Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right

one study, Democrats were asked how many Republicans earn $250,000 a year or more, and answered 38 percent. It’s actually 2 percent. Republicans were asked what proportion of Democrats believe “most police are bad people” and answered 50 percent. It’s actually 15 percent.

But he had paired the lie with a truth—the truth of lost pride. And he had bonded—even fused—with his followers, saying to them, in essence, All those who shame me shame you. Through the alchemy of his repetitions, the list of things that had been “stolen” grew longer. As items passed from “lost” to “stolen,” matters passed from shame to blame. Wit

this I meant provoking liberal/left critics (moment 1) so that they will move into a scold (moment 2), enabling him to claim victimhood (moment 3) and roar back (moment 4).

Indeed, Democrats seemed to him the party of looseness, permissiveness, and what they led to: shame.

Mark Twain’s remark: “‘Kentucky is twenty years behind the rest of the world. So when the world ends, I want to be in Kentucky.’

Pride could be based on recovery.

David also felt invisible to politicians on the left and on the right. “All the Democrats care about is color identity, gender, and sexual identity. So I’m not a Democrat. All the Republicans care about is patriotism and taxes. A lot of them are racist or rich, don’t believe social class exists, give me bootstrap stuff. So I don’t fit there either.

Currency in pride earned in a criminal subculture could not be “cashed in” for higher standing in the wider pride economy.

Over the last forty years, the prison population has been relocating from city to country. Today 53 percent of all American prisons are located in small towns or rural areas. For example, New York convicts far more prisoners each year than Pike County, but most of those convicted in New York serve their sentences in rural areas upstate.