Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right

by Arlie Russell Hochschild

MacGillis suggests that voters really act in their self-interest. But do they? The “two notches up” idea doesn’t explain why red state voters who were not themselves billionaires opposed taxing billionaires, the money from which might help expand a local library, or add swings to a local park. The best way to test the MacGillis idea, I figured, is to pick out a problem that affluent voters in poor red states do have, and to show they don’t want government help for that either. In other words, the two-notch-up voter may say, “Let’s cut welfare to the poor because I’m not poor.” Or, “Never mind improving public schools. My kid goes to a private one”—although no one I spoke to talked like this. But they do themselves face other problems the government could help with, which brings me to the keyhole issue in this book: environmental pollution. Through a close-up view of this issue, I reasoned, I could uncover the wider perspective that drove people’s responses to it and to much else.