December 5, 2024 • 45 mins
Arlie Hochschild, a sociologist from Berkely, has spent a chunk of the last decade in ruby red areas of the United States. During that time she’s written two books: Strangers In Their Own Land (which was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2016) and now, Stolen Pride. Arlie interviewed dozens of people from Pike County, Kentucky–the whitest and second poorest district in the country–to better understand what’s happening in the rust belt and why those voters are so drawn to Donald Trump. In her view, it’s not just about the economy, trans rights, or climate change, but about loss, shame, and ultimately pride. Arlie invites us to open our minds and ears so we can learn about one another and begin to come together.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
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Hi everyone, I'm Katie Kuric and this is next question.
(00:24):
Hi everyone, Yes, dear listeners, it's exactly a month since
the election, and as we know, in many ways, it
was a wake up call, a lesson that when it
comes to both sides in this country, neither of us
really get each other. Ourley Hoakeshield, our guest today, teaches
sociology at Berkeley. Yeah. I know what you're thinking, Katie's
(00:46):
talking to another person inside that bubble of hers, But
that is not really the case because for the past
ten years, Arley, who's the grandmother we all wish we had,
by the way, has been traveling to ruby communities to
get a handle on what's really fueling the anger in
our country. For her first book on this topic, Strangers
(01:07):
in their Own Land, she headed to Lake Charles, Louisiana
now Pikeville, Kentucky. In the heart of Appalachia is the
setting of her new book in this same genre, Stolen Pride, Loss, Shame,
and the Rise of the Right. Arley scales what she
calls the empathy Wall and humanizes Americans in these communities
(01:29):
so we can all better understand what is really happening
in our divided country. Arlee High, be there. Goodness, I'm
so excited to meet you and talk to you and
thank you so much for doing this. I don't know
if you had a chance to watch my hour, but
(01:51):
it's so weird.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Yes, you know I didn't. I just now saw it,
but I look forward to seeing it on a white anxiety.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Yes, and it's so so much echoes a lot of
the things. In fact, I'm sort of mad that I
didn't reach out to you when I was working on
this project because it would have been perfect. And I
think your name came up because it came out, I
believe in twenty eighteen my series for National Geographic and
I talked a lot to Joan Williams. I wonder if
(02:19):
you know her. She wrote White Working Class for the
Harvard Business Review and then it became a book. Yes,
but I should have followed you around and we should
have made a whole documentary together. That would have been
awesome because.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
I would take you.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
I think it's interesting because everything you're writing about now
and have written about in the past, is so relevant
to the conversations people are having today. And that's why
I was really excited to have an opportunity to speak
with you, because I think so much of what you've
written about, so much of what you continue to write about,
(02:55):
resonates deeply today because I think you went out to
explore what everyone is now asking, why are we so divided?
Why do we seem like two different countries? And I
think your work really answers those questions, first with a
(03:16):
book you wrote previously called Strangers in their Own Land,
and now a new book called Stolen Pride. I want
to start at the beginning of this journey, though, if
I could. What set you out on this path to
understand what was happening really in Red America?
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Yeah, I feel the way is if America is now
living with two denials. There's the denial of the democratic
side of America that's saying, who are these people? How
silly of them to vote for Donald Trump? And what
big sector of America that has faced tremendous loss and
(03:57):
has lost faith in the government has response to that loss.
There's a denial of the democratic side of America, of
that whole loss story, and I think we have a
big job ahead to address that. But we are facing
I think a danger to democracy, and I think there
is a discounting and a denial of that on the
(04:21):
right side of America. So I think we've got two denials,
need to work on both.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
I love the fact that you describe something called an
empathy wall, and you really look at sociology and society
writ large from an emotional point of view. Why are
people feeling a certain way? And I think you lead
with that Why.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Well, thank you for the question, Katie, because I actually
believe that we all need to become bilingual. That we're
used to speaking just the language of rationality, and what
we need to do is to be able to hear
and speak in emotions, because there's a curious logic to emotions.
(05:14):
There are emotional scripts. There are a whole different story
unfolds if we look at emotions. We are emotional creatures.
We feel fear, we feel distressed, we feel envy, and
in my last book, I feel that we also feel
pride and shame, and that unless we're listening to that,
(05:37):
we're not seeing the whole story. And actually it feels
like the main story, because why is it the main story.
It's the main story because if we go back two
decades and we look at three decades, look at NAFTA
(05:59):
offshoring automation that has created the haves and the have
nots of globalization, and so the haves who live in cities,
who have bas for whom new opportunities have opened up,
aren't looking at the situation of loss. It's not just deprivation,
(06:19):
but loss of actually the white blue collar class. So
they feeling frightened and a sense of loss. So they
have turned to a charismatic figure who works through emotions.
And that's why it's important. I believe, for example, that
(06:40):
Donald Trump has I think actually as a person his
experienced shame and very harsh father, and that would be
neither here nor there, except that it's given him enormous
insight into the pain of unwarranted shame that a lot
of blue color men who feel in free fall have felt.
(07:04):
And he I think offers a four moment anti shaming
ritual that unless we are biling well, we don't hear
and moment one, for example, and it happens repeatedly through
different episodes, but moment one of this anti shaming ritual
(07:27):
is Donald Trump will say something transgressive, like Asian immigrants
are cooking and eating your pedcats and dogs. A moment two,
the punditry shames Donald Trump and says, you can't say that.
I mean, there was one article that turns out it's
(07:47):
not true, and you don't repeat something that isn't true. Okay,
So the punditry shames Donald Trump. Moment three, Donald Trump
becomes the victim of the shamers. Look how hard it
is to be put down, to be vilified, And have
(08:08):
you been put down? They put you down to y'all, Well,
they're putting me down. I'm actually taking the hip for you.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
That's fascinating because a lot of people wonder, you know,
how can people who are struggling financially aspire or admire
someone like Donald Trump who is so wealthy and so
ostentatious and lives a life so completely different than they do.
(08:38):
But you're talking about this shame sharing thing that happens
that makes them gravitate towards someone that it's kind of
a microcosm of what they're feeling daily in their lives.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Exactly, Katie, Exactly, Bingo and moment four, he gets revenge
for the shaming. He tells them off. He turns shame
to blame.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
That is fascinating. Well, let's get back to Stolen Pride,
because well, this is really what we're talking about. But
you ended up in Pike County, Kentucky, the Nations, as
you mentioned, whitest and second poorest congressional district, which by
the way, is just a few hours from where JD.
Vance wrote Hillbilly Elegy.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Well, that's really an interesting psychological turnabout that we can
maybe discuss another time. But Stolen Pride focuses on a
period of time in twenty seventeen leading up to a
plan rally by a white supremacist named Matthew Heinbach, and
(09:48):
you actually got to know him during the course of
writing this book. And you basically start with Matthew Heimback
and another figure in Pikeville who was trying to figure
out whether or not to give Matthew Heinbach's organization a
permit to protest in Pikeville. Tell us about these two
(10:11):
individuals and why you focused on them initially in your book.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
I focused on them initially in my book because I
saw a perfect storm. On the one hand, cold jobs
had gone out, opiates, big crisis ongoing have come in.
