Once again on liberals trying to understand Trump voters

I referred in my previous post to sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild and her book presenting a sympathetic analysis of white conservatives in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

I see she just published an article on the election, Is Donald Trump a bully or bold protector? That depends on whom you ask The Guardian 10/11/2020. She refers to one of her Lake Charles subjects in trying to explain the exotic Trump voters to Mean Libruls:

Many studies have shown that Republicans yearn for a “strong leader”, a “fighter”, and this may make them hesitant to condemn bullying. I came to know Sharon Galicia, a lively single mum and medical insurance saleswoman from Louisiana, while researching my 2016 book about the American right, Strangers in Their Own Land. “The man liberals see as an arrogant bully,” she told me, “conservatives see as Rocky Balboa.”

Many good-hearted blue-collar voters with American flag decals on their pickups tune into Trump on a frequency that secular liberals cannot hear. Where most liberals hear bullying, Trump supporters hear: “I’m your guy. I do all I do for you and I deliver.” Where liberals hear an interrupter, many conservatives hear, when Trump speaks: “My enemies – the deep state, whistleblowers, impeachment-seekers, the mainstream media, the Democrats, Covid-19 critics [!!!] – bully me. I suffer for you. Stand by me as I bully back.” [my emphasis]

Yes, there are "secular liberals" that may not be familiar with white culture in the Deep South.

But are those secular Mean Libruls actually so out of it that they don't understand that Louisiana Trump fans are hearing something they like coming from Trump's mouth? I doubt there are many of them in that state. What liberals and everyone else not living in the FOX News/QAnon bubble wonder is what motivates people who hear Trump's hate talk and find it appealing.

My main criticism of Hochschild's explanations of her Louisiana white conservatives is not that the explanations are sloppy or wrong. It's that she takes their justifications for their own positions as good faith descriptions of their political motivations, without sufficiently inquiring into what they claims as the factual basis of their allegiances and apparently not making a lot of effort to understand the highly political background of white Southern racial narratives.

She also makes a normative assumption that I find dubious. She describes people who are attracted to Trump because they see him as a bully as nevertheless being "good-hearted blue-collar voters with American flag decals on their pickups." She might have said they are "very fine people," but she doesn't use that phrase.

Not to nitpick. But encouraging, admiring, and supporting bullying is not a sign of being "good-hearted."

And reality-checking matters. Are "whistleblowers" exposing illegal conduct in government or "Covid-19 critics" (as opposed to COVID-19 fans?) really bullying blue-collar white people in Lake Charles Louisiana? That doesn't make any sense.

She actually spends the rest of the column sharply criticizing Trump's destructive bullying behavior, making her preference for Biden as a person and a leader clear. She concludes, "As the nation faces the enormous challenges ahead – jobs, climate change, automation, racial justice, drug addiction, Covid-19 – the truth is that the bully’s hammer causes many more problems than it solves. Bullies do not solve such problems. Leaders do." [my emphasis]

Hochschild is right to encourage left-leaning voters outraged by Trumpism to try to understand the complexity of the political motivations of Trump voters and to make some effort to understand their perspectives. But we also shouldn't take the conventional and superficial reasons people give for their perspectives simply at face value. Especially if they are justifying their positions on conspiracy theories or demonstratively false factual assumptions.