ATTEMPTING TO UNDERSTAND THE DESCENT INTO MADNESS

Decades ago, I read an article in The New York Review of Books that created a lasting impression. It was penned by the late, famed, Harvard biologist, Richard Lewontin. The piece began with Lewontin describing how he and the astronomer, Carl Sagan, had engaged in a debate with defenders of creationism in a large public hall in Little Rock, Arkansas. Despite their professional credentials and expertise, the two East Coast scientists and academics failed to convince the audience, and they were adjudged the debate's losers.

Noting that the two New York Jewish atheists were able to make it out of the hall unscathed through a rear exit, Lewontin then delved into the point of the essay. The looming question he asked is why the public sustained its belief in bible-based creation in the face of authoritative scientific knowledge. As recounted by Lewontin, Sagan invoked the poverty of science education as the prevailing cause.

Lewontin argued otherwise. He fell back on what was a multi-cultural analysis. His position was that the inhabitants of the American outback have long felt under the thumb of the populations on the coasts. It was they, and not themselves, who controlled American manufacturing, the management of wealth, publishing, and the news media. They also set the national standards for education. In short, the residents of the South, the Mountain States, and other rural regions felt themselves lacking in the autonomy and power that others held over them. This caused them, Lewontin argued, to turn inward toward their own local values, their religious beliefs foremost among them. Belief in Jesus was as proximate as mother's milk; it was intrinsic to their identities. In the face of such a compelling dynamic, reason and science could hold little suasion. If Lewontin's position is correct, and I believe it is, then the challenges confronting American society, I concluded, are far more daunting and complex than improving education alone.

Lewontin's position spoke then to a major division cleaving American society, a division which has now exploded with destructive potency. But it has long been with us. I recall that Adlai Stevenson, who twice lost the presidential election to Dwight Eisenhower, was deemed an “egghead,” implying that Ike's followers possessed a different mentality and worldview. In the 60s, the emergence of the New Left counterculture was seen in opposition to “the Establishment,” comprised in great measure of conservatives for whom the progressivism of the Left was seen as alien and worthy of contempt. In the late 70s, we had Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority. Who was this “majority,” other than many comprising today's MAGA crowd?

The pro-Trump extremism has long been percolating. But its scope and depth require explanation. The mindset that Trump exemplifies used to be relegated to the fringe- the irrationality, the disregard for facts and the rules of evidence, the contempt for science and education, the explicit hate - has now poured forth and spread like an oil spill to inform the mentality of tens of millions of his followers.

How are we to explain this? I readily look to the sociology of knowledge for an explanation. Beliefs are sustained by the social dynamics that underlie them and not the intrinsic credibility or rationality of the beliefs alone.

Emile Durkheim was a founder of sociology who perceptively analyzed the relationship of the beliefs people hold to the powers of the social bond that joins people together. He chose religion and shared religious doctrine as the paradigmatic form of belief. It was Durkheim's assertion that as social beings we are powerfully dependent on one another. Without others, we would not survive. Religious beliefs, belief in God being paramount, he reasoned, are ideational projections of the power of the group. When people claim that they are dependent on God for their existence, it is the life-sustaining underlying, power of the group, of society, that they are really asserting. In short, it is the power of the social bond that gives ideas and beliefs their conviction. Reason and the rules of evidence are but handmaidens to social forces that lie beneath.

There are other factors at work. Friedrich Nietzsche comes to mind. Nietzsche was arguably a nihilist. His foil was late 19th-century bourgeois values. He was contemptuous of the haughtiness of Christianity, science, and even reason, and morality. The only constant, according to Nietzsche, is the will to power, an attribute of all organic beings. When it came to morality, Nietzsche brilliantly argued that it is a product of weakness. To put it bluntly, morality is the tool of society's losers. Morality, Nietzsche asserted, is the power of the powerless. In the eyes of the ancient Greeks, goodness was attributed to those who slash, kill, and dominate others without the slightest pang of conscience. But those who were oppressed possessed a power that the powerful did not have. They could turn to their oppressors, point a finger, and proclaim “You are bad.” Thus, morality was born.

