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

by Arlie Russell Hochschild

An empathy wall is an obstacle to deep understanding of another person, one that can make us feel indifferent or even hostile to those who hold different beliefs or whose childhood is rooted in different circumstances.

fact, partyism, as some call it, now beats race as the source of divisive prejudice.

This split has widened because the right has moved right, not because the left has moved left. Republican presidents Eisenhower, Nixon, and Ford all supported the Equal Rights Amendment.

During the depression of the 1930s, Americans turned to the federal government for aid in their economic recovery. But in response to the Great Recession of 2008, a majority of Americans turned away from it.

Across the country, red states are poorer and have more teen mothers, more divorce, worse health, more obesity, more trauma-related deaths, more low-birth-weight babies, and lower school enrollment. On average, people in red states die five years earlier than people in blue states.

People in red states who need Medicaid and food stamps welcome them but don’t vote, he argues, while those a little higher on the class ladder, white conservatives, don’t need them and do vote—against public dollars for the poor.

The Righteous Mind, for example, Jonathan Haidt argues, unlike Frank, that people are not misled but instead vote in their self-interest—one based on cultural values.

Tea Party adherents seemed to arrive at their dislike of the federal government via three routes—through their religious faith (the government curtailed the church, they felt), through hatred of taxes (which they saw as too high and too progressive), and through its impact on their loss of honor,

People on the right seemed to be strongly moved by three concerns—taxes, faith, and honor.

Templet refers me to a 1992 study by the MIT political scientist Stephen Meyer, who rated the fifty states according to the strictness of their environmental protection. Meyer then matched regulatory strictness to economic growth over a twenty-year period and found that the tougher the regulation, the more jobs were available in the economy.

The deep story here, that of the Tea Party, focuses on relationships between social groups within our national borders.

What seemed to my Tea Party friends to be dangerously polluted, unclean, and harmful was American culture. And against that pollution, the Tea Party stood firm.

if you want to sell solar panels to guys like me, tell them you can make them energy independent. Feeding clean energy back into the grid, you can make them free entrepreneurs. Just don’t mention climate change.”

Reading Group Guide 1. Early in the book, when introducing her important idea of “empathy walls,” Arlie Russell Hochschild mentions that in 1960 fewer than 5 percent of Americans would have been disturbed if their child married a member of the opposite political party, while in 2010 over 30 percent would find it troubling. Clearly this speaks to our ever-increasing political divide. Have you yourself experienced or observed this phenomenon in your community? (p. 6) 2. Hochschild argues that our political split has widened because “the right has moved right—not because the left has moved left.” Do you agree or disagree? Is her evidence persuasive? What are the implications for our democracy? (p. 7) 3. What does Hochschild consider “the Great Paradox” and why is Louisiana an extreme example? (p. 8) 4. Early on as well as later in the book, Hochschild mentions the friendship of Sally Cappel and Shirley Slack and says she believes “their friendship models what our country needs to forge: the capacity to connect across difference.” Do you agree? Do you have friends from across the political divide? What challenges do these “across-the-divide” friendships present? (pp. 13, 240) 5. Discuss the story of Lee Sherman—how does he represent “the Great Paradox through a keyhole”? How is it possible for an environmentalist whistle blower to also be a member of the Tea Party? (p. 33) 6. When telling the story of Harold Areno, Hochschild quotes him as saying, “If you sho...