It's Not Really Just The Economy, Stupid -- Digby

[erronis]

https://digbysblog.net/2026/07/05/its-not-really-just-the-economy-stupid/

Mike Lofgren at Salon has a good piece today about a recent study of conservative thought from Johns Hopkins. I've been meaning to get into it, but this is a good intro that's well worth reading:

Published in May, the Johns Hopkins Agora Institute and ReD Associates conducted an in-depth research of conservatives in three red counties in Michigan, South Carolina and Wyoming. The authors describe the content of "Faith, Freedom, Family, Place: An Ethnographic Study of Conservative Americans' Relationships to Democracy" as follows:

This study relies on ethnographic research: sustained immersion in people's homes, lives, and communities through extensive interviews, observations, participation, and relationship-building. Where much democracy research documents what people say they believe, ethnography examines how and why political worldviews take shape within the full context of daily experiences, relationships, and social environments.

The most fundamental issue the researchers attempted to resolve is the relationship their subjects had with what is commonly thought of as the American secular faith in democracy. What the study found is that the respondents either had a notion of what constituted democracy that greatly differed from what is taught in Civics 101 -- when such a course is even offered -- or rejected outright the very concept of democracy. In fact, the latter view was the majority opinion:

14 out of 21 participants in this study had an immediate negative reaction when asked about democracy . . . Sarah (mid 30s, WY), a homeschooling mother, put it plainly: "I don't like the word democracy."

Let that sink in. It's what many of us expected, but it's still surprising to see it in print, given the almost phobic avoidance by major media, academia and think tanks of any discussion of whether Americans actually believe in the nation's unofficial civic religion of democracy. It may also explain why ordinary, non-elite conservatives are untroubled by Donald Trump's assertions that he would be "dictator on day one" or that he intended to "terminate" parts of the Constitution. On the contrary, that's what they want.

[...]

But for all the major media's hand-wringing about "economic anxiety" being a driving force behind Trump's election victory in 2016, there is little discussion of that sort among the study's respondents. There is one reference by Maria from Michigan to losing her job as a result of "the economic collapse under Obama," which actually occurred under George W. Bush. (Economic growth was positive in seven of the eight years of Obama's presidency, with a rate of -0.2% only in 2009 as the effects of the financial collapse of 2008 were ongoing -- nothing remotely as poor as the -3.4% gross domestic product decline in the last year of Trump's first term.)

The study describes Maria from Michigan this way: "Her verdict on the Democratic Party as having dedicated its playbook to Satan and chosen the 'platform of death' does not leave room for normal civic constraints to apply."

What do the study's participants talk about? Their central concern is their own so-called "moral foundations." For them, any democracy is valid only insofar as it vigorously upholds "faith, family, freedom and place," as indicated in the study's title. Since they believe their values are under relentless attack by the institutions of democracy, then democracy must be sacrificed. In this mindset, political opponents are not acting in good faith but are outright demonic. The study describes Maria from Michigan this way: "Her verdict on the Democratic Party as having dedicated its playbook to Satan and chosen the 'platform of death' does not leave room for normal civic constraints to apply."

It should be emphasized that these values mean their faith, not a non-Christian religion or no religion; their family (forcible family separation of immigrants or gay marriage don't count); their freedom (getting vaccinated as a civic responsibility to protect the frail and immune-deficient is incomprehensible to them) and their place (typically small-town and rural, cities being dens of iniquity).

And any idea that they believe they represent the majority is actually bunk:

Most participants believe that the cultural conditions necessary for a viable democracy no longer exist. A 'true' democracy of untrammeled majority rule would require a population with shared values, shared realities, and the capacity for self-governance conditions they feel America has lost.

Part of their rejection of democracy is the fact that they know they would be outvoted in a straight-up, ungerrymandered system: "Kyle (mid 20s, WY), a delivery driver, extends the logic: 'Every single small town would be outvoted by every single city. We wouldn't be able to feed people cows. We'd all be eating seaweed.'"

The fact that these rural areas are dramatically over-represented is apparently just as God intended.

Read the whole piece if you have time. He frames it in the context of the "abundance" fad that swept the left for about 5 minutes last year, and goes on to discuss it as it relates to authoritarianism. It's quite interesting.

I watched a Bulwark Sarah Longwell discussion about this study. She added that her focus groups have shown for years that the old conservative saw that any of us came across contantly during the early years of internet argument -- "it's not a democracy, it's a republic" -- actually has a much more prosaic explanation than this study indicates. It's really that the word "democracy" reminds them of the word "Democrat," and "republic" makes them think of "Republican." That's actually how fatuous this whole thing is.

[rampartd]

1. "their place (typically small-town and rural, cities being dens of iniquity)."

i'm not sure "place," to conservatives means "location"

it has more to do with class and gender roles. a "good negro" for example, "knows his place." or even better "a woman's place is in the home"

[erronis]

3. Agree.

[bucolic_frolic]

2. Love the Grant Wood, hard to fathom these people still exist in mental isolation

They remind me more of 1800s Utopian Socialists, but from a hard right private property edge. They are serious wack-a-doodles. Hey if they can call us Satan we can have our point of view as well, no?

They want to be left alone in their own distorted minds but have no idea where the political power to be left alone derives from.

We should shun them. They are beyond reclamation. You can't reach something that's not there, that doesn't even respect your right to be different. How did they even get this close to them?

[erronis]

4. American Gothic certainly fits the "I've got mine. Now stay out of my yard." type people.