Right? I get that some of middle America feels slighted, and I’m all for preventing the hollowing out of small town America, but I don’t see lying xenophobic scapegoating being the answer here. That’s how you get nationalist parties and paramilitary “cultural enforcement” groups.
Instead, I see a need to foster and fund community organizations and civil engagement. Improved infrastructure and green spaces. More affordable housing - bring people back into the towns rather than the outskirts of it. But unfortunately, oddly, for some reason, that’s not as easy of a sell as the “people be eating your pets” trope.
They think it’s “smart people’s” fault, and those college educated, holier-than-thou smarty pants folks with their big words and fancy wine-sippin’ need to be punished. I think a lot of them know they’re being misled, they just don’t really care.
They know we hate Trump, and so that’s a good enough indication that he must be the solution. Very simple-minded stuff.
In philosophy, ressentiment (/rəˌsɒ̃.tiˈmɒ̃/; French pronunciation: [ʁə.sɑ̃.ti.mɑ̃] ⓘ) is one of the forms of resentment or hostility. The concept was of particular interest to some 19th-century thinkers, most notably Friedrich Nietzsche. According to their use, ressentiment is a sense of hostility directed toward an object that one identifies as the cause of one’s frustration, that is, an assignment of blame for one’s frustration.[1] The sense of weakness or inferiority complex and perhaps even jealousy in the face of the “cause” generates a rejecting/justifying value system, or morality, which attacks or denies the perceived source of one’s frustration. This value system is then used as a means of justifying one’s own weaknesses by identifying the source of envy as objectively inferior, serving as a defense mechanism that prevents the resentful individual from addressing and overcoming their insecurities and flaws. The ego creates an enemy to insulate themselves from culpability.