Arlie Hochschild, an award-winning author and sociologist, has spent years talking with people living in rural parts of the country who have been hit hard by the loss of manufacturing jobs and shuttered coal mines. They’re the very people President Donald Trump argues will benefit most from his sweeping wave of tariffs and recent executive orders aimed at reviving coal mining in the US. But Hochschild argues that Trump’s policies will only fill an emotional need for those in rural America. She should know.

In 2016, Hochschild’s Strangers in Their Own Land was a must-read for anyone who wanted to better understand the appeal of Trump and his ascent to the White House. She spent time in Louisiana talking with Tea Party supporters about how they believed women, minorities, and immigrants were cutting in line to achieve the American Dream. But in her latest book, Stolen Pride, Hochschild shifted her focus to Pikeville, Kentucky, a small city in Appalachia where coal jobs were leaving, opioids were arriving, and a white supremacist march was being planned. The more she talked to people, the more she saw how Trump played on their shame and pride about their downward mobility and ultimately used that to his political advantage.

“A lot of people in this group have felt that neither political party was offering an answer,” Hochschild says. “And they have turned instead to a kind of charismatic leader.” She argues that the secret to Trump’s charisma among his supporters has to do with “alleviating the shame of that downward mobility.”

On this week’s episode of More To The Story, host Al Letson talks with Hochschild about the long slide of downward mobility in rural America and why she thinks Trump’s policies ultimately won’t benefit his most core supporters.

Credits

Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Digital producer: Nikki Frick | Interim executive producers: Brett Myers and Taki Telonidis | Host: Al Letson

Dig Deeper

Read: Farmers in Trump Country Banked on Clean Energy Grants. Then Things Changed. (Mother Jones)

Read: Trump’s Trade War Is Here and Promises to Get Ugly (Mother Jones)

Listen:The Many Contradictions of a Trump Victory (Reveal)

Transcript

More To The Story transcripts are produced by a third-party transcription service and may contain errors. Please be aware that the official record for More To The Story is the audio.

Arlie Hochschild:First, you’ve lost your job, that’s an absolute loss, but you’re also feeling devalued that what you once knew and were good at doesn’t matter anymore. I think that’s actually the bigger hit. And then, thirdly, other people are doing better. What’s wrong with me, I’m not?
Al Letson:Today on More To The Story, I sit down with Arlie Hochschild. She’s a sociologist who spent years talking with the very people Donald Trump says will benefit most from his sweeping wave of tariffs and attempts to reinvigorate coal mining. Stay with us.

This is More To The Story. I’m Al Letson, and over the last few weeks, President Trump has imposed a series of tariffs, which he says are needed to bring back American manufacturing jobs, something economists across the board say is unlikely. He’s also signed executive orders aimed at reviving coal mining. Many of these jobs were once located in rural parts of the country. But today, those regions are often struggling economically.

Sociologist, Arlie Hochschild, argues that President Trump has exploited that economic decline to win over voters, helping shift much of rural America to the right. Arlie, how you doing?
Arlie Hochschild:I’m doing great.
Al Letson:Thank you so much for coming on.
Arlie Hochschild:My pleasure.
Al Letson:I’m curious, as you talk about how there has been a shift in the United States, what is also happening in that shift is the shift away from manufacturing and blue collar jobs, things that really were a part of the culture in places like Appalachia, in the South, in the Midwest.
Arlie Hochschild:Yes.
Al Letson:That has completely shifted and changed-
Arlie Hochschild:Completely.
Al Letson:… the economic fortunes of that area. So I’m curious if you see the correlation between that shift and the changing viewpoints in those areas.
Arlie Hochschild:Absolutely. You’re completely on it. I think, in the ’70s, we began to see a divide in this country between the haves and the have-nots of globalization. So what happened is that the have-nots of globalization in rural, semi-rural areas, small towns, took a real hit.