And then there was a neo Nazi march promising a false,
(10:38):
I think answer to those problems. This is all white,
so blame blacks. So I thought I was looking at
a perfect storm, and so I decided to listen to
the perpetrator, listen to those who were trying to protect
the community against violence that Matthew him bat seemed to
(11:01):
bring with him, and I also talked to those who
might be hurt by his presence. There was a Holocaust survivor,
a ima, a small local mosque, so the potential villains.
And then I topped to bottom, side to side, interviewed people,
(11:24):
just to try and get a pulse through what eyes
would such a man be seen? Is there an appetite
for fascists in such an otherwise beautiful area with good people?
Could it happen here? And looking at emotions turned out
to be the thing to do.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
And what did you discover, Arlie?
Speaker 2 (11:48):
I discovered that the townspeople were disinterested in Matthew Heinbach.
And they said to me, well, you know our grandfathers.
You see those graves on the Hills. We decorate them
Memorial Day because they fought against fascism. But the book
(12:09):
talks about another parade, and that is for someone that
they were taken with that having given up on regular government,
here came a figure by the name of Donald Trump
who saw them, they felt and understood their grievance. Meanwhile,
(12:32):
the left was laughing at them and not seeing them.
They didn't feel understood. Democratic Party seemed to be putting
others out of them, gay as women and not had
forgotten about social class and laws. And so this Donald
Trump had appeal. And while they said no to Matthew Heinbach,
(12:55):
they said yes to Donald Trump.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
Why did you focus primate early on men in this book?
Speaker 2 (13:02):
I'm interested in who's in trouble and getting them out
of trouble. And I think men are in a crisis.
A white man and black men. And one man explained
the crisis well to me. And our interview began with
his saying, I'm trailer trash okay, And I said, well,
(13:27):
what do you mean you know? And he described his family, said,
we've been poor. I'm on disability myself, and I grew
up with the drugs all around me and frightened of
any knock at the door. And I'm used to being
described as dumb hillbilly. And he said, this America has
(13:52):
two primary narratives. One is of the successful middle class guy,
and they say, well, good for you, you've you've had
a good job and I can support family. You're a success.
You had the American dream. And then America looks at
(14:13):
a poor black man and says, well, you didn't get
the American dream. But that's because of racism. And we
understand that that's that narrative. But what about a guy
like me, He said, who's or and male and white.
There's no explanation for this. I don't have the American
(14:35):
dream and it must be because I'm lazy or I'm done.
So he felt anguished, and he didn't He wasn't for
Donald Trump, but he wasn't for the Democratic Party either.
He felt stuck in the middle. And I think Americans
have of good spirit, you know, on the Democratic side
(15:00):
understand him and reach out to him and say, hey,
we do understand. And that that has been I think
a missing piece of the Democratic Party for a while.
Out the hole. They're not looking at social class and
(15:22):
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(16:12):
about what the Democrats should do more of moving forward
in a moment. But you make an interesting observation in
your book about how Republicans view success and really conversely
poverty and how democrats view success. In other words, you
(16:33):
talk about Republicans inadvertently blaming poor people because they don't
have the pull them up by the bootstrap's mentality, and
as a result, people in red states blame themselves, while
Democrats focus on the big picture and say, it's not
(16:57):
your fault, it's society's fault exactly.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
It's a kind of a pride paradox, we could say.
And it's poignant that those who have suffered the hit
economically are also those who subscribe to individualism, and so
they likely to say Look, if I make it, that's
(17:22):
credit to me, and if I fail, that's my fault,
that's my shame. Whereas people blue states are not taking
such an economic hit, are more likely to have a
circumstantial culture of pride and so well, circumstances were wrong.
(17:42):
It's not me personally that's caused my own failure, so
they're less likely to beat themselves up.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
That's compounded by this distrust or inability to accept the
governs help. Right, So you have people blaming themselves and
thinking that government should not get involved in their lives,
at least financially or helping them. So it seems to
(18:14):
me this has all the makings of a massive shame
spiral for these people in red states.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
That's right, you know, saying, look, we need to lift
the veil and think of feelings in order to see
what's really going on on the other side. And that's
an example of a painful feeling that we need to understand.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
I want to read something from your book because I
think it so clearly illustrates what you're talking about. You write,
So what happens, I wondered when workers are exhorted to
believe that capitalism needs no government hand, and that each
individual working in it bears personal responsibility for how well
(18:58):
or poorly he or she fears. And then companies pull out,
those left behind find themselves trapped inside a pride paradox.
Of course, I'll say this parenthetically. You're referring to these
centers where manufacturing got hollowed out and plants moved to
(19:20):
either like non Union states or overseas, And I think
this quote really describes how people felt. You talked to
one man who I thought really encapsulated the downward spiral
of shame. Who was that?
Speaker 2 (19:39):
Yes, Yes, that was. I'm so delighted that you found
that quote. It did open my own eyes as well.
And that quote comes from a young man who's forty now.
And when I met him, he was homeless and in
(20:03):
a drug recovery center and he had just graduated from
it and twelve years of heroin he had overdosed four times.
I've talked to him over the last six seven years,
(20:25):
some in zoom, and I've talked to his sister who
rescued him. He is an amazing, eye opening person.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
So how old is he now, Arlie?
Speaker 2 (20:36):
He's forty three, and I just talked to him yesterday.
And you know what he told me about denial because
I was telling him I think both left are denying things,
but different things. And he said, the thing about denial
is that you don't know that you are denying. I
(20:58):
love this insight, and he's trying to help us lift
our denial. And I'm doing it by giving my reader
this man.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Well, this is what he said. Shame comes gradually. Let
me give you an example of guys around where I live.
First thing, a guy gets his layoff slip, and he
blames the inspector, then the supervisor. Then he shakes his
fists at the Obama administration for putting in the Clean
Air Act and adds in Biden and the Democratic Party
(21:32):
in the deep State. Then, when his unemployment runs low
and his wife asks for money for groceries for the kids,
he faces a hard choice. If you need money and
don't have a degree, you've got to leave. But his
family's here and he doesn't want to leave. That's when
he starts to feel bad about himself. He looks around
at the jobs at nine or ten fifty an hour,
(21:54):
and he turns his nose up at what he thinks
of as girly service jobs because he can't support his
family on that kind of money. But then his partner says,
we need to feed the kids, so he takes the
crap job, and she says there's still not enough money
for food, gas and fixing the roof. It's then that
his shame begins to get stronger, because now he feels
(22:15):
the problem is on him, And if he leaves on
Route twenty three looking for work and comes back empty handed,
that's shame waiting for him at home. Then if he
gets into drugs take it from me, he's ashamed. That
can lead to divorce and separation from his kids. And
now he's on the dole. He always felt superior to
others he saw on the dole, and now he's on
(22:37):
it too, So he's ashamed about that and mad that
he's made to feel ashamed. Then he may read some
op ed in the Appalachian News Express calling people like
him a deadbeat for not supporting his family and paying
taxes the town needs for its sewer repair. He's not
a contributor. On top of all that, he sees on
the internet people outside the region firing inside at him
(23:00):
as ignorant, racist, sexist, or homophobic. Now he's mad at
the shamers, and by this point he's forgotten about the shame.
