Alienated America

[Dill]

(03-01-2019, 09:41 AM)Belsnickel Wrote: However, my only counter to that would be that the evangelical idea of the American Dream is likely also seen as under attack, which draws them to him. It's a little different than those truly alienated, but it could be evidence that the lack of church, or community more broadly, is not an underlying cause in the loss of the American Dream. Meanwhile, inter-generational socioeconomic mobility in this country is lower than other WEIRD nations, and since the American Dream is predicated on that whole idea it begs the question that maybe this is where the problem truly lies. The main idea, the loss of the American Dream being the cause of support for Trump, may hold true, but what causes that loss may be different than the author thinks.

I don't doubt the evangelical ideal of the American dream is under attack--whether it differs from anyone else's ideal or not.  Whatever is undermining that dream (which might be better described as economic self-sufficiency provided by upward mobility) is doing it for everyone in the group Carney is studying, and that more general phenomenon may by why evangelical Christianity has an attraction for people in rural and suburban areas who feel themselves sinking.

I think this economic mobility is also tied to other social and cultural  changes  which  make certain demographics feel more left out and ignored by the government than previous generations would. Why do "they" get help from the government when I don't?  People want to reassert control in their homes (2nd Amendment rights!), in their community (Christmas plays in the local school!), in their government ("drain the swamp") and on their country's borders (keep out Muslims and free-riding illegals). This might also explain the conversion of foreign policy debates/issues to a single symbolic stage of drama driven by whether the US is taken advantage of (by China and Mexico and NATO) and needs to reassert itself in tough talk and tariffs and threats leave alliances if they don't pay up.

My mother had six brothers. Their marriages all lasted over 60 years, as did hers. We had one family gathering in Texas every year. I had 20 cousins, half of whom have had one marriage (I have been married 42 years).  5 have been married more than once or divorced once. Among their children and children's children, the number with 2+ marriages or no marriages is startling. There is drug addiction. Children who haven't seen their parents for years. We still have family gatherings every five years or so--just the surviving cousins now--but few of their children come, just those still living at home or in the neighborhood. My own children don't want to come. They would rather go to Germany, where their childhood friends are.  My wife's extended, once very rooted family in rural Western Montana is a reflection of this too. Scattered. Drug addictions. Fragmentation. I was married in the same one-room rural church my wife's parents and aunts and uncles were married in.  It has long since been decommissioned and (so I'm told) skunks live under the floor.  But in none of these scenarios is there less religion.  It's form has changed somewhat. Many of my wife's Irish Catholic cousins converted to Evangelical Christianity decades ago. I am still a pagan target.  One thing about this that Jives with Carney is the evangelicals tend to support Trump in my wife's family.  Most of my Protestant Texas relatives do. Many also want to preserve Confederate monuments, which "government" is attacking. The few pagans don't want Trump or the monuments.

I think "alienation" is a perfectly good descriptor for people's motivations for Trump support, but it is a symptom and not the cause.