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

by Arlie Russell Hochschild

  The last time I visited Mike Schaff's abandoned home on Crawfish Stew Street in Belle Rose with him, the rose bush was dead, a few shingles had dropped from the roof, and there were signs of an attempted break-in. Thirty-eight feral cats (now called the Cajun Kitties of Bayou Corne) were wandering about. Mike and his wife had moved from their ruined home near the sinkhole into a beautiful, large fixer-upper on a canal flowing into Lake Verret. Some mailboxes along his street were shaped like open-mouthed fish. His new home was not far from where his father had long ago pulled him along as a three-year-old boy in a small plastic tub as he checked his crawfish nets. Mike was back on the water.

  He had jacked up the living room floor, redone the bedroom molding, put in a new deck, and set up his airplane-building kit in the garage for later. A recent tornado had ripped the American flag from the pole extending from his garage, but it hadn't harmed the Confederate flag hanging from the porch of his next-door neighbor.

  Mike's new home lay near the entrance to the spillway of the magnificent Atchafalaya Basin, an 800,000-acre National Wildlife Refuge—the largest bottomland hardwood swamp in the country—overseen, in part, by the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. Mike took me in his flat boat into this extraordinary basin to fish for perch. He pointed out a bald eagle on the bare branch of a tall cypress, a soaring white egret, a long-legged spoonbill watching for fish.

  But, he explained, "I've gone from the frying pan to the fire. They are disposing of millions of gallons of fracking waste—the industry calls it produced water—right here in the basin. It can contain methanol, chloride, sulphates, radium. And they're importing it from Pennsylvania and other fracking sites to go into an injection well near here. Salt can corrode the casing of those wells, and it's not far from our aquifer." In 2015, the Texas state legislature effectively forbade any local bans of fracking and waste disposal—rendering them unenforceable.

  I asked Mike who he was planning to back for U.S. president. His first choice was Tea Party favorite, Texas senator Ted Cruz, who had received $15 million in super PAC contribution from fracking billionaires Farris and Dan Wilks, calls fracking a "providential blessing," and adamantly opposes bans on it. Cruz has also called for gutting clean water protection, limiting citizens' access to the courts, and exempting power plants from having to comply with air standards. Like Mike, he didn't believe in man's role in climate change, and he called for cuts in research on its effects. Indeed, in the 2015 voting scores kept by the National League of Conservation Voters across twenty-five environmental issues, Ted Cruz won a score of 0 out of a possible 100 points. His lifetime score was 5. Still, Mike had to balance his powerful dislike of the federal government against his desire to protect the great majesty of the Atchafalaya Basin and prevent future waves of environmental refugees. He didn't want to vote for the menshevik or the bolshevik. So that left Ted Cruz. And if Cruz didn't win the Republican nomination? I asked. "I'll vote for Donald Trump."

  On my last visit to Harold and Annette Areno at Bayou d'Inde, Harold told me he couldn't be sure, but these days maybe the water was looking a bit clearer. Then he kindly walked me across his driveway and opened my car door. I got in and opened the window on the driver's side. Now in his mid-eighties, Harold looked out at his beloved bayou, where once-majestic cypress had held out their moss shawls as if sashaying up the bayou and beyond. I recalled the photographs he'd shown me of them. Then Harold leaned on the window, and told me slowly: "I don't know when I'll see you next. Only the Angel Gabriel knows when each of our times come. But when it does, and gravity leaves our feet, and we rise up, I know I'll see you up there. And they say there are beautiful trees in Heaven."

  Acknowledgments

  I owe so many thanks.

