The following commentary was posted on the Uexpress.com website July 5, 2018:
In “The Politics of Rage,” his brilliant 1995 analysis of George Wallace’s visceral appeal, scholar Dan T. Carter notes that the infamous Alabama segregationist had an uncanny ability to home in on the fears and resentments of working-class whites who were angered by cultural change. And that exceptional talent not only propelled Wallace’s remarkable political career, but it also reshaped America’s conservative movement, Carter explained.
“In speech after speech, Wallace knit together the strands of racism with those of a deeply rooted xenophobic ‘plain folk’ cultural outlook which equated social change with moral corruption. The creators of public policy — the elite — were out of touch with hardworking taxpayers who footed the bill for their visionary social engineering at home and weak-minded defense of American interests abroad,” Carter wrote.
Sound familiar? President Donald J. Trump has picked up the Alabama governor’s playbook, using a crude and unscripted rhetoric full of racism and xenophobia to tap into the barely submerged prejudices, misplaced rage and assumptions of privilege that animate a significant portion of the nation’s white working class.
View the complete commentary on the Uexpress.com website here.