He's just plain pissing mad. Doesn't that say it all?
Speaker 2 (23:15):
It really does say it all. It says it all. Yeah,
And so what happens then if you have half the
population that doesn't understand that story, or passes over it,
or doesn't see its significance because they're not looking at feelings,
(23:40):
then you have the situation we're in.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
You know, I've done a lot of reading and reporting
on loneliness and the epidemic of loneliness in this country,
and I have this thesis, and it's probably not original
that a lot of people gravitate to these groups because
they want to belong and it doesn't matter what group
(24:05):
they're joining, they just want to feel a part of something.
And as church attendance and community activities have declined and
kawanis clubs and all those things that used to be
gathering places for people are not as active or accessible,
that people are joining these groups and then they have
(24:30):
the foundation of grievance and loss. It's almost a replacement
for community.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
I love your themes, Katie. I think it's right on.
It's really brilliant.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
It's probably your thesis that I just stole.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
No, no, it's yours, and I think it's another way.
And if we take the blinders of what's going on
on the other side, it makes it more, it makes
it understandable. And with this instead of the Kuwanas club
(25:10):
or the bowling club, we do know that nowurd mobility
goes with a loss of community and more people living
alone and worse health. So put all that together with
this new found community in politics where there's kind of
(25:32):
a it's a Petrie dish for rancor and complaint and
blaming you. Now we we shamed are blaming together collectively.
How fun it is and there's kind of a euphoria
getting rid of the blame and being how together. It's
(25:55):
a new and scary form of community, but is a
response I think to loss.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
When I mentioned that, I was thinking about Alex Hughes,
who really ran into trouble. I'm going to do another
dramatic reading for you, our Lee of your own book.
Here we go. Alex Hughes was part of the eighty
percent of Pike County residents who voted for Donald Trump
in twenty sixteen and twenty twenty. Alex's American dream was
(26:24):
not to own a coal company, but to earn a
bachelor's degree, which required money his family lacked, or to
be a government administrator. Alex's dream was to provide well
for his family, perhaps as a small business owner, and
the economic downturn had been holding a knife to that plan.
His maternal grandfather had been severely injured in the mines
(26:47):
and warned Alex's father and Alex himself to find safer work.
At age sixteen, Alex moved in with his grandparents and
started painting houses. By nineteen he had started a small
business painting houses and married. But by the nineteen nineties,
Alex's bootstrap yes sure strategy no longer brought in steady
(27:08):
work quote and now I had to pay both my
bills and my business loan. By then I was divorced
and had my daughter to care for. So when I
lost my business and got in debt for one hundred
and twenty eight thousand dollars to the irs, that's when
things really got bad. The house gone, the car gone,
(27:28):
the furniture gone, my wife's and my wedding rings ponnd.
I was in freefall. I felt like there was no
place for me. I had to ask myself, what did
I do wrong? This man's life, though, changed, didn't it? Arlie?
When he saw an advertisement for a paid six month
(27:48):
training program sponsored by a Louisville based company called Interapt.
Can you talk about that and how transformative these retraining
programs can be and why we need to do more
of it?
Speaker 2 (28:02):
Right? You know, we were just talking about the importance
of community. Your thesis about hey, the loss of community,
and then there can be these scary adheriant violence substitutes
for community, while INTERAPT isn't just the opposite. Example. Here
(28:23):
is a community of people that Alex joined who happened
to pass the test to qualify for a six month
paid training program in Louisville. And I went to visit
that training program and watch it and talk to the
(28:45):
students there, and one after another after another, all unemployed
had been through rough rough times, many from eastern Kentucky
kind of no good jobs, and they came there, and
like Alex had felt kind of beaten up, he'd try
(29:07):
to start a tattoo parlor, and he blamed himself. I
should have seen the handwriting on the wall. Fewer people
came in I wasn't making money. I didn't redirect. So
he's kind of blaming himself. And he'd been turned down
for a lot of jobs that he applied to, so
(29:30):
he felt shamed and beaten up. So he got to
this interact training program and he's sitting around the table
with ten other students, and if he ran into a
problem and he told him said, look, I can't do
this stuff. You know, I'm not really skilled this way.
(29:50):
The guy next to him was saying, oh yeah, I
used to feel that way. Here's it's easier than you think.
And they would help each other and he he became
a great helper to the others and felt good about
himself to be the helper guy because he really was
gifted with this. And it was, he later said, transformative.
(30:14):
He got his self esteem back, and that's what we're
talking about. We're talking about getting your pride back. And
a lot of your pride can be based on helping others.
And in his case, you know, the sweet, wonderful person,
and he got to be the giver. And so that
(30:38):
was true for other students in this class, whom I
followed back to the tiny towns where I interviewed them,
some lived in places that weren't on the Google map
that had to meet somebody at gas station to go
and visit them.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
If you want to get smarter every morning with a
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Wake Up Call by going to Katiecuric dot com. How
(31:27):
did you get people to open up to you, Arlie?
I mean, you're a woman about my age, maybe a
couple of years older. Old you are, you know, from Berkeley.
Was it hard for you to get people to trust you,
to open up to you, to tell you their stories
(31:50):
and to share their shame.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
No, No, it wasn't hard, and it's I think you're
the same kind of person as Ion. It takes a
little at first, and then you're two people and you're
sitting down and I'm really interested to get to know
their story. And I think what it takes is first
(32:13):
you get your alarm system off, and then if there
are stereotypes to deal with, you deal with them. Like
one guy said, oh, you're from Berkeley, California road and well,
people look down on us. You know, it's done. Hill
relyes like that and people have stereotypes of us, and
(32:34):
I said, yeah, people have stereotypes about people that come
from Berkeley, too, So there was a laugh at that.
And then I share that my grandma grew up on
a dairy farm in Maine, you know, and I was
howeing the garden and loved it, but you know, she
(32:54):
those broccoli really need tending. And they say, well, we
you know, we're ridiculed for accents, our Southern accents. And
I said, well, my father had a very strong Boston accent.
He used to call me Ali's heard my name. I'm
used to it being whirling. So we're in the same ball.
