Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right

by Arlie Russell Hochschild

  Her sister was at work. Out the window it was a "beautiful bluebird day," Jackie recalls, and lying on the floor with her sister's dog, Jackie had a moment of transformation. 1 looked up at the sky, and said, "If You really save people, Jesus, would you save me? I can't save myself." Then I got up off the floor. I had no idea what I was doing. I walked into the bathroom and looked in the mirror at a completely different girl. That was it."

  "How did that different girl look? " I ask.

  "Clean, beautiful. I believe that, for the first time, I saw in the mirror how He saw me. He showed me who I am to Him."

  Everything—her marriage to Heath, her children, her living room with the graceful stone fireplace in a spacious house, all are testimony, she feels, to that moment. "Abraham Lincoln was a very good man. I revere Abe Lincoln," she muses. "But if Lincoln walked down the road, he wouldn't see me. Jesus would see me." Presidents? You can't see them and they don't see you. But Jesus is always there, she feels. And she had learned from Him how to trust to Him that good things would happen. Wishing too hard for things could even be counterproductive.

  "I started to learn the Bible, and it said that 'those who wait on the Lord will mount up on wings like eagles. They will run and they won't grow weary.'" She pauses. "Those who wait. So that means when everything's right, things will happen. We don't necessarily have to make things happen."

  Curiously, though, Jackie greatly admires her mother, who did make things happen. As an abandoned mother of five, on welfare, her mother had first found a low-paying job in Chicago's Flower City. "But you know how my mother got her first good job as a medical secretary? She went to the library, studied what medical secretaries do, got all dressed up, applied for the job, lied that she had a college education, and got the job. She did well, and ended up years later as an account executive in a large advertising agency." Jackie laughs with delight; they don't teach that kind of gumption in college. Though highly enterprising herself, Jackie was following a different path, at least for now. Sometimes you have to manage your strong wishes; then something good happens—you win a protective husband, enjoy a paid-off house.

  Reward for Renunciation

  Having related this story, Jackie suddenly asks, "May I take you on an adventure?" We climb into her tan SUV, move her children's jackets and tennis shoes to the back seat, and drive past the double brick pillars of Courtland Place, past an empty field, out the main road, past strip malls, and into a modest housing development. She slows to a stop in front of a snug one-story townhouse in a pan-flat neighborhood of similar homes encircled by modest trim lawns. It was their first home, Jackie says. She and Heath had lived there for eight years when the children were small. Their neighbors were refinery operators, bartenders, machine repairmen, and cashiers from the three enormous casinos in Lake Charles. Many worked long hours, emptying the neighborhood of company. "We didn't get to know our neighbors, but the kids could ride their bikes," she says, pointing to a nearby cul-de-sac.

  Jackie drives on for another ten minutes through other neighborhoods of brick homes hedged with modest shrubs until we arrive before a second home. "We built our second house in Pine Mist Estates and paid it off in three years," Jackie says. I snap a photo out the car window of an attractive red brick ranch house, with white trim and three mid-sized palm trees, their fronds gracefully arching over the front.

  We'd seen two former houses. What was this adventure? I wonder.

  Jackie goes on: "When we lived in Pine Mist Estates, I always wanted to live in Autumn Run," Jackie says. After we circle through another mid-scale development, there it is, a third house: the one she used to dream about when she lived in Pine Mist. It, too, is a one-story ranch house, set on a treeless corner lot, larger than the first but not as large as her present home. House 3 was bigger than house 2. But it was the house she didn't dare want.

  Jackie had learned to be an obedient Christian wife, to subordinate her wishes to those of Heath. Having witnessed her mother's two disastrous marriages, she wanted a good marriage to Heath. And it seemed to her that the route to this was to act as Eve did to Adam; she would be as a "rib" to Heath, a helpmate. But this presented a conflict. "I wanted that house so badly," she repeats, staring at the object of a once-powerful desire. "But I never breathed a word about wanting this house to Heath. We couldn't afford it. He was working so hard. I didn't want to pressure him. I was ashamed of wanting it when there was no way we could have it. He's never even known I wanted to live in Autumn Run so bad."