Related is Nietzsche's invocation of “ressentiment.” (He had a penchant to sprinkle his writings with French terms). People who are oppressed develop a sense of hostility against their oppressors. Unable to alter their condition, they turn their hostility inward and project it onto those in power. It then becomes a basis for their morality and worldview that enables them to feel that others are evil and that their own values and beliefs as true and good.

These seminal thinkers came to mind when I read a recent article published in The New York Times by the sociologist Arlie Hochschild. Hochschild. In the piece, “My Journey to the Heart of Trump Country,” she describes how she made a trip to Pike County, Kentucky in the state's Fifth Congressional District. She notes:

“In the 2024 election, 81 percent of Kentucky’s Fifth Congressional District — the whitest and third poorest in the nation — voted... for Mr. Trump. Once full of New Deal Democrats, the region had suffered losses that its people felt modern Democrats didn’t care about or address. During World War I and II, the “black gold” dug out of their mountains fed industrial America. Then the coal mines closed, and the drug crisis crept in.

In 2016, Mr. Trump’s answer to these losses took the form of policy promises and a story. Many of the policies he promised never panned out. As James Browning, a thoughtful drug counselor and grandson of a coal miner killed in a mining accident, recalled, he never brought back coal or 'great, new jobs.' He did 'nothing about drugs.'

But Mr. Trump’s story of stolen pride did take hold. With the fall of coal and American manufacturing, he told his followers, you lost your pride. That’s because others stole it from you, just as they stole the 2020 election, and they still want more — your guns, your families, your way of life. I’ll take revenge on them, he declared: on the pet-eating immigrants, uppity women, spying international students, idle government workers, and the institutions behind them — the universities, the mainstream press, the judiciary, the 'deep state.'”

Hochschild found that 40 percent in the Fifth District rely on Medicaid and many children qualify for food stamps. Trump's big, beautiful bill, now the law will bring palpably more hardship to their lives. But she also found that “Some seemed more committed to Mr. Trump than they had been before.” Trump's aggressive deportation campaign, she found, did not bother the people of Pike County she encountered, concluding that “With every deportation, it seemed as if Mr. Trump was restoring (their) stolen pride.”

She also found that social isolation has influenced the political thinking of those she had spoken with. Rob Musick, a religious studies instructor at a local college, explained:

“'Around here, Democrats come off as against this and against that — and not for anything. They need a big positive alternative vision. And they need to understand that in rural areas like this, the deeper problem is that we’re socially hollowed out. That happy buzz of community life? That’s not here. There are fewer meetings of the Masons, the Rotary Club, the Red Hatters. Our church benches are empty. In the mountains, there’s no safe place against drugs. One elderly woman told me, ‘I don’t open my door anymore.’ I’ve heard teens say, ‘There’s nothing to do.’ A lot of kids are alone in their rooms online with Dungeons and Dragons. I think MAGA plays to a social desert.'”

The vulnerability to authoritarianism exacerbated by social isolation is an observation often made by those searching for explanations for Trump's widespread appeal. It also creates the groundwork for conspiracy theories.

Stolen pride is obviously a powerful motivator, even more powerful than those government programs that support the material well-being and even the health of the residents of Pike County. But these sociological dynamics, fueled by resentment and hostility, have been politicized to a high pitch, augmented by right-wing media.

One wonders if there is a tipping point. Trump's programs will bring more palpable suffering to the people of Pike County, Kentucky, and those like them nationwide. Perhaps the material conditions Trump has wrought will begin to make inroads into the consciousness of rural Americans. But Democrats cannot escape a daunting challenge. Perhaps the solutions in the initial phases will be local and small-scale. There is a movement afoot to return solutions to the states. Illinois's governor, J. B. Pritzger, is part of that movement. However, as one Pike County resident observed,

“..what happens then would hinge on how Democrats handle it, what better ideas they have to offer, their tone of voice. If the left starts scolding, ‘You Trump supporters brought this on yourselves,’ or ‘We told you so,’ people around here will get more pissed at the snarky left than they are at the hurtful right — and Trump will march on.'”

Those of us who are progressives need to sustain our own values. But when it comes to those on the other side of the divide, it is hard to disagree.