(33:17):
It's not so different like that.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
I think a lot of people could learn from taking
your approach. I do think that people who have college
degrees have been condescending to a lot of these people.
I think it's less about their income and more that
they believe to your earlier point that blaming immigrants, blacks
(33:47):
women for their troubles is just racism and sexism and xenophobia.
How did you come to understand if people were that
way and did you forgive them for those attitudes.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
Yes, there are things I heard that I personally disagree with.
And going in I tell people that we're not going
to agree on a lot of things. That's not why
I'm here to tell you what I believe. I'm really
here because I think a lot of people on the
Democratic side of America aren't listening and don't.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
Get to know you or don't understand.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Yes, that's right. And I guess what I would add
to that is that on the left there are rightesses
against you know, men, I can'tst white men, and that
we need to look again and dismantle. In other words,
they feel like a minority group. I know it sounds.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
Strange, but well, they feel like they've been the target
of reverse racism, they would say. In fact, many of
them told you that right they did.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
So. I think it's time for people on the left
to take their alarm system off to actually actually start,
once we catch our breath, to build new empathy bridges
to portions of the white working class. I don't think
it would be hard to do. And there are many
ways in which Donald Trump is far more extreme than
(35:27):
his followers, and those would be issues on which we
could get common ground, for example, climate change. They're a
majority of Republicans, there majority of Republicans strong majority of
Democrats agree that the government should spend money in remediating
(35:54):
climate change. I don't agree on the causes of it,
but they do agree something should be done about it.
Majority of bare majority of the public, and strong majority
of Democrats agree that children in schools should learn about
climate change and the dangers of it. So that's crossover territory.
(36:15):
I think prison reform you would find quite a lot
of cross party agreement and reproductive rights. So rather than
kind of settling for judgment, we should realize that we've
actually been in denial about a whole social shift that
(36:38):
has led a lot of Americans to become predisposed to
a charismatic leader that's with great promises of a new day.
And it's happening not just in America, it's happening actually
around the world. In this last election, there's been a
giant move away from income and governments toward right wing government.
(37:02):
So you know, we shouldn't say, oh, what did can
will do wrong? You're in there, Okay, we should do
those appraisals, but there is a larger set of forces
and we should I think that's what these last two books,
especially my last strangers to tune into the circumstances and
(37:25):
then the feelings that those circumstances make people feel. So
you get our answers from.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
I was going to say the first step is obviously understanding,
but the second step I don't know. I'm very a
solution oriented person. And since your book is called Stolen Pride,
Lost Shame, and the Rise of the Right, I guess
my final question to you, Arlie is how do we
collectively as a nation restore pride to some of these
(37:55):
towns and some of these people.
Speaker 2 (37:58):
Yeah. Well, I think by making clear that that left
and right share, first of all, the goal of restoring right.
We get it, we want it. That's the first thing
to do. And in doing that first thing, we have
to realize that actually people on the left are less
(38:20):
good at listening across the partisan divide. Recent research found
that people on the liberal left are more likely to
break off contact with people that say something they disagree
with than are people on the right. Whites are more
likely to do it than blacks. So paradox is that
(38:45):
research also shows that conservatives are more likely to soften
their positions if they get to meet somebody face to
face and sit down and get to know them personally.
So we need to break that impass for starters and
then search the kinds of issues in which we could
(39:09):
come to some common agreement. I met a lot of
people in these deep red communities who were for renewable energy.
One big MAGA leader pointed to me said, all those
those sought off mountains there, we need some windmills on
(39:31):
the windmills. So that's a Biden built back better and
the inflation reduction at kind of measures of pain for
that kind of thing. So he he doesn't kind of
acknowledge it, or I don't know. One could say, hey,
(39:51):
that's a good idea. You know, we should have windmills,
so get rid of the shaming by me and on
with on which both sides could outly agree. I think
that's the way to go, and just being a bystander
it's not the way to go. We all need to participate.
(40:15):
Now it's serious what we're facing.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
I kept thinking about Brian Stephenson, and my team is
so sick of me fawning over Brian Stephenson. But he
talks about the need to be proximate, and I think
the fact that there's not much co mingling between people
who live in urban centers and people who live in
more rural communities is part of the problem that we
(40:38):
just don't know people who are really that different from us,
and we all are in our little bubbles, and I
think those need to be penetrated from both sides.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
You know, we used to have labor unions that were
basically the middleman between the working class and the Democratic Party.
Those got undercut by offshoring.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
And by greedy corporations. I should add, but although I
know unions sometimes get out of control, and I have
arguments with friends about unions, and you know, if they're
corrupt and they overreach, but I also think they're so
important to protect people from greedy corporations who just care
about quarterly profits in the bottom line and pleasing their shareholders. Right,
(41:28):
that's right.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
And the terrible thing is the more we don't have
things like unions that ameliorate people's lives, the more distressed
they are, the more emotionally open to charismatic leaders. So
we need to break the cycle.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
My daughter reminded me of an FDR fireside chat that
he gave about the key to stability is really economic prosperity.
For every one, and if you don't have that, or
there's such a huge chasm between the haves and have nots,
that is a recipe for terrible unrest and social instability
(42:14):
and worse. So yeah, I think that we need to
figure out how to make everyone feel like they have
a chance to just have a good life and create
you know, stability for their families and for their children.
Speaker 2 (42:30):
Right, and that just pointing to an enemy, you know,
the intruder of the immigrant, you know, the black, the
woman is not a real solution. But I think we
need to get new channels across this political divide to
(42:54):
stop that blaming and get some faith back, some real
community back in America.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
Well, we'll see if that can happen. I think your
book is a great start for people to read because
I think what you do is humanize people. And I
think so many groups have been dehumanized in our current culture,
whether you're talking about immigrants, or you're talking about black Americans,
(43:22):
or you're talking about poor white men in rural communities,
and I think to give them a name and a
face and to tell their stories is really critically important
for us to better understand what's going on and try
to fix it. Harley, It's been such a pleasure talking
to you. I really enjoyed meeting you, and I love
(43:44):
your work and I'm going to recommend it to all
my friends who are scratching their heads and trying to
understand what's going on in this country of ours.
Speaker 2 (43:54):
Thank you, Katie, you do wonderful work too well. Thanks
a chance to talk to you.
Speaker 1 (44:00):
Thank you, Aurlie. And hopefully we'll meet one day in person.
Speaker 2 (44:04):
Yes, I'm looking forward to that.
Speaker 1 (44:15):
Thanks for listening everyone. If you have a question for me,
a subject you want us to cover, or you want
to share your thoughts about how you navigate this crazy world,
reach out send me a DM on Instagram. I would
love to hear from you. Next Question is a production
of iHeartMedia and Katie Couric Media. The executive producers are Me,
(44:36):
Katie Kuric, and Courtney Ltz. Our supervising producer is Ryan Martz,
and our producers are Adriana Fazzio and Meredith Barnes. Julian
Weller composed our theme music. For more information about today's episode,
or to sign up for my newsletter, wake Up Call,
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(44:57):
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Hi everyone, I'm Katie Kuric and this is next question.
