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

by Arlie Russell Hochschild

So how can such a company get a community to accept it? The plant manager’s best course of action, Powell concluded, would not be to try to change the minds of residents predisposed to resist. It would be to find a citizenry unlikely to resist. Based on interviews and questionnaires, Powell drew up a list of characteristics of the “least resistant personality profile”: • Longtime residents of small towns in the South or Midwest • High school educated only • Catholic • Uninvolved in social issues, and without a culture of activism • Involved in mining, farming, ranching (what Cerrell called “nature exploitative occupations”) • Conservative • Republican • Advocates of the free market

Pretty fucking diabolical