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

by Arlie Russell Hochschild

Over time, new groups were added to older ones, and political and therapeutic cultures merged. Identity politics was born. Identities based on surviving cancer, rape, childhood sexual abuse, addiction to alcohol, drugs, sex work—these and more came to the media’s attention. It became a race “for the crown of thorns,” the critic Todd Gitlin, a former 1960s activist, lamented in his book, The Twilight of Common Dreams: Why America Is Wracked by Culture Wars. On the heels of these movements for social change, a certain culture of victimization had crept in. And where did that leave the older white male? As an ideal, fairness seemed to stop before it got to him.