(00:24):
Hi everyone, Yes, dear listeners, it's exactly a month since
the election, and as we know, in many ways, it
was a wake up call, a lesson that when it
comes to both sides in this country, neither of us
really get each other. Ourley Hoakeshield, our guest today, teaches
sociology at Berkeley. Yeah. I know what you're thinking, Katie's
(00:46):
talking to another person inside that bubble of hers, But
that is not really the case because for the past
ten years, Arley, who's the grandmother we all wish we had,
by the way, has been traveling to ruby communities to
get a handle on what's really fueling the anger in
our country. For her first book on this topic, Strangers
(01:07):
in their Own Land, she headed to Lake Charles, Louisiana
now Pikeville, Kentucky. In the heart of Appalachia is the
setting of her new book in this same genre, Stolen Pride, Loss, Shame,
and the Rise of the Right. Arley scales what she
calls the empathy Wall and humanizes Americans in these communities
(01:29):
so we can all better understand what is really happening
in our divided country. Arlee High, be there. Goodness, I'm
so excited to meet you and talk to you and
thank you so much for doing this. I don't know
if you had a chance to watch my hour, but
(01:51):
it's so weird.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Yes, you know I didn't. I just now saw it,
but I look forward to seeing it on a white anxiety.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Yes, and it's so so much echoes a lot of
the things. In fact, I'm sort of mad that I
didn't reach out to you when I was working on
this project because it would have been perfect. And I
think your name came up because it came out, I
believe in twenty eighteen my series for National Geographic and
I talked a lot to Joan Williams. I wonder if
(02:19):
you know her. She wrote White Working Class for the
Harvard Business Review and then it became a book. Yes,
but I should have followed you around and we should
have made a whole documentary together. That would have been
awesome because.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
I would take you.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
I think it's interesting because everything you're writing about now
and have written about in the past, is so relevant
to the conversations people are having today. And that's why
I was really excited to have an opportunity to speak
with you, because I think so much of what you've
written about, so much of what you continue to write about,
(02:55):
resonates deeply today because I think you went out to
explore what everyone is now asking, why are we so divided?
Why do we seem like two different countries? And I
think your work really answers those questions, first with a
(03:16):
book you wrote previously called Strangers in their Own Land,
and now a new book called Stolen Pride. I want
to start at the beginning of this journey, though, if
I could. What set you out on this path to
understand what was happening really in Red America?
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Yeah, I feel the way is if America is now
living with two denials. There's the denial of the democratic
side of America that's saying, who are these people? How
silly of them to vote for Donald Trump? And what
big sector of America that has faced tremendous loss and
(03:57):
has lost faith in the government has response to that loss.
There's a denial of the democratic side of America, of
that whole loss story, and I think we have a
big job ahead to address that. But we are facing
I think a danger to democracy, and I think there
is a discounting and a denial of that on the
(04:21):
right side of America. So I think we've got two denials,
need to work on both.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
I love the fact that you describe something called an
empathy wall, and you really look at sociology and society
writ large from an emotional point of view. Why are
people feeling a certain way? And I think you lead
with that Why.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Well, thank you for the question, Katie, because I actually
believe that we all need to become bilingual. That we're
used to speaking just the language of rationality, and what
we need to do is to be able to hear
and speak in emotions, because there's a curious logic to emotions.
(05:14):
There are emotional scripts. There are a whole different story
unfolds if we look at emotions. We are emotional creatures.
We feel fear, we feel distressed, we feel envy, and
in my last book, I feel that we also feel
pride and shame, and that unless we're listening to that,
(05:37):
we're not seeing the whole story. And actually it feels
like the main story, because why is it the main story.
It's the main story because if we go back two
decades and we look at three decades, look at NAFTA
(05:59):
offshoring automation that has created the haves and the have
nots of globalization, and so the haves who live in cities,
who have bas for whom new opportunities have opened up,
aren't looking at the situation of loss. It's not just deprivation,
(06:19):
but loss of actually the white blue collar class. So
they feeling frightened and a sense of loss. So they
have turned to a charismatic figure who works through emotions.
And that's why it's important. I believe, for example, that
(06:40):
Donald Trump has I think actually as a person his
experienced shame and very harsh father, and that would be
neither here nor there, except that it's given him enormous
insight into the pain of unwarranted shame that a lot
of blue color men who feel in free fall have felt.
(07:04):
And he I think offers a four moment anti shaming
ritual that unless we are biling well, we don't hear
and moment one, for example, and it happens repeatedly through
different episodes, but moment one of this anti shaming ritual
(07:27):
is Donald Trump will say something transgressive, like Asian immigrants
are cooking and eating your pedcats and dogs. A moment two,
the punditry shames Donald Trump and says, you can't say that.
I mean, there was one article that turns out it's
(07:47):
not true, and you don't repeat something that isn't true. Okay,
So the punditry shames Donald Trump. Moment three, Donald Trump
becomes the victim of the shamers. Look how hard it
is to be put down, to be vilified, And have
(08:08):
you been put down? They put you down to y'all, Well,
they're putting me down. I'm actually taking the hip for you.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
That's fascinating because a lot of people wonder, you know,
how can people who are struggling financially aspire or admire
someone like Donald Trump who is so wealthy and so
ostentatious and lives a life so completely different than they do.
(08:38):
But you're talking about this shame sharing thing that happens
that makes them gravitate towards someone that it's kind of
a microcosm of what they're feeling daily in their lives.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Exactly, Katie, Exactly, Bingo and moment four, he gets revenge
for the shaming. He tells them off. He turns shame
to blame.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
That is fascinating. Well, let's get back to Stolen Pride,
because well, this is really what we're talking about. But
you ended up in Pike County, Kentucky, the Nations, as
you mentioned, whitest and second poorest congressional district, which by
the way, is just a few hours from where JD.
Vance wrote Hillbilly Elegy.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Well, that's really an interesting psychological turnabout that we can
maybe discuss another time. But Stolen Pride focuses on a
period of time in twenty seventeen leading up to a
plan rally by a white supremacist named Matthew Heinbach, and
(09:48):
you actually got to know him during the course of
writing this book. And you basically start with Matthew Heimback
and another figure in Pikeville who was trying to figure
out whether or not to give Matthew Heinbach's organization a
permit to protest in Pikeville. Tell us about these two
(10:11):
individuals and why you focused on them initially in your book.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
I focused on them initially in my book because I
saw a perfect storm. On the one hand, cold jobs
had gone out, opiates, big crisis ongoing have come in.
