Most white collar workers don’t brag about how hard they work. Where a lot of people I personally know try and act better then white collar workers because of the physical labor they do (fyi these are family). They also at the same time brag about how much they try and not work at the same time.
My next-door neighbors when I was growing up were a (large) family that most people would call white trash. They were only around from April through October, but, believe me, that was enough. The papa worked at Kodak and retired on a generous pension when he was barely fifty. He used to brag about how he would pass entire work days napping in the supply closet.
This bounty had a mixed effect on his progeny. A few of them were hard workers. Others were not. The worst were total lowlifes, making what living they had (beyond sponging off of papa's pension) off of criminal and semi-criminal activities. We couldn't play in the woods behind our house when they were around, because they treated their backyard as a shooting range. They also didn't bother taking their trash to the transfer station - they just dumped it off of an embankment behind their house. Loud parties were standard during the summer. They made life miserable for my parents.
By the way, these people were never political when I was growing up, but they came out exactly as loud and proud for Trump as you would imagine in late 2015, and haven't looked back since.
Sidebar: I used to know a lot of elderly Trump supporters, and I felt like I could empathize with their perspective even if I didn't agree with it, but most of them are dead. The ones who are left are exactly what I'm describing: derelict, criminal, or semi-criminal whites who think that the world owes them a living. I know this isn't as true beyond my personal circles, and beyond my region of the country, but you can bet that it colors my perception.
All of which is to say, I get the resentment. A great American company was driven in to the ground, and with it a great American city, and I was a front-row witness to where a tiny portion of those generous pensions kept going while Rochester suffered. That guy is now entering his fourth decade of retirement - fishing away the summers on his boat, and basking away in the Florida sun through the winter months. At least one of his children is dead as a result of the wild lifestyle that this enabled. So is one of his grandchildren. And all of this is just one story that I could tell. My hometown is full of people like this. My parents' hometown is too. Sometimes it seems like they're the only people left under fifty, other than a few families that own most of the farmland and run the remaining profitable businesses.
Please forgive the essay, I didn't mean to ramble at you.
