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

Harold is a “gentle Cajun pipefitter” (39). For at least three generations, Harold’s family made their living from the Bayou D’Inde, the waterway into which Lee Sherman dumped countless barrels of toxic waste. Part of the area’s Acadian (Cajun) community, Harold’s family has long been tied to the land, and he recalls a childhood spent fishing, hunting, trapping, and tending to the family’s livestock. They had little need to purchase anything from stores, and they were a happy, close-knit bunch. After the area industrialized, life became more difficult for Harold and his family. Most of his relatives had been employed by PPG, and cancer had killed many of them. He and his siblings cannot recall a single case of cancer in their family before the advent of industry, and they know that they have all been exposed both at work and at home. From the Areno family, the author learns about the area’s waters, so polluted that they smell, and the death of not only people from cancer, but also wildlife and livestock from unexplained illnesses. Harold Areno embodies the difficult tension between industries that provide income and the damaging pollution that those industries have brought to rural Louisiana.

Janice is Harold’s niece. She is devoutly Pentecostal and derives much of her identity from her faith. She is also a proud member of the Republican Party and sees her values best represented by conservative politicians. Janice has nearly 100 cousins and works hard to help her family whenever she can. Active in her church, she also provides assistance to fellow churchgoers and community members when they need it. Sixty-one and unmarried, Janice has worked in a variety of fields: She runs a hunting lodge, helps secure underground oil rights, manages land leases, and does accounting. She is a deeply principled woman, and the author observes that for Janice, “Endurance wasn’t just a moral value, it was a practice” (155). She values endurance, perseverance, and hard work. She cites church and family as the spaces where she learned her values. She is proud of never having “taken a dime from the government” (157). Janice, like many of the other people whom the author encounters, resents the government for giving her tax dollars to people who do not want to work and for over-regulating business. She sees, in her church, family, and community, a model for how society should be run: People work hard, the burden of providing help to those who need it lies with families and churches, and everyone is left to live their lives as they see fit, so long as they are not hurting anyone. Janice sees liberal values as antithetical to her own and argues that the DFL encourages sloth and self-victimization.

Bob is a “vital, athletic, balding man” who even at 60 is “boyish in manner” (85). The mayor of Westlake, he is thrilled that Sasol, a South African petrochemical company, is expanding a plant in his community. He is the fourth generation of his family to call Westlake his home, and he is proud of his small community. Although he is mayor, he chooses to keep the part-time job he enjoyed before the election: He earns extra money cutting people’s grass and feels that “cutting lawns keeps him a regular guy” (88). In part because of how tied he feels to his community, he sees Sasol as a net win. They have paid millions of dollars to purchase various properties in town including a local church, and although the chemical smell from their plants has earned the town some derisive nicknames, he hopes that the influx of revenue will help lift Westlake out of poverty. A self-described moderate Republican, Hardey believes in hard work and “bootstraps,” and decries the “poor me” rhetoric of Democrats who are quick to give tax dollars away to “unwed mothers.” Hardey’s political views are largely representative of what the author comes to identify as the Tea Party’s deep story, and they evidence his support for “traditional” American values like religion, hard work, and endurance. Like many other people whom the author encounters, Hardey is deeply resentful that his tax dollars go to support people who do not share his values and do not, he believes, deserve “handouts.”

Madonna is a gospel singer who likes and respects Rush Limbaugh because he defends her and people like her against the insults hurled at them by liberal politicians and their voters. “She has an easy, friendly manner, a lilting laugh, and a wide smile” (117). She is deeply embedded into her community in part through her work as a gospel singer in her church. She is well-liked in her town, and the author often observes how many people greet Madonna with a smile. She always returns the smile and appears to know personal details about everyone she meets. She is also staunchly pro-free market. She believes that the government wants to endanger the American Dream by over-regulating small and large businesses alike. She trusts the system to ensure the safety of its places and people and is sure that in a world where the government interfered less, everyone would be safer. Like many others whom the author interviews, Madonna believes that it is the church, not the state, who should be responsible for charity and social welfare. She is happy to donate money and time when her church assists those in need but resentful when her tax dollars are used for that purpose.

Mike Schaff is a lifelong resident of a rural portion of Louisiana that once produced sugarcane and cotton and, during his lifetime, became a hub for oil production. Mike’s family’s roots in this area are deep, and he recalls how harmoniously (if unequally) Black and white residents once lived in the now-vanished settlement of Banderville. A Tea Party Republican, Mike feels that big government has adversely impacted small communities like his. Although he lost a large portion of his own land to a sinkhole caused by an only “lightly regulated” drilling company, he still believes that government should have a limited role in business. Mike was one of seven children in a Catholic family and tells the author that “we didn’t know we were poor” (6). He believes in the value of church, family, and community, and recalls the decades of his youth as a better, simpler time in which communities were allowed to live their lives as they saw fit. He embodies the rightwing subjectivity that the author finds so puzzling, and she often notes what she perceives as a disconnect between his kindness and generosity and his belief that the government should not provide a social safety net. The author is additionally puzzled by Mike’s failure to alter his beliefs about the need for governmental regulation in the wake of the Bayou Corne Sinkhole disaster. Mike lost a large portion of his property and saw his community shattered by a sinkhole created by salt drilling company Texas Brine’s failure to abide by government regulations and the government’s failure to enforce them. The author is sure that this experience will cause Mike to reflect on his views, but he remains staunchly in favor of small government largely because he resents his tax dollars being put toward what he perceives as wasteful purposes. This, the author finds, is at the crux of why many like-minded men and women vote for politicians whose environmental policies harm their small communities: They are deeply opposed to government waste, and the Democratic party, they believe, wastes more of their hard-earned money.

Lee, 82, is a “large-chested, six-foot-three man” who walks with the aid of a walker (25), but he retains the bearing of the football player and Nascar driver that he was in his youth. He is warm, welcoming, and gregarious. Lee once worked for Pittsburgh Plate Glass, a company responsible for a huge increase in toxic emissions in its county, and he is open to the need for environmental regulations and environmental preservation. He is also active in Tea Party politics. Part of Lee’s openness to the idea of environmental regulation, a subject anathema to most Tea Party proponents, is rooted in his own experience working in a polluting industry. It had been Lee’s job to clandestinely dump toxic chemicals into area waterways and wetlands, and his work had resulted in the mass poisoning of area wildlife. Because so many people in the region depended on fishing for their income, the fallout from PPG’s chemical dumping had been massive. Despite his youthful liberal views and his experience with environmentally damaging industry, Lee disagrees with big government regulation and what he perceives as the misappropriation of tax dollars. He argues that churches should have a greater role in charity work than the government and resents his money being misspent and his social and cultural opinions ridiculed.