  My first big thanks go to Sally Cappel. One Sunday in Berkeley when my former graduate student, Manuel Vallee, and his wife, Alice Cappel, were visiting, Manuel asked what I was researching. When I replied, "the political divide in America—I think I should get out of Berkeley, maybe go south," Alice said immediately, "My mother is a progressive, her lifelong friend is Tea Party, and you should visit them" It wasn't long before an invitation arrived from Sally Cappel to visit Lake Charles, Louisiana, and my adventure began. The Cappel home became my home away from home as I began interviews around Lake Charles and elsewhere around the state on what became ten expeditions between 2011 and 2016. It was in Sally and Fred's cozy kitchen, the walls covered with vibrant oil paintings, an overflowing basket collection, a sign hung in the window that said "EAT," aromas from a pot on the large iron stove, that I first placed my tape recorder on the table and conducted four focus groups. (Appendix A describes my full research design.) Sally's Tea Party friend Shirley Slack also invited me to stay with her in Opelousas, where we browsed through her Louisiana State University yearbook and family photos, visited her church, the nursing home where her mother had stayed, and her granddaughter's school, and walked through her family graveyard. Her husband, Booty, drove us in his truck past tree-shrouded oil pumping rigs to his favorite fishing spot. This book could not have been written without Sally and Shirley and their families.

  My heartfelt thanks to the Tea Party enthusiasts who allowed me into their lives. You gave me your trust, your time, and your insight, and you extended your famous Southern hospitality. Most of all, you shared with me the hope that something good could come of this. You probably won't agree with all I say in this book, but I hope you feel I've been true to your experience and perspective.

  Many thanks to Susan Reed, who kindly put me in touch with a wide range of experts. I'm grateful to Peggy Frankland, author of the very fine Women Pioneers of the Louisiana Environmental Movement, about early kitchen-sink environmental activists, and who, along with Mike Tritico, kindly read an early draft of the manuscript. Thanks to Paul Ringo in Singer, Louisiana, for sharing his knowledge of the industrial pollution of Louisiana's rivers, especially the Sabine River. Thanks to Jimmy and Marilyn Cox, who shared their close knowledge of Louisiana state politics and their generous hospitality. Jimmy also helped me research "man camps." Thanks to Dan Schaad and Sherry Jones Miller of Aunt Ruby's Bed and Breakfast, where I stayed in Lake Charles, another home away from home. In Baton Rouge, a big thanks to Willie Fontenot, a former Louisiana assistant district attorney who, with his wife Mary, kindly hosted my son and me, and proved an extraordinary guide through Louisiana's environmental history.

  I dedicate this book to six inspiring environmentalists: Willie Fontenot, Wilma Subra, Marylee Orr, Mike Tritico, Clara Baudoin, and General Russel Honoré. Thank you for all you do.

  Through the images and text of their astonishing book Petrochemical America, Richard Misrach and Kate Orff opened my eyes—a solemnly received gift. An image from that book appears on the cover of this book.

  Special thanks to Ron and Linda Alfieri. Ron made a creative and generous offer—I should watch a program he chose (Fox News's Bill O'Reilly) and he would watch one I chose (MSNBC's Rachel Maddow), and we would each take notes and later compare impressions. We did, and along the way we became good friends. Thanks also to Mari Harris Alfieri.

  Other Louisianans of many political stripes greatly deepened my understanding of the right, including Wendy Aguilar, Michele Armstrong, William Baggett, John Barry, the late David Conner, Eric Cormier, Laura Cox, Janice and Bob Crador, Debra Gillory, Michael Hall, former U.S. congressman from Louisiana "Buddy" Leach, Daniel Levesque, Father Henry Manusco, Reverend Keith Matthews, Robert McCall, Ann Polak, Deborah Ramirez, Stacey Ryan, Rachael and Eddie Windham, Carolyn Woosley, and Beth Zilbert.

  Back in Berkeley, I had the help of two highly gifted research assistants. In the project's first year, Sarah Garrett scoured the literature—in sociology, psychology, political science, and history—that bore on political views. Later, Rebecca Elliott honed in on the history of industry and its impact on the environment. Both could zoom around datasets drawn from scientific and governmental sources as if on magic skates. Rebecca, now a profess
or at the London School of Economics, conducted the painstaking research behind Appendixes B and C and performed a highly complex analysis interrelating data from a national survey (the National Opinion Research Center's General Social Survey) with information on risk of exposure to hazardous waste (from the Environmental Protection Agency's Risk-Screening Environmental Indicators). Thanks also to Bonnie Kwan, who heroically transcribed over four thousand pages of interviews, proofread much of the manuscript, and cheered me along.

