Hochschild Creates New Understanding of the Tea Party

Walls, Lines, and Deep Feelings

Facts and feelings make up our perception of reality. Taken alone, each leaves an incomplete picture and they are often at odds with one another. Any holistic understanding of reality must address both.

Sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild has sought to reconcile fact and feeling in her book, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right. A self-defined liberal from Berkeley, California, Hochschild spent five years from 2011–2016 regularly traveling to Louisiana to conduct research and break out of her left-leaning bubble. Seeking out members of the newly formed Tea Party movement, Hochschild sought to gain a deeper understanding of those on the polar-opposite end of the political spectrum from herself. Her aims were twofold: scale the "empathy wall" and unravel "The Great Paradox."

Hochschild defines an empathy wall as, "… an obstacle to deep understanding of another person … ".¹ This barrier compels us instead to "… feel indifferent or even hostile to those who hold different beliefs or whose childhood is rooted in different circumstances."² These walls are not a new phenomenon and, as Hochschild notes, have appeared throughout periods of conflict in American history. Some resolutions have involved violence, like in the Civil War, while others, such as the civil rights movement, were resolved only when the American democracy demonstrated its ability to, "hash things out."³

The Great Paradox is the mystery lying between fact and feeling. How do the Tea Partiers Hochschild befriends reconcile the facts of their lived circumstances with their very real and valid feelings on the environment, religion, politics, the government, and a multitude of other issues? To investigate, she focuses on the keyhole issue of the environment—linking together stories of those involved in, impacted by, and regulating Louisiana's vast energy and chemical industries. Louisiana ranks near the bottom on environmental and economic indicators as well as overall well-being when compared with other states.⁴ Yet, Louisiana voters have consistently dismissed these facts and voted for the same parties and supported the same systems that have led to the present poor conditions of their environment. Hochschild explains that these voters are motivated, in part, by their dependence on industry—but argues politics, like reality, is not the outcome of only facts, but feelings too.⁵

The Deep Story - Line Cutters in the American Dream

Critical to the argument in Strangers is the narrative wrought by the "deep story." A deep story is a "feels-as-if story," void of facts and judgement—it is the narrative of feelings.⁶ Hochschild believes deep stories exist for all, across all measures of magnitude. There are deep stories for nations, minority groups, political ideologies, and others. Each is unique. Each represents the "hopes, fears, pride, shame, resentment, and anxiety," of each story's characters.⁷ It is only through a thorough understanding of another's deep story, Hochschild argues, that one can truly circumvent an empathy wall.

The deep story of the Tea Party is bound to the American Dream. Hochschild relates this narrative as a play, unfolding characters and their experiences. This is an effective, if contrived, mechanism to convey the deep story of Tea Partiers. In this narrative, the Dream is a destination—one all American's are hoping to arrive at one day. This Dream is progress—the promise that you will be better off than those who have come before you. Yet, for the Tea Partiers, who have given years of hard work and faced sacrifice and setbacks, they see others are cutting ahead in line. Rules no longer seem to matter. The federal government has adopted new, alien values that favor others.

In this narrative, if you are a white male—a status liberals define as being the most privileged—you are suddenly at the back of the line. Women, immigrants, refugees, the environment, public sector employees, even animals—have all cut ahead of you in line.⁸ The money you have...