What Wokeness Looks Like from Trump Country
In part 2 of this pre-election breakdown of economic and behavioral economic issues influencing votes, I detailed how the economy is far better, and improving more, for rural Trump voting counties than it is for urban Biden voting counties because of Biden’s goal to help those left behind.
While this may be enough to win over a swing voter here or there, it won’t be enough to help Democrats win in Trump country. The first reason this economic performance won’t be enough is that “better than Biden counties” is not the same thing as “everything is great.” In the last two years economic growth, job and wage growth, and investment growth have all been historically strong, but inflation has eaten away the impact of these gains. But the primary reason Democrats are going to struggle is that even if everything were great, Democrats have branded themselves as an out of touch party obsessed with wokeness.
The economic performance matters only if Democrats can convince voters that they are better at providing economic abundance than Republicans. Democrats have been unwilling to do this for as long as they have been better at providing economic abundance—for 30 to 40 years. Despite this reality, if voters don’t see either party as economically advantageous, they tend to substitute other issues in for economic performance.
Way of life issues can be a powerful heuristic that clouds economic realities. If the ground is shifting under voters’ feet, it is much easier to feel like the economy is worse than it actually is. For some reason, rather than keep the ground stable, Democrats have seemed to opt for an earthquake.
If I asked the average American, “which party loves America more” the overwhelming majority answer will be the Republican party. Some politically astute centrists might point out that Republicans attacked the Constitution after Trump lost, and the right is leading the rhetorical march toward a civil war. And they would be right. But the average voter doesn’t pay enough attention to politics to grasp these nuances. I’ve said this over and over, and I cannot emphasize it enough: most Americans don’t want to hear about politics. Most people would like to put in their good day’s work, make it to their kids’ ball games, concerts, or dances, then come home and watch football or House of the Dragon. The idea that they need to sift through nuance and detail to really know what happens in government is tiresome and frustrating.
Most voters want things to be simple and Republicans have the simplicity high ground. Republicans want things to stay the same, or even go backwards to some fantasized gilded yesteryear. Democrats want things to change, they want things to move forward to some gilded utopia. In simplest terms, Republicans want things to stay the same because America is good; Democrats want things to change because America is bad.
The keenest readers will have already noticed that I am separating America as an idea from The United States of America as a government. America has itself become more or less a religion in Trump country. If the United States stands in the way of America, then Trump country believes it is the government, not the idea, that must bend.
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Anyone old enough to remember dial up internet was raised as a part of this American religion. School always started with the Pledge of Allegiance, and often a prayer; everyone put their hand over their heart for the flag and the anthem; soldiers and law enforcement officers were all heros; anyone who worked hard could get ahead; slavery had been an unfortunate mistake that was remedied by the Civil Rights movement.
America was a useful religion for the United States to preach at a time when the Soviet Union posed a real threat to the latter. It didn’t matter that “under God” was not in the Pledge until 1954; it didn’t matter that prayer in school—especially sectarian prayer—was losing public support; it didn’t matter that soldiers killed student protestors, that public police evolved out of a disdain for minorities and immigrants, or that much of the public spat upon soldiers who served; it doesn’t matter that moving up the income ladder has long been harder in the United States than other developed democracies;1 It doesn't matter that policy design has put black Americans in an economic hole for generations.
Religions function through faith, and faith in these principles worked better than knowledge of facts ever could. Americans who deconstruct this civic faith, and look at the world as it really is, rather than as the American dream paints it, have just as hard a time showing this reality to ordinary voters as Biblical historians do to Evangelicals. But just like Christianity, the American religion is not a de facto negative just because it’s traditions are more legend than history. The United States is still an amazing country—there is a reason immigrants from all over the world still long to reach our shores.
America is not bad just because the United States isn’t perfect.
But far too many on the left send out the message that America, and the United States are both individual negatives. America has not always lived up to its ideals, and sometimes it has been far from them, but any human who has fallen short of their own better angels has no standing to cast a stone. Yet, here in Trump country, voters see progressives lined up outside the gates, waiting to hurl stones for any action—or worse yet, any word—that doesn’t fit their ideal world.
The stones of “racist”, “sexist”, “bigot”, and “homophobe” have been thrown so many times that many well intentioned modern ideals are seen as a woke attack on America. If a twitter-is-real-life liberal tells someone in Trump country that “mother” is not inclusive, and they should use “birthing person” instead, the stones already thrown at America dictate how this will be interpreted.