  I'm also very grateful for the early editorial help of the highly gifted Connie Hale, who set a high standard and greatly helped me shape the narrative. Many thanks to my draft-reading friends, to Barbara Ehrenreich, who greatly inspires and ever encourages me, and who shook me back to "my Berkeley self," and to Ann Swidler, who pushed me to empathize more. A long while ago Ann was my student and I mentored her, but she has turned the tables on me and has—over many breakfasts at Saul's—very lovingly mentored me. So many thanks, Ann. Thanks also to Allison Pugh, dear friend and editor extraordinaire, who has a great gift for putting her finger on exactly the right hidden point. Thanks to Mike and Flo Hout for a very helpful read and to Mike for expertly shepherding Rebecca and me through the General Social Survey analysis mentioned above, and a great thanks to Troy Duster and Larry Rosenthal for help at every stage of this project. Many thanks to Harriet Barlow, whose deep concern about this political moment is an inspiration to many, and to Deirdre English for her continuing support and "wow" insights, and to Wayne Herkness, who advised me on details of the BP oil spill. Thanks to Chuck Collins for help understanding which public policies help big business and which help small businesses, and to Ruth Collier and Elizabeth Farnsworth for helpful conversation. I'm grateful to Gustav Wickstrom for his helpful critical feedback on an early prospectus and to Larry Rosenthal and Martin Paley for comments on an early draft. Huge thanks to Joan Cole, who remained an angel of encouragement throughout. When I most feared becoming a workaholic drudge to all my friends, Joan warmly you-hooed inside the emotional tunnel one digs in completing such projects with her loving, near daily, "So how's it going?"

  My deepest gratitude goes to my longtime literary agent, Georges Borchardt, for his enormous support, his largeness of vision, and his unfailing sense of humor. Thanks also to two fantastic editors at The New Press, Ellen Adler and Jed Bickman, for wise and incisive edits. My special gratitude to Ellen for her equanimity under pressure and to Jed for sidebar theory chats; it was pure pleasure working with them both. And to Emily Albarillo for her good-humored and superb oversight of the production of the book.

  More than I can say, I'm grateful for my family. My son David joined me at an environmental rally on the steps of the Louisiana state house in Baton Rouge, first spotted Mike Schaff (whom I profile in this book) at the podium, scoured a draft of the book, and offered great encouragement. Many thanks to my son Gabriel for wise meditations on politics and the human spirit, and to my nephew Ben Russell, who joined me on visits to Port Arthur, Texas, and Longville, Singer, and Lake Charles, Louisiana, and spent a day with me visiting a man living in a trailer without electricity or running water on land zoned "heavy industrial" for new development by Sasol. Many thanks to my daughter-in-law Cynthia Li, herself a gifted writer, who read a draft of the book and helped me see the text through her wondrously insightful eyes.

  Finally, Adam. He twice set up at Aunt Ruby's, his own manuscript in tow. He visited with some of my new friends, attended church, explored bookstores, and caught beads thrown from a Lake Charles Mardi Gras float. He also red-penned multiple drafts, cooked, listened, wondered, lightened, encouraged, held, and shared with me the experience of writing this book as he has shared much else in the fifty years of our marriage. He is the light of my life and I so thank him for being that.

  Appendix A:

  The Research

  This book is based on a kind of research sociologists describe as "exploratory" and "hypothesis generating." The goal of it is not to see how common or rare something is, or where one does and doesn't find it, or to study how the something comes and goes through time—although I draw on the research of others who address such questions. My goal has been to discover what that something actually is. I've long been fascinated by the emotional draw of right-wing politics; that's my "something." It took getting close and that determined my choice of method.

  As with my other books based on this method—The Second "Shift: Working Families and the Revolution at Home; The Time Bind: When Home Becomes Work and Work Becomes Home; The Managed Heart: The Commercialization of Human Feeling—I adapted my approach to the subject at hand. Decisions about sample selection, interviewing method, participant-observation profile selection, statistical analysis—all were the best ways I could think of to get close to the "something."