And then there was a neo Nazi march promising a false,
(10:38):
I think answer to those problems. This is all white,
so blame blacks. So I thought I was looking at
a perfect storm, and so I decided to listen to
the perpetrator, listen to those who were trying to protect
the community against violence that Matthew him bat seemed to
(11:01):
bring with him, and I also talked to those who
might be hurt by his presence. There was a Holocaust survivor,
a ima, a small local mosque, so the potential villains.
And then I topped to bottom, side to side, interviewed people,
(11:24):
just to try and get a pulse through what eyes
would such a man be seen? Is there an appetite
for fascists in such an otherwise beautiful area with good people?
Could it happen here? And looking at emotions turned out
to be the thing to do.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
And what did you discover, Arlie?
Speaker 2 (11:48):
I discovered that the townspeople were disinterested in Matthew Heinbach.
And they said to me, well, you know our grandfathers.
You see those graves on the Hills. We decorate them
Memorial Day because they fought against fascism. But the book
(12:09):
talks about another parade, and that is for someone that
they were taken with that having given up on regular government,
here came a figure by the name of Donald Trump
who saw them, they felt and understood their grievance. Meanwhile,
(12:32):
the left was laughing at them and not seeing them.
They didn't feel understood. Democratic Party seemed to be putting
others out of them, gay as women and not had
forgotten about social class and laws. And so this Donald
Trump had appeal. And while they said no to Matthew Heinbach,
(12:55):
they said yes to Donald Trump.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
Why did you focus primate early on men in this book?
Speaker 2 (13:02):
I'm interested in who's in trouble and getting them out
of trouble. And I think men are in a crisis.
A white man and black men. And one man explained
the crisis well to me. And our interview began with
his saying, I'm trailer trash okay, And I said, well,
(13:27):
what do you mean you know? And he described his family, said,
we've been poor. I'm on disability myself, and I grew
up with the drugs all around me and frightened of
any knock at the door. And I'm used to being
described as dumb hillbilly. And he said, this America has
(13:52):
two primary narratives. One is of the successful middle class guy,
and they say, well, good for you, you've you've had
a good job and I can support family. You're a success.
You had the American dream. And then America looks at
(14:13):
a poor black man and says, well, you didn't get
the American dream. But that's because of racism. And we
understand that that's that narrative. But what about a guy
like me, He said, who's or and male and white.
There's no explanation for this. I don't have the American
(14:35):
dream and it must be because I'm lazy or I'm done.
So he felt anguished, and he didn't He wasn't for
Donald Trump, but he wasn't for the Democratic Party either.
He felt stuck in the middle. And I think Americans
have of good spirit, you know, on the Democratic side
(15:00):
understand him and reach out to him and say, hey,
we do understand. And that that has been I think
a missing piece of the Democratic Party for a while.
Out the hole. They're not looking at social class and
(15:22):
you need.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
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(16:12):
about what the Democrats should do more of moving forward
in a moment. But you make an interesting observation in
your book about how Republicans view success and really conversely
poverty and how democrats view success. In other words, you
(16:33):
talk about Republicans inadvertently blaming poor people because they don't
have the pull them up by the bootstrap's mentality, and
as a result, people in red states blame themselves, while
Democrats focus on the big picture and say, it's not
(16:57):
your fault, it's society's fault exactly.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
It's a kind of a pride paradox, we could say.
And it's poignant that those who have suffered the hit
economically are also those who subscribe to individualism, and so
they likely to say Look, if I make it, that's
(17:22):
credit to me, and if I fail, that's my fault,
that's my shame. Whereas people blue states are not taking
such an economic hit, are more likely to have a
circumstantial culture of pride and so well, circumstances were wrong.
(17:42):
It's not me personally that's caused my own failure, so
they're less likely to beat themselves up.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
That's compounded by this distrust or inability to accept the
governs help. Right, So you have people blaming themselves and
thinking that government should not get involved in their lives,
at least financially or helping them. So it seems to
(18:14):
me this has all the makings of a massive shame
spiral for these people in red states.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
That's right, you know, saying, look, we need to lift
the veil and think of feelings in order to see
what's really going on on the other side. And that's
an example of a painful feeling that we need to understand.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
I want to read something from your book because I
think it so clearly illustrates what you're talking about. You write,
So what happens, I wondered when workers are exhorted to
believe that capitalism needs no government hand, and that each
individual working in it bears personal responsibility for how well
(18:58):
or poorly he or she fears. And then companies pull out,
those left behind find themselves trapped inside a pride paradox.
Of course, I'll say this parenthetically. You're referring to these
centers where manufacturing got hollowed out and plants moved to
(19:20):
either like non Union states or overseas, And I think
this quote really describes how people felt. You talked to
one man who I thought really encapsulated the downward spiral
of shame. Who was that?
Speaker 2 (19:39):
Yes, Yes, that was. I'm so delighted that you found
that quote. It did open my own eyes as well.
And that quote comes from a young man who's forty now.
And when I met him, he was homeless and in
(20:03):
a drug recovery center and he had just graduated from
it and twelve years of heroin he had overdosed four times.
I've talked to him over the last six seven years,
(20:25):
some in zoom, and I've talked to his sister who
rescued him. He is an amazing, eye opening person.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
So how old is he now, Arlie?
Speaker 2 (20:36):
He's forty three, and I just talked to him yesterday.
And you know what he told me about denial because
I was telling him I think both left are denying things,
but different things. And he said, the thing about denial
is that you don't know that you are denying. I
(20:58):
love this insight, and he's trying to help us lift
our denial. And I'm doing it by giving my reader
this man.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Well, this is what he said. Shame comes gradually. Let
me give you an example of guys around where I live.
First thing, a guy gets his layoff slip, and he
blames the inspector, then the supervisor. Then he shakes his
fists at the Obama administration for putting in the Clean
Air Act and adds in Biden and the Democratic Party
(21:32):
in the deep State. Then, when his unemployment runs low
and his wife asks for money for groceries for the kids,
he faces a hard choice. If you need money and
don't have a degree, you've got to leave. But his
family's here and he doesn't want to leave. That's when
he starts to feel bad about himself. He looks around
at the jobs at nine or ten fifty an hour,
(21:54):
and he turns his nose up at what he thinks
of as girly service jobs because he can't support his
family on that kind of money. But then his partner says,
we need to feed the kids, so he takes the
crap job, and she says there's still not enough money
for food, gas and fixing the roof. It's then that
his shame begins to get stronger, because now he feels
(22:15):
the problem is on him, And if he leaves on
Route twenty three looking for work and comes back empty handed,
that's shame waiting for him at home. Then if he
gets into drugs take it from me, he's ashamed. That
can lead to divorce and separation from his kids. And
now he's on the dole. He always felt superior to
others he saw on the dole, and now he's on
(22:37):
it too, So he's ashamed about that and mad that
he's made to feel ashamed. Then he may read some
op ed in the Appalachian News Express calling people like
him a deadbeat for not supporting his family and paying
taxes the town needs for its sewer repair. He's not
a contributor. On top of all that, he sees on
the internet people outside the region firing inside at him
(23:00):
as ignorant, racist, sexist, or homophobic. Now he's mad at
the shamers, and by this point he's forgotten about the shame.
