Guno צְבִי
We fight, We win, Am Yisrael Chai
A sense of loss easily gives way to shame. A 40-year-old grandson of a coal miner, himself a recovering heroin addict, explained it to me this way: “Shame comes gradually. First thing, a guy gets his layoff slip and he blames the supervisor. Then he shakes his fist at the Obama administration for blaming climate change on coal, and adds in Biden and the Democratic Party and the deep state.” Next, as this man tells it, comes low unemployment money and “girly” service jobs like waiting tables that make him feel bad about himself. Shame becomes stronger and for so many, this leads to drugs which can then lead, in turn, to divorce and separation from your family—which stirs up more shame. He continues: “Then he may read some op-ed in the Appalachian News-Express calling people like him a deadbeat for not supporting his family and paying taxes the town needs for its sewer repairs. On top of all that, he sees on the internet people outside the region firing insults at him as ignorant, racist, sexist, or homophobic. Now he’s mad at the shamers. And by this point he’s forgotten about shame. He’s just plain pissing mad.”
time.com
How Trump Weaponized White Rural America’s Shame
Trump’s masterful ability to shift shame into blame pushed white working-class America to accept his turn to the right.