  My first step was to conduct four focus groups, two of Tea Party supporters and two of Democrats, all composed of middle-class white women from Lake Charles, Louisiana. I then did follow-up interviews with nearly all of the conservative women and sometimes, in a method social scientists call "snowball sampling," with their husbands, parents, and neighbors. A member of one of the right-wing focus groups invited me to join the monthly luncheons of Republican Women of Southwest Louisiana, and this gave me the opportunity to talk to those around the luncheon table and do follow-up interviews. One was with the Pentecostal minister's wife whom you meet in chapter 8. She, in turn, introduced me to many members of her church, invited me to a church social, and opened a window into that community.

  Following another path, I followed two rival congressional candidates on their campaign trails. The differences between their positions seemed very small to my Berkeley eyes but loomed large to many in Louisiana. At every campaign event, I tried to talk to the person next to me, who sometimes introduced me to still others. At a union hall meet-and-greet for a Tea Party candidate in Rayne, for example, a kind man took it upon himself to introduce me around a large picnic table to mainly retired white male workers: "Y'all, this lady is from California, and she's writing a book."

  A Lake Charles-born environmental activist, Mike Tritico, who appears throughout this book, had many deeply conservative Tea Party, anti-environmentalist friends with whom he kept in close touch. I asked him if I could tag along as he visited with them. It was in this way that I came to attend a number of Sunday after-church luncheons at the home of Brother Cappy and Sister Fay Brantley (chapter 12) and to listen in on some of Mike's arguments with Donny McCorquodale.

  Recognizing the importance of their debate for this book, I began attending public rallies on the environment. It was at such a rally that I met two people—Mike Schaff, a Tea Party advocate, and General Russel Honoré. To learn more about Honoré's capacity to talk effectively to those normally hostile to the environmentalist outlook, I followed him around for a day, listening to him speak to both businessmen and victims of extreme pollution. He also took me on a tour of the strip of oil and petrochemical plants along the Mississippi between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, known as Cancer Alley, which I describe in chapter 4.

  Altogether, I talked with sixty people and accumulated over four thousand pages of transcribed interviews. Forty of these were people who embraced the principles of the Tea Party. An additional twenty helped me understand the core group; they included scientists, academics, two former members of the Louisiana legislature, ministers, a newspaper reporter, a librarian and volunteer River Watcher, two professors, a former director of the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, a former assistant attorney general of Louisiana, an environmental chemist, a marine biologist, and a mayor. Eight of this latter group were black. I spent a day, for instance, with a black, male, disabled plant operator living in a trailer surrounded by land rezoned as "heavy industrial" and owned by Sasol, a large petrochemical company. His water and electricity had been cut off, and the mailman would no longer deliver his mail, but at the time I saw him, he was determined never to leave his home.

 
When I met my interviewees, 1 gave them my consent form, set up my tape recorder, and offered to turn it off any time they asked. A number of times they did, and those discussions are either reported in a way that completely separates the event from the person who told me of it, or not reported at all.

  From among my forty core interviews, I chose six to profile as they most clearly and richly exemplified patterns of thinking and feeling that I'd noticed in many others among the forty. With these six people, I also did what sociologists call participant observation—visiting places of birth, churches, and burial plots, sharing meals, driving places together, attending events, and more.

  Of the core group, roughly half were women and half were men. All were white and between the ages of forty and eighty-five. Their occupations placed them in the middle, lower-middle, and working class. Roughly one-third worked or had worked for oil directly (e.g., as pipefitters) or indirectly (e.g., as suppliers) and two-thirds were in lines of work unrelated to oil— teachers, secretaries, a flight attendant, and a trailer park owner, for example. Interestingly, attitudes across these groups varied very little.

  Back in Berkeley, with the great help of two research assistants, both PhD candidates in the U.C. Berkeley Sociology Department, I set about studying Gallup, General Social Survey, and Pew opinion polls. I paid special attention to the degree to which my respondents seemed to reflect, exaggerate, or buck national patterns.

  Midway through this research, I returned to the General Social Survey with an important new question. What was the link, I became curious to know, between an American's description of him or herself as a "strong Republican" or "strong Democrat," attitudes about regulating pollution, and actual exposure to it. For that research and finding, see Appendix B.