With slightly more than a month until Election Day, the polls show that Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are basically tied. Political scientists, historians, and other experts are describing the 2024 presidential election as one of the closest in modern American history. For those outside of the so-called MAGAverse, Trump’s popularity, even after more than eight years, remains a riddle. Unfortunately, the future of American democracy may be decided by their inability to break the Trump Code. The mainstream news media’s failure to decipher Trumpism has repeatedly led them to normalize the wantonly corrupt ex-president’s extremely malignant behavior.
In her new book “Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right,” leading sociologist and author Arlie Hochschild has taken on the task of trying to explain Trump’s powerful appeal for and power over “white working class” voters and other downwardly mobile Americans. She argues that Trump speaks to their grievances, pain, rage, and feelings of lost pride, manhood, purpose and honor.
