The BBC has delivered some excellent commentary on what we are living in American politics. These quotes hit the nail on the head:
[Thomas Frank] believes that the voters’ preference for emotional engagement over reasonable argument has allowed the Republican Party to blind them to their own real interests.
Right-wing politics has become a vehicle for channelling this popular anger against intellectual snobs. The result is that many of America’s poorest citizens have a deep emotional attachment to a party that serves the interests of its richest.
[Source, BBC, Why do people often vote against their own interests?]
…whatever disadvantaged Americans think they are voting for, they get something quite different:
"You vote to strike a blow against elitism and you receive a social order in which wealth is more concentrated than ever before in our life times, workers have been stripped of power, and CEOs are rewarded in a manner that is beyond imagining." [Source, BBC, Why do people often vote against their own interests?]
And here’s my favorite. One for the history books:
"It’s like a French Revolution in reverse in which the workers come pouring down the street screaming more power to the aristocracy." [Source, BBC, Why do people often vote against their own interests?]
Wow. Talk about an ideological blind spot!
Demographically the poor overwhelmingly vote Democrat, so while the diagnosis is correct, the doctor is treating the wrong patient.
Do you think when you read this stuff, or just take it in blindly?
Look at any voter map. The bluest areas are also the poorest areas, but you see Republican voters there.
Doug, you’re smarter than that.
A truer analysis of the typical conservative voter is that we often vote against our own selfish interests, i.e. “free healthcare” in order to preserve the good of the nation as a whole, i.e. not going bankrupt. The ability to put the nation’s best interests ahead of our own is the mark of a true citizen and patriot. I’d love to have all my basic needs met whether I earned it or not, but that path leads to financial and moral bankruptcy.