In the heartland of the American right, people harmed by polluting industries have instead come to hate the government whose environmental regulations protect them. Now they’re voting for Donald Trump
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/07/how-great-paradox-american-politics-holds-secret-trumps-success
podcast: https://www.theguardian.com/news/audio/2016/sep/19/how-the-great-paradox-of-american-politics-holds-the-secret-to-trumps-success-podcast
In the life of one man, Lee Sherman, I saw reflected both sides of the Great Paradox – the need for help and a principled refusal of it. As a victim of toxic exposure himself, a participant in polluting public waters, now proudly declaring himself as an environmentalist, why was he throwing in his lot with the anti-environmental Tea Party? Not because anyone was paying him to, at least directly. Sherman was putting up Tea Party lawn signs for free.
His source of news was limited to Fox News and videos and blogs exchanged by rightwing friends, which placed him in an echo chamber of doubt about the EPA, the federal government, the president, and taxes.
When Americans moved in the past, they left their homes in search of better jobs, cheaper housing, or milder weather. But, according to Bill Bishop and Robert G Cushing’s book, The Big Sort, when people move today, it is more often to live near others who share their views. People are segregating themselves into different emotionally toned enclaves – anger here, hopefulness and trust there. And the more people who confine themselves to like-minded company, the more extreme their views become. According to a 2014 Pew study of more than 10,000 Americans, the most politically engaged on each side see those in the “other party” not just as wrong, but as “so misguided that they threaten the nation’s wellbeing”. Compared with the past, each side also increasingly gets its news from its own television channel – the right from Fox News, the left from MSNBC. And so the divide widens.
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