EAllusion wrote:When it comes to xenophobia, I think the evidence is largely in favor of xenophobia being a much better explanation of the shift of voters to Trump than "economic anxiety." In fact, I think "economic anxiety" was used a fig leaf by far too many people to cover for what was raw racial animus.
Yeah, I don't think you are reading my posts with enough care. Underlying racial animus and xenophobia are factors FOR EVERYONE. What I am saying is that circumstances impact how much this underlying animus or xenophobia manifests itself overtly. It is easy to judge people when their xenophobia comes to the surface. A religious mentality, even a post-religious mentality, is to judge the manifestation of xenophobia instead of seeking to understand the conditions under which general xenophobia, a near universal human trait, becomes hardened into racist attitudes and behaviors.
Too often the Democratic Party--probably in line with its Protestant cultural roots--is focused on the "sin" of racism, particularly when it is helpful for casting blame on people who voted the wrong way. One would think that all of these clever, rational, data-driven types would be too sophisticated for that. But data is collected by people, and its interpretation has a lot to do with the questions we ask. So, if you simply ask, "were the people who voted for Trump racist?," you are correctly cataloguing the symptoms of deeper problems. If all you want to do is explain why Trump voters are bad, wrong, and stupid, then congratulations, you found a useful data point.
But I do believe that economics, education, and other factors/stressors deeply impact the choice of solutions that people seek. Certain stressors push people to otherwise horrific solutions. It would be the height of historical blindness not to see the pattern of spiking of anti-Semitism as, in part, a byproduct of other stressors. Similarly in earlier eras with human sacrifice. The Romans buried people alive when they were wigged out. Yes, all of this is evil and unacceptable. But do we stop it by condemning it, or by identifying the circumstances in which it manifests and doing our best to head it off?
On most days I would look to the Democratic Party to embrace and pursue the idea of heading these problems off. In this case, however, Democrats seem more interested in blaming racist people for Clinton's loss. "You bad racist, you, you voted for Trump because you are a bad person."
"Petition wasn’t meant to start a witch hunt as I’ve said 6000 times." ~ Hanna Seariac, LDS apologist