The liberal might think they were saying something like this: “Excuse me sir, but with the advancements in the understanding of sex and sexuality, and how these interact with the concept of gender, science has progressed to a point where every individual can have their identity align even if it did not align at birth. Because of this it is now medically possible for someone who was not born female to become pregnant. The term ‘birthing person’ is preferred so these individuals are not excluded from the conversation.” But, because the knee jerk reaction has for so long been to attack the character of anyone who isn’t woke, what the conservative hears is likely this: “Um? What! There you go again with your transphobia and sexism, you cisgender scum. Why don’t you go back to the stone ages where you belong since your caveman brain is obviously not intelligent enough to grasp the concept of gender.”
What do you think happens to the odds of that person ever voting for a Democrat again?
The portrait this behavior paints is that progressives care more about concepts than they do about reality—they would rather have equal prestige than equal opportunity.
I’ll give you some examples, and, in fact, I need to take the first arrow here. When I wrote my book I made the choice to use the term Latinx. At the time I was working in a university department almost exclusively made up of white and asian professors and researchers. Latinx had just begun to circulate through the academic world, and I thought I’d use it to try to be inclusive. But I should have just talked to my Hispanic friends. The fact that this never even occurred to me, someone who was trying to be inclusive, is irony that isn’t lost on me.
As it turns out, most Hispanics don’t prefer Latinx—in fact, only 2% do. Even worse, 40% are bothered or offended by Latinx. The woke world was trying to achieve a meaningless rhetorical gender equality by retiring the gendered phrases Latina and Latino.
But what did this actually accomplish? Did this phrase reform the broken immigration system? Did this end discrimination based on language or accent? Did this improve school funding in first-generation American communities? No. It didn’t make anyone’s life any better, and it annoyed 2 in 5 of the people it was attempting to help.
This is the pattern wokeness weaves, or at least that’s how it looks to Trump voters. Defund the police is one more thread in this tapestry. Yes, it is true that black Americans are disproportionately the victims of police violence. Yes, it is true that black people are treated more harshly in court. Yes, it is true that underinvestment in communities and schools can lead to more crime and violence. But, you know who didn’t want the police defunded? Black Americans. In one poll after another the question of defunding the police is opposed by Black people—and by some big numbers too.
Did defund the police make communities safer? Did it create more public spaces for disadvantaged kids? Did it end wage discrimination based on race? Did it address the wealth disparity from redlining and racial property value penalties? Did it provide clemency to nonviolent drug convicts? No. It didn’t make anyone’s life better.
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The #MeToo movement was a long overdue and necessary social and criminal reckoning for abusers. Every single abuser deserves to get punished, and nobody in Trump country believes differently. Then wokeness took over again, and tried to create rhetorical equality. The lines between rape, groping, and a terrible pickup line were blurred. The woke insisted that everyone believe all women, then dismissed Tara Reade. Reade’s story had an awful lot of holes in it, but this highlighted the complications with woke phrases. Amber Heard’s story had holes in it, but those holes didn’t stand in the way of the push to believe her. Trump country could be forgiven for thinking the difference in these situations was their candidate being accused.
Reade was taken seriously, but the inconsistencies in her story made it difficult to believe her. On the other hand, everyone believed Christine Blasey Ford, but they just didn’t take here seriously.
Wokeness had pushed too far again. Being taken seriously is more important than being believed: a credible accuser (like Blasey Ford) who is believed but not taken seriously will not find justice.
But this was just one harm created by pushing wokeness too far. The me too movement also harmed women in the workplace. It made collaboration with men less likely;2 it made both men and women less likely to hire an attractive women, or to hire any woman for a job that has close interpersonal interaction with men; it increased the likelihood that women would be labeled a "problem" for coming forward; it made women believe men would just be more careful about getting caught; and it increased the likelihood that women would be excluded from social interactions.
Despite far more people being harmed by Brett Favre’s apparent involvement in taking $77 million of assistance money for needy families to build a volleyball gym, the media focussed far more on Ime Udoka’s consensual relationship with a staffer. Power dynamics are clearly problematic, but wokeness pushed the Overton window so far that a $77 million fraud committed against the most impoverished Americans was somehow less than.
Being born and raised in Kentucky, and now living and working in Tennessee, this is the view most of my friends, neighbors, and acquaintances have of wokeness. Rather than actually trying to solve problems, it creates problems and encourages conflict with everyone who isn’t woke. The woke crowd can dismiss social trends like #KillAllMen as just trying to make a point, and not meaning what it seems like it means; then they can’t keep their cool when someone in Trump country thinks a statue of a confederate general ought to stay up.