He's just plain pissing mad. Doesn't that say it all?
Speaker 2 (23:15):
It really does say it all. It says it all. Yeah,
And so what happens then if you have half the
population that doesn't understand that story, or passes over it,
or doesn't see its significance because they're not looking at feelings,
(23:40):
then you have the situation we're in.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
You know, I've done a lot of reading and reporting
on loneliness and the epidemic of loneliness in this country,
and I have this thesis, and it's probably not original
that a lot of people gravitate to these groups because
they want to belong and it doesn't matter what group
(24:05):
they're joining, they just want to feel a part of something.
And as church attendance and community activities have declined and
kawanis clubs and all those things that used to be
gathering places for people are not as active or accessible,
that people are joining these groups and then they have
(24:30):
the foundation of grievance and loss. It's almost a replacement
for community.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
I love your themes, Katie. I think it's right on.
It's really brilliant.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
It's probably your thesis that I just stole.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
No, no, it's yours, and I think it's another way.
And if we take the blinders of what's going on
on the other side, it makes it more, it makes
it understandable. And with this instead of the Kuwanas club
(25:10):
or the bowling club, we do know that nowurd mobility
goes with a loss of community and more people living
alone and worse health. So put all that together with
this new found community in politics where there's kind of
(25:32):
a it's a Petrie dish for rancor and complaint and
blaming you. Now we we shamed are blaming together collectively.
How fun it is and there's kind of a euphoria
getting rid of the blame and being how together. It's
(25:55):
a new and scary form of community, but is a
response I think to loss.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
When I mentioned that, I was thinking about Alex Hughes,
who really ran into trouble. I'm going to do another
dramatic reading for you, our Lee of your own book.
Here we go. Alex Hughes was part of the eighty
percent of Pike County residents who voted for Donald Trump
in twenty sixteen and twenty twenty. Alex's American dream was
(26:24):
not to own a coal company, but to earn a
bachelor's degree, which required money his family lacked, or to
be a government administrator. Alex's dream was to provide well
for his family, perhaps as a small business owner, and
the economic downturn had been holding a knife to that plan.
His maternal grandfather had been severely injured in the mines
(26:47):
and warned Alex's father and Alex himself to find safer work.
At age sixteen, Alex moved in with his grandparents and
started painting houses. By nineteen he had started a small
business painting houses and married. But by the nineteen nineties,
Alex's bootstrap yes sure strategy no longer brought in steady
(27:08):
work quote and now I had to pay both my
bills and my business loan. By then I was divorced
and had my daughter to care for. So when I
lost my business and got in debt for one hundred
and twenty eight thousand dollars to the irs, that's when
things really got bad. The house gone, the car gone,
(27:28):
the furniture gone, my wife's and my wedding rings ponnd.
I was in freefall. I felt like there was no
place for me. I had to ask myself, what did
I do wrong? This man's life, though, changed, didn't it? Arlie?
When he saw an advertisement for a paid six month
(27:48):
training program sponsored by a Louisville based company called Interapt.
Can you talk about that and how transformative these retraining
programs can be and why we need to do more
of it?
Speaker 2 (28:02):
Right? You know, we were just talking about the importance
of community. Your thesis about hey, the loss of community,
and then there can be these scary adheriant violence substitutes
for community, while INTERAPT isn't just the opposite. Example. Here
(28:23):
is a community of people that Alex joined who happened
to pass the test to qualify for a six month
paid training program in Louisville. And I went to visit
that training program and watch it and talk to the
(28:45):
students there, and one after another after another, all unemployed
had been through rough rough times, many from eastern Kentucky
kind of no good jobs, and they came there, and
like Alex had felt kind of beaten up, he'd try
(29:07):
to start a tattoo parlor, and he blamed himself. I
should have seen the handwriting on the wall. Fewer people
came in I wasn't making money. I didn't redirect. So
he's kind of blaming himself. And he'd been turned down
for a lot of jobs that he applied to, so
(29:30):
he felt shamed and beaten up. So he got to
this interact training program and he's sitting around the table
with ten other students, and if he ran into a
problem and he told him said, look, I can't do
this stuff. You know, I'm not really skilled this way.
(29:50):
The guy next to him was saying, oh yeah, I
used to feel that way. Here's it's easier than you think.
And they would help each other and he he became
a great helper to the others and felt good about
himself to be the helper guy because he really was
gifted with this. And it was, he later said, transformative.
(30:14):
He got his self esteem back, and that's what we're
talking about. We're talking about getting your pride back. And
a lot of your pride can be based on helping others.
And in his case, you know, the sweet, wonderful person,
and he got to be the giver. And so that
(30:38):
was true for other students in this class, whom I
followed back to the tiny towns where I interviewed them,
some lived in places that weren't on the Google map
that had to meet somebody at gas station to go
and visit them.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
If you want to get smarter every morning with a
breakdown of the news and fascinating takes on health and
wellness and pop culture, sign up for our daily newsletter,
Wake Up Call by going to Katiecuric dot com. How
(31:27):
did you get people to open up to you, Arlie?
I mean, you're a woman about my age, maybe a
couple of years older. Old you are, you know, from Berkeley.
Was it hard for you to get people to trust you,
to open up to you, to tell you their stories
(31:50):
and to share their shame.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
No, No, it wasn't hard, and it's I think you're
the same kind of person as Ion. It takes a
little at first, and then you're two people and you're
sitting down and I'm really interested to get to know
their story. And I think what it takes is first
(32:13):
you get your alarm system off, and then if there
are stereotypes to deal with, you deal with them. Like
one guy said, oh, you're from Berkeley, California road and well,
people look down on us. You know, it's done. Hill
relyes like that and people have stereotypes of us, and
(32:34):
I said, yeah, people have stereotypes about people that come
from Berkeley, too, So there was a laugh at that.
And then I share that my grandma grew up on
a dairy farm in Maine, you know, and I was
howeing the garden and loved it, but you know, she
(32:54):
those broccoli really need tending. And they say, well, we
you know, we're ridiculed for accents, our Southern accents. And
I said, well, my father had a very strong Boston accent.
He used to call me Ali's heard my name. I'm
used to it being whirling. So we're in the same ball.
(33:17):
It's not so different like that.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
I think a lot of people could learn from taking
your approach. I do think that people who have college
degrees have been condescending to a lot of these people.
I think it's less about their income and more that
they believe to your earlier point that blaming immigrants, blacks
(33:47):
women for their troubles is just racism and sexism and xenophobia.