  "But look at it now." The house's roof is ripped. The paint is chipped. The fence sags—the lingering signs of the highly destructive Hurricane Rita. "Now the kids call it Autumn Run-down," she tells me. We have seen house 1 (the starter house), house 2 (a slightly larger house), and house 3 (her old dream house), and now we are headed back to house 4 (her own beautiful house). Jackie wants me to know something about her relationship to house 3, her old dream house. She had wanted it "too badly." "I always dreamed of living in Autumn Run," she says again. Jackie wants me to see this talisman of desire, this proof that it isn't wise to wish for something too hard. Her once-coveted house is nothing compared to the home she lives in now, which is "beyond my wildest dreams, the home paid off in three years, when I couldn't imagine less than thirty."

  "I told my daughter, what if I had pushed to move to Autumn Run? We would have ended up there when this [our current house] is the house we're meant to be in. I told her that Bible passage about not necessarily having to make things happen."

  Each house was as a step on a ladder to the American Dream. On one rung she had yearned too much for the next: that was the lesson. In a sense, Jackie's lesson ran counter to the deep story; one shouldn't wish too much for what seems like the next step toward the American Dream. That was grabbing. On the other hand, she had struggled hard emotionally not to grab for it. Our adventure was in coming to understand that lesson.

  On our ride back to her home, Jackie gestures out the window. "See over there? That's Crestview." This is another housing development, where dream houses 5, 6, and 7 might be, she is pointing out. "This is where 'super-rich' people live." Then she adds, "I've never even driven there. I don't want to. I don't want to want a house there." It was hard enough wanting these other things she felt she couldn't have.

  As we drive home, she reflects, "I was a poor little Irish girl. I was devastated that I didn't have a good home life, like everybody else did. I mean, some of my friends were rich kids who ended up going to lovely Ivy League colleges. In Chicago, we lived on the other side of Elliott Road. Everyone on our side of Elliott Road was poor. We looked nice, so you couldn't see that we didn't have anything." She so envied the girls on the other side of Elliott Road, with their happy families, their lovely homes. It had been a struggle to give up wanting what they effortlessly enjoyed. But with Jesus's help, she'd given it up. And her own beautiful house was His reward.

  The reward for renunciation appeared to her in another way too. Although a born-again Christian, Jackie was reluctant at first to follow her husband into the Baptist Church, and even more reluctant to tithe 10 percent of their hard-earned wages to it. "And that's on top of the 33 percent taxes we pay the government," she notes. There was the house note to pay, the children's private Christian school tuition, hurricane and health insurance payments, car insurance, gas—-and 10 percent on top of that. How could they swing it? Then more: Trinity had a fundraising campaign to renovate and expand the building, for which the church was asking all parishioners to commit an extra $3,000. At first Jackie thought, "We can't." Then thirty-seven, Heath was earning eighteen dollars an hour in his father's construction business, and his father shared a third of his profits with Heath as well. But Heath had signed a pledge to Trinity Baptist. And as a dutiful Christian wife, Jackie renounced her wish to pay off their debt.

  If she renounced one wish, she'd discovered, a bigger one came true. As Hurricane Rita shredded homes, upended trees, and smashed houses, Heath got more work a
nd earned more money. People living in fifth-wheel (towable) trailers got him to rebuild their homes. Heath was also asked to put in the drywall for Trinity's children's playroom and gym. "Even though we were tithing and giving the church $3,000, we paid off every loan," Jackie said.

  In every job she has taken, Jackie explains, "I always end up the leader. I'm good at it." But on accepting Christ as her savior and joining Trinity, and becoming a Christian wife, she had renounced her wish to lead. "A wife is a helpmate to her husband. Eve was created to be a helper. I'm created to help Heath." By renouncing one desire, Jackie fulfilled another: she got to stay home with her children.

  We have turned around now and are slowly driving back through this parade of neighborhoods to her home in Courtland, when the issue of environmental pollution comes up. "We live in a terribly polluted environment here," Jackie tells me. "My son's best friend, Patrick, recently died of a rare neuroblastoma at age nine. Nine—that young. His parents think some chemical around here caused it, but they can't prove it."

