Just finished reading J.D. Vance's book, "Hillbilly Elegy," and it was pretty good. It was an autobiography of a fellow who grew up in a dysfunctional Appalachian family. And while reading about dysfunctional families is usually not good entertainment, this one was educational. The story had a happy ending. For you see, Vance, with help from those in his family who were not addicted to alcohol or drugs, and he made it out and made it good.
Anyway, for an excerpt, here's the portion where he provides a theory of why Democrats lost the working people's vote. To wit.
I also learned how people gamed the welfare system' They'd buy two dozen-packs of soda with food stamps and then sell them at a discount for cash' They'd ring up their orders separately, buying food with food stamps, and beer' wine' and cigarettes with cash. They'd regularly go through the checkout line speaking on their cell phones' I could never understand why our lives felt like a struggle while those living off of government largess enjoyed trinkets that I only dreamed about.
Mamaw listened intently to my experiences at Dillman's. I'd began to view much of our fellow working class with mistrust. Most of us were struggling to get by, but we made do, worked hard, and hoped for a better life. But a large minority was content to live off the dole. Every two weeks, I'd get a small paycheck and notice the line where federal and state income taxes were deducted from my wages. At least as often, our drug-addict neighbor would buy T-bone steaks, which I was too poor to buy for myself but was forced by Uncle Sam to buy for someone else, This was my mind-set when I was seventeen, and though I'm far less angry today than I was then, it was my first indication that the policies of Mamaw's "party of the working man"- Democrats weren't all they were cracked up to be.
Political scientists have spent millions of words trying to explain how Appalachia and the South went from staunchly Democratic to staunchly Republican in less than a generation. Some blame race relations and the Democratic Party's embrace of the civil rights movement. Others cite religious faith and the hold that social conservatism has on evangelicals in that region. A big part of the explanation lies in the fact that many in the white working class saw precisely what I did, working at Dillman's. As far back as the 1970s, the white working class began to turn to Richard Nixon because of a perception that, as one man put it, government was "payin' people who are on welfare today doin' nothin'! Theyre laughin' at our society! And we're all hard workin' people and we're gettin' laughed at for workin' every day." 20
This was before the "party of the working man" embraced identity politics and began agitating to increase racial strife. So we could probably add that to bring his assessment up to date.
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1:33 PM 9/21/2017
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