And it’s a story of loss, that I don’t think the democratic side of America has been fully looking at. If you look at who’s going up and who’s going down in the last two and a half decades, white non-BA Americans have been downwardly mobile. They earn less, while whites with BAs have been rising. And Blacks, who, while starting much lower in the economic ladder, have also been rising.

So there’s this dominant demographic group that’s been downwardly mobile. And there’s a certain social logic that goes with downward mobility, and that fits this group too. And more people live alone, their families were disrupted, their higher rates of what are called diseases of despair, that’s a death from a drug overdoses, and alcoholism, and suicide.

So this group’s kind of taken a hit, and we weren’t looking at that yet. And I think the real story I’ve been exploring, is that a lot of people in this group have felt that neither political party was offering an answer to its problem. And they have turned, instead, to a kind of charismatic leader. That would be Donald Trump, who really is torn up the rules of politics in many ways.

A guy like Joe Biden doesn’t say, “Oh, look at me and I’m going to be an answer to your emotional problems.” No, no, he says, “Look at what I’ve done. Look at the Build Back Better Bill. Look at what I do.” That’s what that kind of leader does. But this charismatic leader said, “Don’t look at what I’m doing. Look at who I am.”

And I think the secret, in a way, to his charisma and his hold on his followers has to do with alleviating the shame of that downward mobility. So that’s what I got into. And it took me both to the Deep South, and more recently, in my new book, Stolen Pride, into Appalachia, where this is a region that used to be FDR Democrats and moderate Democrats, and now goes 80% for Donald Trump.
Al Letson:So in Stolen Pride, you focus on pride and shame in Pikeville, Kentucky. Before we go to the pride and shame, because I’m really curious about that, why Pikeville? What was that history? And what drew you to that specific town?
Arlie Hochschild:Pikeville is the hub town in a congressional district, which is the whitest and second-poorest congressional district in the country. And when I got there, I saw a perfect storm. First, coal jobs were going out and opiate crisis was coming in. And 2017, there was a neo-Nazi-led white nationalist march in town. And so, Pikeville seemed like the center of a storm that was nationwide.
Al Letson:So you’re in Pikeville, and as an outsider coming in, of course, you can see a lot of the issues that are plaguing this area. But what did the residents of Pikeville believe their issues to be?
Arlie Hochschild:First of all, coal jobs were going down and there weren’t other jobs they could get without leaving. So that was the sting for them. And Obama had passed a clean energy measure, and they were blaming him for the loss of their jobs and the shutting of coal mines.

The other part of the story is that they’re a very proud people. They’ve been very poor, and they’re proud of surviving that poverty, and making due, and being handy with what little they had. And they were very proud of the new car they could get from a miner’s salary. And proud of, they died early with Black Lung, but sort of proud that they could withstand the pain of that.

So I think a hidden part of the story is the loss of that pride. And lives became unraveled and families split. And people would leave, for Cincinnati, or Toledo, trying to get a job, and sometimes in the ’90s and later, those jobs went down and they’d come back empty-handed. So there was a shame story.

They weren’t blaming just Obama, they were blaming themselves. So it’s kind of an individualism based culture of pride in a place that was taking an economic hit. Those two things, that economic reality and that culture of pride led to what I’m calling the pride paradox.

First, you’ve lost your job, that’s an absolute loss, but you’re also feeling devalued, that what you want to knew and we’re good at doesn’t matter anymore. I think that’s actually the bigger hit.

And then thirdly, “Other people are doing better. What’s wrong with me? I’m not.” So I think that the purpose of my book actually to open our eyes, to make us bilingual, so that we can read the emotional reality in order to see how it can be spoken to. Because, basically, I think what has happened is that Donald Trump, who I think as an individual is kind of a shamed guy, his father’s very harsh, and sent him off at a young age. But I think it gave him real insight into what I would call the areas of structural shame. Something happened that’s external in origin, but they’re feeling it. And he has spoken to that shame.
Al Letson:In the book, there was just one quote that really stood out to me. You quoted someone in Pikeville saying, “When Trump told us he was going to bring back coal, I knew he was lying, but I felt like he saw who I was. Why is that so important?”
Arlie Hochschild:What it suggests, is that a lot of people have been really starved for acknowledgement, not just what they’re proud of, but of their own humanity, that they’ve taken a hit. They want to be seen. And so, we all do. Of course we do. We need this.