Here is a stat I doubt most of my woke friends know. The gender gap in college is now larger than it was when Title IX was signed—but the gender roles are reversed. Men, whose prefrontal cortex develops an average of two years later than women, are less likely to be admitted and graduate. There is a pretty good argument to be made that the way men are treated in the woke world is hurting, rather than helping their lives and livelihoods.
Over the last 50ish years the inflation adjusted income of white, noncollege educated men as actually declined. People in Trump country are working harder for less. They were by far the biggest losers of the globalized economy.
They watched on as their dad’s factory job got shipped overseas, then their family’s farm got pushed out by large corporate farms. Now, they rely on two incomes for the same livelihood their parents were able to provide with one. For people on the coasts who are born with a trust fund, put in a boarding school, and funnelled to a prestigious college there is clear privilege. But white people in Trump country sure don’t feel privileged, even if they don’t face many of the social maladies poor minorities face.
But when Trump country looks at wokeness they see privilege hypocrisy. The idea that people can even spend time obsessing over labels and titles is a privilege. Having gone to college and gotten a higher education; having reliable access to technology and information; and having a secure enough income to worry about what other people are called is itself a privilege. Too many disadvantaged people have gone too long unable to make a difference because they were too busy trying to make ends meet.
Then wokeness comes along to obsess about pronouns, but do nothing to make the economic reality better for the disadvantaged? That looks like hypocrisy to Trump country. Having the luxury of worrying about titles is a privilege. The fact that so many Hispanic people don’t want to be called Latinx shows that even those who the woke are trying to help are excluded from this privileged endeavor.
I think a lot of my liberal friends would be surprised to find out just how receptive many in Trump country are to information about racial disparities. When I lay out the data and the research about how minorities are treated differently across economic markets, most of the reactions I get are along the lines of “this isn’t right, how do we fix this?” But, solutions are less likely when wokeness insists people are racist because they aren’t aware these problems exist, or they disagree on what the best solution would be.
This dynamic, more than anything else, defines how wokeness is seen in Trump country. Wokeness doesn’t solve problems, it makes problems worse. It uses name calling and shaming to try to get everyone to see America as evil, but doesn’t do a thing to try to make America better. Because of this the actual problems—right wing media charlatans—can manipulate viewers by using wokeness as a threat to their America.
Over the summer I had an interesting conversation with a man here in Tennessee. He told me a woman called him a bigot because he merely used “LGBT” and she was offended he hadn’t used “LGBTQIA+”. He had no ill will toward anyone, he just wasn’t online enough to be aware of the change. But the woman’s reaction made him dismissive. I’ll never forget what he said: “I have gay friends, and I don’t treat them any different. But now I’m a bigot because I don’t know all the letters? *counting on his fingers* LGBTQIA. That’s 7 letters, they already got over a quarter of the alphabet. Why is she getting mad at me for this? It makes me just want to start calling them the alphabet soup.”
I have no doubt that many LGBTQIA+ people would be offended to be called alphabet soup, and I understand why. But one woke warrior’s misunderstand of and impatience with a good hearted Tennessee man has now made this more likely.
The last time the Democratic Party won votes by calling people racist was Strom Thurmond, and I’m not sure that’s a Democratic Party the woke left wants to get back to. Politics is not a therapy session—people are never going to find affirmation in the voting booth. Politics should be about solutions. A candidate who is not politically or rhetorically “pure” can still provide solutions. But, occupying band width with arguments about affirmations takes bandwidth away from solutions.
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Björklund, Anders, and Markus Jäntti. "Intergenerational income mobility in Sweden compared to the United States." The American Economic Review 87, no. 5 (1997): 1009-1018.
Chetty, Raj, Nathaniel Hendren, Patrick Kline, and Emmanuel Saez. "Where is the land of opportunity? The geography of intergenerational mobility in the United States." The Quarterly Journal of Economics 129, no. 4 (2014): 1553-1623.
Jäntti, Markus, and Stephen P. Jenkins. "Income mobility." In Handbook of income distribution, vol. 2, pp. 807-935. Elsevier, 2015.
Gertsberg, Marina. "The Unintended Consequences of# MeToo-Evidence from Research Collaborations." Available at SSRN 4105976 (2022).