In a new poll from Winthrop University, 46% of white Southerners said they agree or strongly agree that white people are under attack in the U.S.
Conservatives have made a type of backlash politics their cornerstone for many years and this new poll exemplifies how they live in a constant perpetual state of white grievance.
They live off their feelings of victimization and persecution at the hands of the left. AM talk radio's mission statement is not to discuss policies or politicians, but to make their listeners hate the left so much that they would rather vote for a pedophile than a Democrat.
Digby writes it up nicely:
So a lot white Southerners believe that nobody loves them. As usual.
Nearly half of white American poll respondents living in the South feel like they’re under attack, a new Winthrop University poll found.
Forty-six percent of white Southerners polled said they agree or strongly agree that white people are under attack in the U.S. More than three-fourths of black respondents said they believe racial minorities are under attack.
And 30 percent of all respondents in the poll agreed when asked if America needs to protect and preserve its white European heritage. More than half of respondents disagreed with the statement.
Sure, their chosen president is in the White House. Conservatives have every branch of government. They have their own news media and it's very powerful. Their numbers are smaller than in the past but white people are still a majority of the country and their "European heritage" is culturally dominant. But it's not enough. It's never been enough. If everyone doesn't agree with them in word and deed, they are being "attacked."
Yes, they hold all the cards in Congress and in the White House, but as usual, they are always the aggrieved party and always oppressed by the media.
Always.
Thomas Frank wrote about this back in 2004
Yet the conservatives have, in many ways, a much more developed, elaborate theory of their own victimization than any other group out there. They are the “Middle Americans,” they believe, the salt of the Earth. They’ve stood up for their country and their flag and here they are marginalized. The schools won’t teach what they believe, the world just insults them constantly. All their arguments proceed from this theory of victimization. There’s even a book out there that they love by Rush Limbaugh’s brother called Persecution. The idea of it is that Christians are persecuted right here in the U.S. of A.
This is so critical for people to understand: conservatism is not a doctrine of contentment. Not a doctrine for the satisfied and the smug. It’s a politics that’s at war with the world. It sees itself as the ideology of the oppressed. This is central to its appeal.