  On the campaign trail, in the media, from the pulpit, and from industry I had observed a silence about pollution. It seemed like the kind of amnesia E.E. Evans-Pritchard had spoken of, the kind that had led the Areno family to remember the events on Bayou d'Inde in a spirit of defiance. This silence extends to Jackie's personal world as well. "Pollution? I don't talk about it much with friends," Jackie muses. "This whole town operates off of oil. So I could be talking to two moms whose husbands work in the plants. They think government regulation will hurt jobs, or stop new plants from coming in. You don't want to remind them of dangers. Or make them think you're blaming them for the work they do. It's too close to home." Again, the silence. Many plant workers were indeed caught in a bind—as enthusiastic members of the Calcasieu Rod and Gun Club and lovers of wildlife, they feel remorse about pollution, but as employees, they felt obliged to keep quiet about it. And so, out of deference, did Jackie and Heath. One consultant told me he saw "a notice in the men's room, 'Don't drink the water,' in Axiall [this being the former PPG],... But you don't hear much talk about why that sign was there."

  Jackie was a Worshipper. She had developed a worshipful attitude and a capacity for meaningful renunciation. Instead of overcoming her aversion to regulation, Jackie spoke of learning to live without it. In this way, she echoed Team Loyalists like Janice Areno. You accommodate. Clean air and water; those were good. She wanted them, just as she wanted a beautiful home. But sometimes you had to do without what you wanted. You couldn't have both the oil industry and clean lakes, she thought, and if you had to choose, you had to choose oil. "Oil's been pretty darned good to us," she said. "I don't want a smaller house. I don't want to drive a smaller car." An operator job in an oil plant is a passport to houses in Pine Mist. One of those rare engineering job gets you into Autumn Run, and a high management job gets you into Courtland. The Arctic Cat, the SUV, the house: all these, she felt, came indirectly from oil. For its part, the federal government got in the way of both oil and the good life.

  As a Team Loyalist, Janice Areno had not allowed herself to feel too badly about pollution. Bayou d'Inde, the rubberized horse. As a loyalist to industry and the Republican Party, she defended herself against "too much" anxiety about pollution, the brown pelican, and human health. For her part, Jackie Tabor allowed herself to feel sad about these things. It was a terrible shame this had happened, she felt. But having permitted herself to feel sad about environmental damage, she renounced the desire to remediate it, because that would call for more dreaded government. Each had a different moment of emotional pause—Janice's was on the act of admitting to loss and grieving it. Jackie's important moment of emotional pause was upon the act of renouncing an important desire. A clean environment? Sadly, we can't have it.

  "I'm named for Jacqueline Kennedy," she says, her face ready to receive my surprise. And she admires the Kennedys still. But today, she feels, as in the deep story, that "the government has gone rogue, corrupt, malicious, and ugly. It can't help anybody," she says. Like others, she feels that President Obama is not a real Christian and, neither through his upbringing nor in his loyalty, a true American. Her distrust has gone the full cascade: from president to the redistributive function of the federal government to nearly all government functions—including that of cleaning up the environment.

  Along the way, Jackie goes out of her way to explain that she does not admire those who pay their taxes gratefully. She doesn't feel grateful for what the government does for her and doesn't believe others should either. In a lightly taunting way, she brings up the financier Warren Buffett. "He's rich. And he says he wants to pay higher taxes because that's fairer to poor people." (Buffett had said that he didn't think it fair that his secretary paid higher taxes than he did.) "Okay. Set the standard," Jackie taunts. "What's stopping you, buddy? Write that check if you don't think you pay enough taxes. Get on TV, the whole world will cover it, and be a hero from one end to the other. Knock yourself out. Why aren't you writing a check?" Jackie speaks with frustration. Buffett seemed to be asking for praise for being a good citizen in a system she no longer believes in. He was on offer as a role model for liberal gratitude for public schools, libraries, and parks. But those were liberal feeling rules, not hers.

  "I'm not against stopping pollution, of course. I'm for regulating polluters," Jackie says, but she quickly amends what she said: "I would be all for it if the government didn't use pollution as an excuse to expand." And environmentalists are not to be trusted either. "They push the government to expand and have their own financial interest in solar and wind too."

