midweek roundup — 10.18.18
I know. It’s Thursday. Midweek is Wednesday. We can be flexible though, no? I’m known for being flexible. This week I’ve got one article, one podcast and one movie.
01
First up, the article titled A New Study Reveals Why Obama Voters Switched to Trump by Zack Beauchamp. I read Hillbilly Elegy and (part of) Strangers in Their Own Land after the election, in an attempt to understand the conversation surrounding, well, how the hell did this happen? Economic hardship, everybody cried! Woe to us who overlooked the working class, and all that. But midway through Strangers in Their Own Land, I thought “I’m just not buying this.” Not as a reason for why Trump won the Presidency, anyway. There are plenty of people of color in the working class and they didn’t vote for Trump. Just the white working class.
Anyway, check out this article, which debunks the idea that economic stress in the working class is the reason why Trump won in 2016. It’s short and straightforward. Definitely worth a look.
The study, from three political scientists from around the country, takes a statistical look at a large sample of Obama-Trump switchers. It finds that these voters tended to score highly on measures of racial hostility and xenophobia — and were not especially likely to be suffering economically.
02
The podcast. Rob Bell’s recent one on the Lord’s Prayer. As his groupies podcast listeners like to say, SO GOOD. Revitalized those 66 words for me, that’s for sure.
03
And the movie? The Breadwinner. Available on Netflix. We watched this with the boys* this week and while it is a bit dark, it revealed things about the world to all of us in ways that only movies can. It told the story of a family in Afghanistan in 2001. It’s animated but don’t let that deter you. It got 95% on Rotten Tomatoes and it’s more like a graphic novel (think Persepolis) than Woody the Woodpecker.
We had some heavy but really, really good conversations with the boys over dinner after watching the first half. About women and girls around the world, about war, and what we thought we would do if we were in a similar situation.
*They are 8.5 and 10 and that’s the youngest I’d recommend going — though we do have one boy who is particularly sensitive so maybe take that into consideration as well.