Own Land

Anger and Mourning on the American Right
1 to 20 of 20 items
"Regulation is like cement: you lay it down, and it hardens and stays there forever."
Implicitly, Trump promised to make men "great again," too. . . .Trump was the identity politics candidate for white men.
Of course people want to feel good about themselves. . . . And while economic self-interest is never entirely absent [as in Thomas Frank's "What's the Matter with Kansas?"], what I discovered was the profound importance of . . . release…
In the realm of emotions, the right felt like they were being treated as the criminals, and the liberals had the guns.
Oil is the new cotton, but the plantation culture persists. "Confederates tried to get out from under the control of the federal government -- to secede. But you can't secede from oil. And you can't secede from a mentality. You have…
. . .one more thing - the federal government wasn't on the side of men being manly. Liberals were certainly on the wrong side of that one. It wasn't easy being a man. It was an era of numerous subtle challenges to masculinity, it seemed.…
The 'federal government' filled a mental space in Mike's mind - and in the minds of all those on the right I came to know - associated with a financial sinkhole.
In 1980. . .in Lake Peigneur. . . .Texaco had drilled a hole in the bottom of the lake and punctured an underlying salt dome. The resulting whirlpool had sucked down two drilling platforms, eleven barges, four flatbed trucks, a tugboat,…
The free market was the unwavering ally of the good citizens waiting in line for the American Dream. The federal government was on the side of those unjustly "cutting in." In the undeclared class war, expressed through the weary,…
Behind it all. . .lay a deep story. A deep story is a "feels-as-if-story." Like a dream, it is told in the language of symbols. It removes judgment. It removes fact. It tells us how things feel. . . . The deep story here, that of the…
Churches typically ask parishioners to tithe -- to give 10 percent of their income. For many, this is a large sum, but it is considered an honor to give it. They PAY taxes, but they GIVE at church.
People speak of children not as "going to church," but as being "churched." And this is said with the same pride as others might say "highly educated" or "well mannered."
". . . a free-market economy in a highly regulation-averse culture. . ." ". . .a culture in which the state [environmental protection] agency is expected to protect industry."
Congressman Boustany was a mainstream Republican. . . . He could both complain about Washington being too out of touch and put you in touch with it.
I was backing into the picture I wanted to see by noticing what wasn't in it. . . . I found myself focusing not on what people remembered, focused on, and said, but on what they forgot, disregarded, and did not say.
A political campaign has a central place in the cultural life of a people. It tells citizens what issues powerful people think are worth hearing about.
"The state always seems to come down on the little guy. Take this bayou. If your motorboat leaks a little gas into the water, the warden'll write you up. But if companies leak thousands of gallons of it and kill all the life here? The…
I feel as if I've come upon the scene of a slow-motion crime.
. . . as a sociologist, I had keen interest in how life feels to people on the right - that is, the emotion that underlies politics. To understand their emotions, I had to imagine myself into their shoes. Trying this, I came upon their…
Jackie's impulse to clean up the environment had also been tempered by her faith. "I'm probably less of a an activist than I would be because of my faith today," she says. "As a kid, I wrote every president to tell him what I thought he…