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

by Arlie Russell Hochschild

So while his central life experience had been betrayal at the hands of industry, he now felt—as his politics reflected—most betrayed by the federal government. He believed that PPG and many other local petrochemical companies at the time had done wrong, and that cleaning the mess up was right. He thought industry wouldn’t “do the right thing” by itself. But in the role of counterweight, he rejected the federal government. Indeed, Lee embraced candidates who wanted to remove nearly all the guardrails on industry and cut the EPA. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration had vastly improved life for workmen such as Lee Sherman—and he appreciated those reforms—but he felt the job was largely done.