How did you come to understand if people were that
way and did you forgive them for those attitudes.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
Yes, there are things I heard that I personally disagree with.
And going in I tell people that we're not going
to agree on a lot of things. That's not why
I'm here to tell you what I believe. I'm really
here because I think a lot of people on the
Democratic side of America aren't listening and don't.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
Get to know you or don't understand.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Yes, that's right. And I guess what I would add
to that is that on the left there are rightesses
against you know, men, I can'tst white men, and that
we need to look again and dismantle. In other words,
they feel like a minority group. I know it sounds.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
Strange, but well, they feel like they've been the target
of reverse racism, they would say. In fact, many of
them told you that right they did.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
So. I think it's time for people on the left
to take their alarm system off to actually actually start,
once we catch our breath, to build new empathy bridges
to portions of the white working class. I don't think
it would be hard to do. And there are many
ways in which Donald Trump is far more extreme than
(35:27):
his followers, and those would be issues on which we
could get common ground, for example, climate change. They're a
majority of Republicans, there majority of Republicans strong majority of
Democrats agree that the government should spend money in remediating
(35:54):
climate change. I don't agree on the causes of it,
but they do agree something should be done about it.
Majority of bare majority of the public, and strong majority
of Democrats agree that children in schools should learn about
climate change and the dangers of it. So that's crossover territory.
(36:15):
I think prison reform you would find quite a lot
of cross party agreement and reproductive rights. So rather than
kind of settling for judgment, we should realize that we've
actually been in denial about a whole social shift that
(36:38):
has led a lot of Americans to become predisposed to
a charismatic leader that's with great promises of a new day.
And it's happening not just in America, it's happening actually
around the world. In this last election, there's been a
giant move away from income and governments toward right wing government.
(37:02):
So you know, we shouldn't say, oh, what did can
will do wrong? You're in there, Okay, we should do
those appraisals, but there is a larger set of forces
and we should I think that's what these last two books,
especially my last strangers to tune into the circumstances and
(37:25):
then the feelings that those circumstances make people feel. So
you get our answers from.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
I was going to say the first step is obviously understanding,
but the second step I don't know. I'm very a
solution oriented person. And since your book is called Stolen Pride,
Lost Shame, and the Rise of the Right, I guess
my final question to you, Arlie is how do we
collectively as a nation restore pride to some of these
(37:55):
towns and some of these people.
Speaker 2 (37:58):
Yeah. Well, I think by making clear that that left
and right share, first of all, the goal of restoring right.
We get it, we want it. That's the first thing
to do. And in doing that first thing, we have
to realize that actually people on the left are less
(38:20):
good at listening across the partisan divide. Recent research found
that people on the liberal left are more likely to
break off contact with people that say something they disagree
with than are people on the right. Whites are more
likely to do it than blacks. So paradox is that
(38:45):
research also shows that conservatives are more likely to soften
their positions if they get to meet somebody face to
face and sit down and get to know them personally.
So we need to break that impass for starters and
then search the kinds of issues in which we could
(39:09):
come to some common agreement. I met a lot of
people in these deep red communities who were for renewable energy.
One big MAGA leader pointed to me said, all those
those sought off mountains there, we need some windmills on
(39:31):
the windmills. So that's a Biden built back better and
the inflation reduction at kind of measures of pain for
that kind of thing. So he he doesn't kind of
acknowledge it, or I don't know. One could say, hey,
(39:51):
that's a good idea. You know, we should have windmills,
so get rid of the shaming by me and on
with on which both sides could outly agree. I think
that's the way to go, and just being a bystander
it's not the way to go. We all need to participate.
(40:15):
Now it's serious what we're facing.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
I kept thinking about Brian Stephenson, and my team is
so sick of me fawning over Brian Stephenson. But he
talks about the need to be proximate, and I think
the fact that there's not much co mingling between people
who live in urban centers and people who live in
more rural communities is part of the problem that we
(40:38):
just don't know people who are really that different from us,
and we all are in our little bubbles, and I
think those need to be penetrated from both sides.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
You know, we used to have labor unions that were
basically the middleman between the working class and the Democratic Party.
Those got undercut by offshoring.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
And by greedy corporations. I should add, but although I
know unions sometimes get out of control, and I have
arguments with friends about unions, and you know, if they're
corrupt and they overreach, but I also think they're so
important to protect people from greedy corporations who just care
about quarterly profits in the bottom line and pleasing their shareholders. Right,
(41:28):
that's right.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
And the terrible thing is the more we don't have
things like unions that ameliorate people's lives, the more distressed
they are, the more emotionally open to charismatic leaders. So
we need to break the cycle.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
My daughter reminded me of an FDR fireside chat that
he gave about the key to stability is really economic prosperity.
For every one, and if you don't have that, or
there's such a huge chasm between the haves and have nots,
that is a recipe for terrible unrest and social instability
(42:14):
and worse. So yeah, I think that we need to
figure out how to make everyone feel like they have
a chance to just have a good life and create
you know, stability for their families and for their children.
Speaker 2 (42:30):
Right, and that just pointing to an enemy, you know,
the intruder of the immigrant, you know, the black, the
woman is not a real solution. But I think we
need to get new channels across this political divide to
(42:54):
stop that blaming and get some faith back, some real
community back in America.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
Well, we'll see if that can happen. I think your
book is a great start for people to read because
I think what you do is humanize people. And I
think so many groups have been dehumanized in our current culture,
whether you're talking about immigrants, or you're talking about black Americans,
(43:22):
or you're talking about poor white men in rural communities,
and I think to give them a name and a
face and to tell their stories is really critically important
for us to better understand what's going on and try
to fix it. Harley, It's been such a pleasure talking
to you. I really enjoyed meeting you, and I love
(43:44):
your work and I'm going to recommend it to all
my friends who are scratching their heads and trying to
understand what's going on in this country of ours.
Speaker 2 (43:54):
Thank you, Katie, you do wonderful work too well. Thanks
a chance to talk to you.
Speaker 1 (44:00):
Thank you, Aurlie. And hopefully we'll meet one day in person.
Speaker 2 (44:04):
Yes, I'm looking forward to that.
Speaker 1 (44:15):
Thanks for listening everyone. If you have a question for me,
a subject you want us to cover, or you want
to share your thoughts about how you navigate this crazy world,
reach out send me a DM on Instagram. I would
love to hear from you. Next Question is a production
of iHeartMedia and Katie Couric Media. The executive producers are Me,
(44:36):
Katie Kuric, and Courtney Ltz. Our supervising producer is Ryan Martz,
and our producers are Adriana Fazzio and Meredith Barnes. Julian
Weller composed our theme music. For more information about today's episode,
or to sign up for my newsletter, wake Up Call,
go to the description in the podcast app or visit
(44:57):
us at Katiecuric dot com. You can also find me
on Instagram and all my social media channels. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows into It. Credit
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(45:19):
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