As I read through the stories chronicled by one Hochschild I discovered with some help from my own interviews of a person with many of the same beliefs and ideas as her interviewees I discovered a bitter truth, the people I disagree with have reason to disagree with me. Often I liked to imagine that the only reason people believed the counter of my own political views was becathey has been taught to by their parents and were only engaging in group think, but I am very wrong about that. They have a lot of good reasons to believe what they do and they are often affected by government interference and incompetence as much as private corporations.

My empathy walls did change, I stopped thinking of people with opposing political views as obstacles to get over and more like people to reason with. I am more able to question my own ways of thinking as well and understand that I need to reexamine my own positions constantly. I have always thought freedom was important, but now I question if I’ve always championed that or not. I also wonder if I myself have been subject to group think because of my family, community, and education.

Xavier had multiple jobs through his life, but as of now he has turned to his writing as what he considers to be his job. He writes sci-fi and fantasy and seeks to tell stories more about the characters and why villains are villains rather than just making them out to be obstacles the heroes need to overcome. I think this is an interesting concept as in our society today it is a very common for people to compare their political opponents to one dimensional book villains it is interesting he is trying to make a book villain three dimensional.

He often tells me how his girlfriend helped him to develop a closer social group, in a literal sense. Because he did not have many street friend he often relied on the kids he met at school and online video games to connect with friends. As a result he met a lot more people and slightly altered his already conservative foundation and turned them away from the harcore ideas that his family often held. He remains right wing, but is less a republican and more of a right leaning centrist. He views the exchange of ideas as one of the most important things people can do because of this he was able to become a more understanding person and not just think of democrats as liberal whiners. In this we move onto core values.

His most core beliefs are that the rights of an individual are just as important as a needs of the collective and is far more important than their desires. He feels that we should not have to sacrifice someone’s freedom for the sack of someone’s comfort, such as silencing a man because he says something that offends others as he believes that will always give way to people being silenced whether their ideas are liberal or conservative simply for the sake of an authoritarian government in power.

The story we see in this chapter is the interview of a woman named Janice who tells us a lot of her political views. She explains her beliefs about how individuals should have more autonomy when it comes to their own lives but how the federal government is too invested in things that she believes shouldn’t be their jurisdiction. As she puts it “we live in a free country, but not that free.” We can also see where she gets her feelings of loyalty to capitalism as she opens the chapter talking about how we already have a fair minimum wage despite democrat complaints about it, she feels this way because she was able to climb the ladder of capitalism and they could to if they worked hard enough. Janice essentially shows us where the classic republican opinions seem to come from.

The belief that popped out to me most was her opinion on gun control, that there shouldn’t be any. She believes everyone should own a gun and ammunition and unlike the typical reasoning that private citizens must be able to stand against a tyrannical government she feels guns would help people solve their own problems without a need to involve the government. This has a certain”frontier” logic to it where it would be best if we could all solve our own problems with other citizens, my only question would be what do you do when someone starts shooting rather than talking. She also believes that if people refuse to work then they should be allowed to starve and go homeless, odd that this opinion came right after their visit to the church. I wouldn’t contest the opinion of her’s so much if not for the fact that I am, unsure who she would define as refusing to work vs who you might define as unable to. However, I do see her point as people should do their best to put as much into the system they can especially when they plan to take out of it later. Her last opinion that got to me was her opinion that if someone is gay she doesn’t care so long as they don’t “push it” on her. What pushing it on her means is that they shouldn’t be expressing herself, they should keep their personal life private. I found it ironic how she wants others to staunch their own first amendment rights after the all the defense for personal freedoms and you’re only owed what you make.

I think the most compelling part of the story was when we saw why she had such a loyalty to capitalism and an aversion to social programs. The two things aren’t black and white, there have been a great deal of good from capitalism. A lot of people have benefitted from the laissez-faire system that allowed them to build their own wealth. I can see why they want everyone to be smart enough to do well in their system and make a pretty enough penny that they do not need to pay such high taxes. After all, taxes kinda suck.

Immigration is a sensitive and complex issue that itself is often influenced by other factors like war and environmental disasters. I often saw immigration as nothing but a good thing, as something that brings cultures together and cultural clash as something rare that is caused only by bigots and they all vote republican, but after the past few years since the events leading up to the 2016 election I have rethought how I view many of these people. It does not seem logical that all of them are simply horrible racists with no legitimate qualms against mass immigration of undocumented immigrants. I spoke to a man named Xavier Rin about his thoughts on mass immigration and how it has affected his home of Orlando, Florida and his birthplace in Pennsylvania.

At first I was simply asking Rin about how changes in the environment has affected his life and how he thinks the government should step into stop or slow environmental damages. He takes a view that the government should have a soft hand in such matters and should not be allowed to make sweeping legislation that would put people’s jobs at risk for the sake of the environment “I would side with the coal workers” he says. This is a good point in my mind, afterall if our ultimate goal of stopping climate change is to help people and save humans from extinction, then why not find a solution that couldn’t potentially put people out of work. As we went further into this line of questions he eventually brought up how his place of residence were affected when immigrants from Puerto Rico had fled their home do to environmental disasters and how this changed the face of Orlando.

