Show Notes
There has long been a curious sub-genre in liberal journalism. It can best be described as "examining working class Americans in their natural habitat." It goes something like this. Journalists from New York or California will bravely venture into a red state, observe the local inhabitants from afar, and come back with a series of superficial insights that reinforce the existing prejudices of coastal elites.
Partly as a result of this lack of journalistic curiosity, liberal America is no closer to truly understanding the underlying forces that swept Donald Trump into the White House, and may yet do so again.
Batya Ungar-Sargon did something novel. She wanted to understand the American working class, so she actually spoke to them, all over the country, for over a year. Lessons learnt were captured in 'Second Class: How the Elites Betrayed America's Working Men and Women.' It is the best book to read if you want to understand the political and cultural forces at play in America in 2024.
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More from Fire at Will
Politics shouldn't be a team sport, but it has become one. Far too many of us blindly support politicians or parties as opposed to critically assessing ideas and policies. Where has this tribalism come from, how has it got so bad, and what do we do about it?
The Economist recently described Germany as "the hole at the heart of Europe". That's a reasonable description, particularly given it accounts for a quarter of the EU's output, but it has been in recession for the past two years. Another way to look at it is that Germany is a representation of Europe, and all of its challenges.
Whilst illiberal progressivism (or woke for short) appears to be in retreat, what will take its place is an open question. The right in the UK has splintered, Europe is still being suffocated by the weight of the leftist social democratic model, free speech is under assault in Australia (as it is pretty much everywhere), and whilst the Republicans are resurgent in the US, Trump's brand of economic protectionism would have been anathema to the American right in years gone by.
There's an interesting historical pattern in British politics, and you can see it in various shapes and forms since the days of William the Conqueror. About once every century, there is a realignment that completely changes the nature of politics in the country. The last great realignment was the 1922 election, with the Liberal Party falling to third-party status, the Conservatives establishing themselves as the largest party in Parliament, and Labour emerging as the undisputed opposition party.
In the last month, the grooming gangs scandal has gone from being the UK's worst-kept secret to its greatest source of national shame. From at least the 1990s, and likely long before then, criminal networks comprised almost entirely of Pakistani Muslim men prostituted, raped and tortured thousands of young girls in towns and cities across the UK. And the authorities, despite being aware of what was happening, did very little to intervene. UK citizens, and indeed the world, quite rightly want to know why.