And yet, politics has played on the very starvation for acknowledgement. And I think that’s where we need to start, actually, for the repair, both cultural, emotional, and political. We have to listen to that. There isn’t a human being that’s conscious of life that doesn’t want, wish, need to be seen. It shouldn’t be scarce. It shouldn’t be something you are deprived of.

And somehow, a lot of people who are in distress, and especially need to be seen, and need their problems respectfully addressed, that group of people, they’ve given up on regular parties, Democrats, Republicans, and government. They just have not felt seen. Their questions have not been answered. And so they’ve, in that state, looked around and a charismatic leader has come on the scene, with great promises, and seems larger than life. And people say, “Well, why not? What do I have to lose?”
Al Letson:Coming up, how President Trump’s return to the White House might ultimately affect those in Pikeville and similar areas around the country.
Arlie Hochschild:I think it will feed an emotional need, but I don’t think it will do anything more. And it will get us used to non-truths. And I feel frightened of what it might do.
Al Letson:Hey, before we continue our conversation, I want to remind you that there is a real easy way to keep up with all the important work we’re doing here at Reveal. You can sign up for our free newsletter. Just go to revealnews.org/newsletter to receive your weekly email about all of our good reporting. We have to stay connected now more than ever. Okay, don’t go anywhere, there’s more to the story.

This is More To The Story. I’m Al Letson. And I’m joined by author and sociologist, Arlie Hochschild. She spent years in the deep south in Appalachia talking to conservative voters about things like economic decline, downward mobility, and the larger forces behind the rise of Donald Trump, including the Democratic Party’s failure to successfully reach voters in rural parts of the country.

Talk to me a little bit about David Maynard, because when I read the book and we came to the David Maynard part, first of all, I felt like that must’ve been a fun interview to conduct.
Arlie Hochschild:Yes, it was.
Al Letson:His joy and plain-spokenness kind of jump off the page.
Arlie Hochschild:Yes, they do. You’re right, they jump off the page. Yeah.
Al Letson:Tell me about him.
Arlie Hochschild:Well, when I first met David and his wonderful wife, he said to me, “So, I’ve always lived here. I’m uneducated. I’m trailer trash, okay?” It kind of began like that. He felt between two narratives, as a white high school-educated guy in a region, he was born very, very poor. His father was disabled. And he said, “In our trailer court, there was a murder four trailers down. And my uncle was dealing drugs in the backyard. And I was told never to open the trailer door. I grew up scared.”

But he felt between the two parties, he felt like nobody saw him. He said, “Looking at the Republicans, well, they’re just rich people that want tax breaks. Trump is racist. I don’t want any part of that nonsense. But the Democrats have all kind of disappeared into different identity groups, and no one’s talking about social class or poverty. So they don’t draw me either. They see me as sexist, racist, homophobic, and they throw me away.”

So he felt himself without a narrative. And he kind of said this, thinking about pride, “If you’re white, you have a BA degree, and you do well. People say, ‘Well, congratulations for you. You came from nothing, and now you’re something, and you can be proud.'” And he said, “But if you really look at that, they didn’t come from nothing. They came from something, and they went on to another something.”

And then if you look at Blacks, he said, “Oh, well, they’re poor. But the reason they’re poor is they’ve been put down because of racism.” And so their story is, “It’s not your fault. You shouldn’t be ashamed. That happened to you.” And that was that, the racism narrative.

And he said, “But you take a guy like me, I came from nothing, and I have gone to nothing, and I’m a failure. And it’s not because I’m white, because I’m privileged to be white, so it’s got to be because I’m stupid and lazy. And so what do I do? Where do I go politically? Neither party are speaking to me.”

