PJ Media

I watched the documentary last night. I too wished that it showed a broader cross-spectrum of right-wing opinion. However — having grown up in a very conservative, rural, all-white (and very racist town — where the only black family was literally run out of town), and poorly educated town in upstate among self-proclaimed “rednecks” — I think that the film does portray certain truths. It is genuinely difficult for people who have been “left behind” by the global, urban, multi-racial world, which is increasingly made up of college-educated professionals, city dwellers, and minorities, to accept the demise of their isolated, and in many cases ignorant, world. When you only get your news from FOX, never went to college, and don’t read widely from difficult texts, the documentary shows how these people can easily transfer all their resentment, hate, racism, and anger (at being “left behind” by the rest of the culture) onto a scary black man with a remarkably diverse and multicultural background. Instead of being angry at McCain — a genuinely rich man born into wealth and privilege with many homes who cuts taxes for the rich — they are angry at the guy who worked himself up from nothing, who became editor of the Harvard Law Review after being born to a poor single mother. Their life experiences are so limited that they become angry at what they don’t understand and the world that is passing them by.