Chomsky: Fear, along with the breakdown of society during the neoliberal period. People feel isolated, helpless, victim of powerful forces that they do not understand and cannot influence. It’s interesting to compare the situation in the ‘30s, which I’m old enough to remember. Objectively, poverty and suffering were far greater. But even among poor working people and the unemployed, there was a sense of hope that is lacking now, in large part because of the growth of a militant labor movement and also the existence of political organizations outside the mainstream. http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/noam-chomsky-we-owe-rise-trump-fear-and-breakdown-societyWilliams: What are your opinions on the surprising progress of Donald Trump? Could it be explained by a climate of fear?
Yes, I didn't mean to imply "so we can just sit back and watch it happen." But hopelessness is what gives us voter apathy. It's not the hopeless that go vote. The Republican party depends on playing to people's fears, sure, but it also depends on ideological appeals more than the Democrats. It can do that, because it doesn't have a coalition too large to have a coherent ideology. The "values" in "values votes" isn't just Evangelical Christian values though. The communitarian sense that people far away shouldn't get to tell you how to live has been a big part of American conservative ideology since the Anti-Federalists at least. It's why defenders of slavery and opposition to the civil rights movement talked about "state's rights", but that distrust of the distant over the local extends all the way down. You hear people say the name of their state capitol in the same tone they say "Washington". Using state governments to shut down progressive legislation in cities and college towns is abandoning a big part of their ideological appeal, at the same time demographics are turning against them.
St. Louis is going through a similar legal fight right now. Seems silly to me that the city's standing is that they should be allowed to write this legislation and raise minimum wage as it is a matter of 'local concern.' And the Missouri Chamber of Commerce (ie Big Business in the State) sued saying it wasn't. Should be resolved this year in the appellate courts.