And I thought, oh boy, the Democratic Party has really missed a beat here, that he didn’t feel it spoke to him.
Al Letson:Yeah. I feel like that story is so complicated, because, on one hand, I totally understand exactly how he feels, and what he’s trying to communicate, and how it feels to him. Right? I don’t know if I generally agree with the facts of what he feels.
Arlie Hochschild:I know what you mean. Yes, you’re right.
Al Letson:You know, like-
Arlie Hochschild:Totally.
Al Letson:In therapy, my therapist is really good-
Arlie Hochschild:Are we ignoring history here?
Al Letson:Right. My therapist is really good at reminding me that feelings are not facts, and facts are not necessarily feelings. And so I think the thing that I got from it, that felt important to me, is that in order for us to be able to move forward as a society, and I’m not just talking about left or right, I mean, just us as a society to move forward, we have to understand what his feelings are, versus what reality is-
Arlie Hochschild:Yes.
Al Letson:And put it in context next to everybody else’s feelings and try to understand how to move that forward.
Arlie Hochschild:And it’s wonderful what you just said. That really is it. I mean, it goes to the heart of a conversation we’re not having. I mean, Black history really is very different from white history.
Al Letson:Uh-huh.
Arlie Hochschild:You know. And you have a white guy at the bottom who says, “Nobody’s looking at me,” we haven’t had this conversation. People aren’t talking to each other. And that’s just the conversation that I think could open eyes and has a lot of possibility to it.
Al Letson:And throughout history, there’s been several times when there have been coalitions between Black and white communities, but they always seem to disintegrate, because whatever they are pushing up against, whether it’s labor, i.e. working in a factory, or it’s labor, like farm workers or whatever, it always seems to dis-
Arlie Hochschild:Or coal miners. Yeah.
Al Letson:Coal miners. It always seems to disintegrate because the powers that be use race as a lever.
Arlie Hochschild:Yes.
Al Letson:And they go to white folks and say, “But you’re white. And we’re going to give you a little bit more privilege than these Black folks-“
Arlie Hochschild:Yeah, that’s right.
Al Letson:“… enough to make you break the coalition. And then we can get back to business as usual.”
Arlie Hochschild:In the coal mines, Blacks were used as strike breakers. So, oh, man, yeah, there’s a divide and rule strategy that has worked, and divided and ruled, and that we need to address and overcome.
Al Letson:Yeah. So I’m thinking about Pikeville, and the people there, in your book. And to me, one of the things that really stood out, that I just couldn’t let go. The more I read the book, the more I kept thinking, where are these people getting their information from?

Because that information, it’s confirmation bias, right? They are feeling something, because of the forces of globalization that are at work, that they are not just seeing in their financial status, but feeling inside of their souls. So they’re seeing and feeling these pressures, and then they are getting their news from specific places that are confirming what they feel.
Arlie Hochschild:Exactly. And a lot of people that I talk to actually don’t know where their news comes from. And they’re not checking into NBC, or MSNBC, or even Fox News, or X. But what the media does is see who you’ve been looking at, and feed you more media sources that you, quote, “might be interested in”. So the media puts us in our own bubble. It’s an external force that reinforces our own bubble, so that we think everybody else thinks like we do.
Al Letson:So looking ahead to the next few years, what do you think the people in Pikeville expect from a second Trump term? And do you think Trump being back in the White House will benefit them?
Arlie Hochschild:I think it will feed an emotional need, but I don’t think it will do anything more. And it will get us used to non-truths. And I feel frightened of what it might do.

But there in Pikeville, you’ve got, in a way, three groups. There’s people who are ardent believers in Donald Trump, and I’m not sure they’re the majority, really. And then you’ve got people who feel like he would be good for them. I talked to some evangelical ministers who said, “Well, we know he’s not a good person, not a Christian, but it’ll be good for us,” as sort of an opportunity. You could say they were opportunists. So that would be a second group.