As he said to me the smallest problems were the simple issues of communication where the immigrants to Pennsylvania had taken jobs at the local King of Prussia mall and none were all that fluent in English, so the simple trip to the butcher’s suddenly became a rather upsetting game of charades. You can see where the problem comes from and how it could get upsetting, but Rin had bigger issues. Because many dems had voted to lend support to the people of Puerto Rico the new residents had supported the democrats overwhelmingly and this was very much at opposition with Rin’s politics.

I have now begun to see how the issues of immigration are more than just creating a nice cultural melting pot and upon this discovery I can now see where someone could get the impression that immigrants were an erasure of their own culture. Even with his problems however Rin agreed that a limited number of refugees should be allowed in and put under U.S. protection, he simply questions the liberal definition of refugee.

For this project of interviewing someone else on their political beliefs I need to keep a few things in mind. I have to get their informed consent to take down notes and ask them about their ideals, origins, and other relevant information. I have to explain exactly what I am doing, why I am asking the question, where the information will be published, who will most likely see it. I also have to come up with a fake name to protect their identity and not disclose any other private information about them. I have to keep their information secret, because there are people who have a tendency to go after others for their political opinions and ideas when they disagree. The other important part of this interview is to maintain a respectful and professional relationship in my work. I cannot misrepresent or misquote my subject in an attempt to make their views seem absurd, objectively wrong, or make them out to be bigoted or stupid. I have to objectively and intelligently represent their ideas and views.

In this chapter Hochschild interviews one Harold Areno, who describes how his large families life in the Bayou d’Inde (Bayou of the Indians) was decimated by the dumping of the Pittsburgh Plate Glass companies dumping. Harold scrolls down a morbid list of the horrible effects the dumping had on the animals in the bayou including his families livestock and the frogs they relied upon for food. Hochschild describes this pollution of the natural ecosystem that she is witnessing as a “slow motion crime” and then goes into the health effects the family has suffered since the pollution, including cases of cancer. Despite all of this the Areno’s tend to vote republican despite the fact that the right-wing (or at least members of it) are more often than not for against environmental protections and for deregulating the corporations, keeping out the big government. When we look deeper though this makes some sense as the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers is partially responsible for making the problem worse by pushing a lot of the heavy metals that once sat at the bottom of the water to the banks of the rivers.

The Areno’s seem themselves as a kind of resistance through the act of remembering the horrible thing done to the bayou. Harold notes how his nephew was fined by the State of Louisiana for not keeping his hogs safely away from the dirty waters that could infect or kill them, but they did not care too much about cleaning the water itself. Harold says that he thinks the wardens and judges and other men in charge are simply regulating the bottom because they are easier to get at than the government men and rich CEOs on the top.

Do you think that regulation in the United States should be applied in cases of environmental damage?

DO you think there is a classist or otherwise discriminatory way that officials apply regulations?

What kind of pollution or environmental disasters have you seen in your own life, how have they affected you personally?

Hochschild, Arlie Russell. Strangers In Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on The American Right, 2016. New York, The New Press.

Hi, I am Logan Bernsten and this is my cultural anthropology blog. Through this blog I will be documenting the story of someone with a different political/ideological identity than my own and try to tell you the reader their story. We will explore how people come to different political opinions and ideals and come to visualize the political divide our our country and where it started.

I will take my first steps by setting aside my own prejudices against certain people of different political ideas and conduct an interview with them. Hochschild engaged on interviews with people she meets like Mike a member of the Tea Party who are a right-wing organization who believe in less government regulations and lower taxes. She tells his story and how from his perspective the problems he faces are the result of large government. She also humanizes him showing his friendly and comedic side. She talks about the empathy walls that build up between people of different political opinions and how political issues can be a source of a lot of political divide and how political parties are becoming the key determining factor in one’s ideals on every issue. She engages in participant observation by living with the cajun people and hearing their stories and opinions without making judgements even when the ask her if she’s a communist because she is from Berkley. She also gives her study a more grounded and scientific approach by citing statistics that tell how the white American population has moved to the political right over the last few years. This shows the real depth of what she’s exploring and trying to find out why this happened. The last key concept she explore was the Keyhole Issue, where she talks about how she herself has associated her subject Mike with Rush Limbaugh and other troubling right-wing demagogues. Because of this she seeks to find a way to look past that and study what is going on with the American right wing.

With these key ideas I will seek to identify the reasoning and the ideals of someone with a different political identity than my own and find out why their political opinions are different from mine.

Hochschild, Arlie Russell. Strangers In Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on The American Right, 2016. New York, The New Press.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton