David Brooks is possibly the best-dressed pundit on TV-and he figures the truck driver next to him at the lunch counter may have noticed his duds. But that didn’t stop Brooks from producing a really perceptive column:
“I don’t know what came first, the mystique of trucking or the country music songs that defined the mystique, but this trucker had been captured by the ethos early on and had never let it go. He wore the right boots and clothes. He had a flat, never-surprised way of talking. He didn’t smile or try to ingratiate.
“He has one of those hard jobs, like mining and steel-working, that comes with its own masculine mythology and way of being in the world. Jobs performed in front of a keyboard don’t supply a code of dignity, which explains the spiritual anxiety that plagues the service economy.
“As the trucker spoke, I was reminded of a book that came out a few years ago called ‘The Dignity of Working Men,’ by the sociologist, Michèle Lamont, who is now at Harvard. Lamont interviewed working-class men, and described what she calls ‘the moral centrality of work.’
“Her subjects placed tremendous emphasis on working hard, struggling against adversity and mastering their craft. Her book is an antidote to simplistic notions of class structure, because it makes clear that these men define who is above and below them in the pecking order primarily in moral, not economic terms. …
“This is why successful populist movements always play on moral and social conditions first, and economic ones only later. This is why they appeal to the self-esteem of the working class, not on any supposed sense of victimization. This is why their protests are directed not against the rich, but against the word manipulators – the lawyers, consultants and the news media.
“The trucker I met Saturday in Virginia not only believed in the American Dream, he believed he had achieved it. He owned his own truck. He owned a nice house in Texas on a lake near the Louisiana border. His brother owned five trucks.”