  What she holds separate from this betrayal and pursuit of self-interest are the Constitution and the American flag. On another visit, I come with Jackie to a performance at her son's small Christian school. Sitting near us in the audience are Jackie's kindly mother-in-law and her mother-in-law's mother. Christian steps to the front of the assembled parents, asks them to stand, reads a passage from the Bible, asks them to be seated, and is followed by students who, one by one, do the same. As part of the performance, a video is shown and "America the Beautiful" is played. Looming high and majestic on the screen, backlit by a vivid sunset, the American flag waves. "Take a picture with your cellphone!" Jackie whispers, "of the flag!" The American government is a betrayer, she feels, but the American flag stays true.

  Liberals seemed a problem for Jackie, because they believed different things and might get her children to believe them too. As we drive home from the performance, the children in the back of the SUV, she shakes her head recalling an incident: "My kids were watching a program called Victorious on the Disney Channel, which I thought would be fine," but the commentator started to talk about global warming. "We don't believe in global warming." That belief, too, seemed like an excuse for government expansion, part of the betrayal. "The commentator said that people that watch Fox News are idiots. It was a good thing I was watching TV with the kids and caught that. I thought, 'How long are my kids going to believe me over them?' A year? Six months?"

  Jackie's impulse to clean up the environment had also been tempered by her faith: "I'm probably less an activist than I would be because of my faith today," she says. "As a kid, I wrote every president to tell him what I thought he needed to do. But now, I'm less involved. I do think a lot of activists are self-serving. You have to put up with things the way they are." She has a deep story self: she had fought her way out of a tough childhood, to the front of the line for the American Dream, a line in which she feared her family could lose its place. Meanwhile, as we drive past the American flag draped over a stone at the edge of her neighbor's yard, into the carport beside the Arctic Cat, with a small, sad shake of her head, Jackie says, "Pollution is the sacrifice we make for capitalism."

  12

  The Cowboy: Stoicism

  A Vidalia onion sits within arms reach of Brother Cappy's place at the dining room table, a warning—half joke and half serious—not to fight. Around the table some ten
people are seated for Sunday dinner at the home of Brother Cappy and Sister Fay Brantley, two respected elders of the Pentecostal church in Longville, an hour's drive north from Lake Charles. Mike Tritico is their friend, and he has asked them if I could join. Everyone has come from either that church or the local Baptist one, and everyone knows about the onion. Debate between two men, regular luncheon guests and friendly adversaries, is about to begin. It is both poke-in-the-ribs home theater, a source of collective hilarity, and an airing of serious political difference. The onion is Cappy's standing joke, a way of saying, "Keep it civil, boys." Arguments could get heated over anything to do with the environment, regulation, and the government.

  A fatherly man with half-moon eyes and thinning reddish hair, Brother Cappy is a well-liked retired telephone repairman. Before coming to their house, I had attended the Longville Pentecostal Church with the Brantleys. Brother Cappy had spoken at church, introducing the man who reported the attendance (thirty-eight parishioners) and the total collection ($42.45). His wife, Sister Fay, wearing a long, floral dress and pale-rimmed glasses, her gray hair swept into curls high on her head, had sung gospel tunes with zest in church and now warmly welcomes us into their cozy home. One by one, we pass the bird feeders and flower beds, climb the front steps onto the front porch, past the wooden swing where neighbors gather over coffee in the morning, and scatter a plump calico cat. The Brantley home is part of a larger family compound. "Our family all live right here," Sister Fay explains proudly. "Our daughter and family here [she points left], our son and family there [she points right]. My ninety-one-year-old mother lives behind us." They have with them the Brantleys' cousin who is in training to become a Pentecostal minister, and their son-in-law, an inspector at CertainTeed. "And Brother Cappy and Sister Fay have adopted us" Mike Tritico adds brightly, referring to himself and another Sunday dinner regular, a retired repairman of railroad tracks and bridges. "So they've got a big family." Cappy and Mike had long been friends, and Cappy and another parishioner at the Pentecostal church had done a "faith healing" that cured Mike's back of terrible pain for twelve years, Mike said, which further deepened their bond. Beyond Sunday dinners, friends also gather most mornings to sit on the porch, drink coffee, gossip, and talk politics.