White Working-Class Decay Is a Real Phenomenon
Category: News & Politics
Via: nerm-l • last year • 15 commentsBy: Nathan Ehrenreich (National Review)
Ehrenreich provides a solid explanation for what is happening. Sticking fingers in ears and chanting Kamala-lala-lala-la won't make that explanation go away, either. In fact, dismissing and ignoring the core issue that Ehrenreich addresses really does provide a rational explanation for how we got her.
The elite class prosecuting Trump for elite crimes won't persuade anyone. A Harvard law professor looking down his nose at people is only an elitist snob undeserving of serious attention. Jack Smith, Alvin Bragg, and, even, Merrick Garland are playing the role of Dylan Mulvaney in this bit of strictly elitist political theater. People aren't drinking what they're selling.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
I appreciate Dominic’s must-read response to my piece this morning in which I touched on the phenomenon of working-class whites in Middle America who find themselves and their communities in “states of dissatisfaction, decay, and discombobulation.” He rightfully notes that “there are plenty of people living in urban areas on the coasts who are dissatisfied, decaying, or discombobulated as well.” To an extent, I take Dominic’s point, but I maintain that there is a unique (in both kind and degree) sort of decay in white, working-class communities in Middle America — and I think that conclusion is largely supported by the data.
Take drug overdoses, which Dominic references. Dominic lists the ten states with the lowest overdose rates, but not the ten with the highest . I’ll do so here:
- West Virginia
- Tennessee
- Louisiana
- Kentucky
- Delaware
- New Mexico
- Ohio
- Maine
- Pennsylvania
- Indiana
And now the ten states with the highest suicide rates:
- Wyoming
- Montana
- Alaska
- New Mexico
- South Dakota
- Colorado
- Oklahoma
- Nevada
- North Dakota
- Arkansas
And here are the ten states with the lowest estimated levels of happiness according to a 2022 study attempting to aggregate 30 relevant factors:
- West Virginia
- Louisiana
- Arkansas
- Kentucky
- Alabama
- Mississippi
- Oklahoma
- Tennessee
- New Mexico
- Missouri
So yes, “there are are plenty of people living in urban areas on the coasts who are dissatisfied, decaying, or discombobulated as well.” But to the same extent? With the same life-ending consequences?
Now, on matters of economics, I’m not even going to attempt to argue with Dominic — he would pummel me so thoroughly that I fear it would rival the worst defeats of my beloved Cleveland Browns. But I will note that Dominic’s assertion that “nobody actually has the capability to direct trillions of dollars in economic output across hundreds of millions of people over millions of square miles in such a way as to screw specific geographic areas on purpose” does not mean that elites did not do so accidentally . And even highly destructive accidents of elite behavior, of course, should be of particular concern to those (not referring to Dominic) criticizing “Rich Men North of Richmond” singer Oliver Anthony for failing to emphasize human agency and personal responsibility. “It wasn’t on purpose” isn’t all that satisfying a response to someone whose family member died of a drug overdose as a result of elites failing to patrol the southern border.
And finally, I believe that Trump voters (which I focused on in my original piece) do believe in a very real sense that they are victims of the elites — I’m struggling to see Trump’s primary victory in 2016 any other way. As a matter of fact, it was already apparent in 2016 that the local mortality rate for whites was significantly correlated with support for Donald Trump in the primaries (for those interested in the relationship between social capital and Trump primary support, Tim Carney’s Alienated America is a must-read). And as the Washington Post noted in March of 2016, “most demographic groups saw a decline in their mortality rate over the past 15 years. Whites with little education saw an increase” (that is true for whites in general as well).
In sum, I agree with Dominic that
[M]any individuals and communities in middle America do find themselves in states of dissatisfaction, decay, and discombobulation, but many do not. Many individuals and communities in urban America also find themselves in states of dissatisfaction, decay, and discombobulation. The causes for each are varied and often context-specific.
But that every white, working-class Middle American (or even a majority) is not in a state of despair does not mean that white, working-class despair in general is not relatively elevated, responsible for more loss of life, and disproportionately liable for creating our current political reality on the right. And I seriously worry that elites who discount this impart a “trust me or your lying eyes” message (I am not referring to Dominic, of course) which makes it impossible to wrestle these communities away from supporting Trump and thus furthering the tragic impact he continues to have on our politics.
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Whutabout all you want. That's not going to change the opinion of the dismissed, disparaged, and ignored. Elitist arguments won't persuade Qanon. Demanding sympathy from the working class without empathy for the working class is not a sustainable political strategy.
wtf? nobody sane cares about those willfully ignorant wack jobs in the right wing fringe.
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Seems some fascists have actually been assigned to be here.
Truth hurts cj.
Persist!!!!!!
That is quite the imagination you have there.........................
National Review. Yet more far right wing bias.
Garbage
and White Evangelical Martyrdom. The article is nothing more than the same culture war bullshit we've been hearing for years now and amounts to, "We were all better off when white males dominated every level of leadership." Except they were the only people that were better off. When someone wants to reference drug overdoses as a metric of community decay they should be pointing at affiant white greed like the Sackler family and the doctors they bribed to push their opiates. The Kochs that buried environmental and health data to keep pushing oil.
It is funny that when data shows any other group falling behind, it's always the fault of society and necessitates society wide changes to remedy the situation. Even to the point of mythologizing an oppression that doesn't exist (see Barbie). But white men? Fuck' em.
e were all better off when white males dominated every level of leadership."
Get that strawman! Only a progressive could turn an article about rising levels of suicide into some demand to dominate society.
Here's a shocking thought. We are all better off when white males aren't killing themselves.
ould be pointing at affiant white greed like the Sackler family and the doctors
I'm guessing you didn't read the article at all, but had the typical progressive racialist reaction to data that points out things aren't going swimmingly for the white working class.
Do you not think the Sackler family is exactly the type of elite this article is talking about? It's the literal point of the article.
The National Review is a populist propaganda rag that isn't worth the pixels count to read. If they told me the sky was blue I'd have to check out the window. If there is a point beyond their typical whining I'd be surprised.
I'm white working class. I've worked for every god damned thing I've every gotten. Clawed, scaped and sacrificed. Rubbed shoulders with milionaires and homeless people. Made friends and allies of every kind of person in every race, class, religion and sexuality. Now I constantly have to hear some entitled fuckstick tell me I should be afraid of anything outside the norm. Fuck all the little populist prick bastards.
Are the guys at the National Review all of a sudden Bernie Bros?
Lol. You are just throwing words around without understanding what they mean.
I'm white working class.
So?
t the National Review all of a sudden Bernie Bros?
No, they aren't left wing populists.
Do you have any actual objection to the cited data, or is this all just an ad hominem deflection?
That's funny!
So then the right wing populists have gone so far to the right they now look left? That actually makes complete sense...
Nope. Only how they are trying to use it.
Non-critically thinking populists are a joke... Case in point from the article -
But fail to see that Trump (their great white dope) is the very definition of elite. He was elite when he was hobnobbing with Bill & Hilary. He was elite when he was stiffing contractors for work he ordered done. He was elite when he employed undocumented workers in his businesses. He was elite when he declassified government documents with his mind...
Fun times ... the "white-working class" are the new elites.