And the third were just people who were depressed. They were refugees from the Democratic Party. They were non-voters, had given up. So each of those will approach the next four years in their own way. But I think the question we need to ask is what can be on offer? Where is a voice of repair, and reform, and realignment that we could see in the next four years?

And I think the first stage of doing this realignment is looking outside our own bubbles to really take it as an enjoyable and challenging task to inform ourselves about who, quote, “our adversaries” are.
Al Letson:You’ve been able to actually reach out across the divide and try to understand where conservatives, like those in Pikeville, are coming from. How has your own perspective changed?
Arlie Hochschild:Well, I wouldn’t say it’s changed. I would say it’s deepened and widened. I feel that as a result of talking to people whose experiences and outlooks are very different from my own, the effect it’s had on me is not to alter my political beliefs and hopes, it is to help me make room in my heart, make room for new set of people, and new standpoints.

Now, with those perspectives, does that make your own ideals different? Actually, no. But you have to kind of address your ideals so that they broaden enough to address the issues of the people you’ve made room for. It’s something we should all do, especially in this political moment. I think we need to reach out.

Whatever group you are a part of, in your church, let’s say, or in your friendship group, if you’re into sports, school group, extend it and use that as an opportunity for reach out. And if our politicians start doing the same thing, we can maybe start healing this divide.
Al Letson:Arlie Hochschild, thank you so much for coming to talk to us about your book, Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right. I had a great time reading it and an even better time talking to you.
Arlie Hochschild:Thank you, Al, it’s been a complete pleasure.
Al Letson:Thank you, as always, for listening to More To The Story. If you liked it, you might want to check out our Reveal episode, The Many Contradictions of a Trump Victory. We’ll put a link to the episode in our show notes.

Lastly, just a reminder, we are listener supported. To make a gift today, go to revealnews.org/gift. Again, that’s revealnews.org/gift. And thank you. Today’s episode was produced by Josh Sanburn and Cara McGurk Allison. Theme music and engineering help by Fernando, my man, yo, Arruda, and Jay Breezy, Mr. Jim Briggs. I’m Al Letson, and let’s do this again next week. This is More To The Story.

Kara McGuirk-Allison is a senior radio editor for the Center for Investigative Reporting, where she works on podcast strategy and audio production. In her three decades of audio work, she has produced for a number of NPR news programs, including the award-winning Justice Talking, and was the founding producer of NPR’s Hidden Brain. Before joining CIR, Kara was a podcast producer for Marvel/Disney.

Al Letson is the Peabody Award-winning host of Reveal. Born in New Jersey, he moved to Jacksonville, Florida, at age 11 and as a teenager began rapping and producing hip-hop records. By the early 1990s, he had fallen in love with the theater, becoming a local actor and playwright, and soon discovered slam poetry. His day job as a flight attendant allowed him to travel to cities around the country, where he competed in slam poetry contests while sleeping on friends’ couches. In 2000, Letson placed third in the National Poetry Slam and performed on Russell Simmons’ Def Poetry Jam, which led him to write and perform one-man shows and even introduce the 2006 NCAA Final Four on CBS.

In Letson’s travels around the country, he realized that the America he was seeing on the news was far different from the one he was experiencing up close. In 2007, he competed in the Public Radio Talent Quest, where he pitched a show called State of the Re:Union that reflected the conversations he was having throughout the US. The show ran for five seasons and won a Peabody Award in 2014. In 2015, Letson helped create and launch Reveal, the nation’s first weekly investigative radio show, which has won two duPont Awards and three Peabody Awards and been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize twice. He has also hosted the podcast Errthang; written and developed several TV shows with major networks, including AMC+’s Moonhaven and Apple TV+’s Monarch; and is currently writing a comic for DC Comics. (He loves comics.) When he’s not working, Letson’s often looking for an impossibly difficult meal to prepare or challenging anyone to name a better album than Mos Def’s Black on Both Sides.