The Tea Party movement's confusion about government assistance (exemplified by placards saying 'take government hands off my Medicare') reveals that political propaganda has obscured people's understanding of what government aid they themselves receive.

J.D. Vance, the author of 'Hillbilly Elegy' and a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley, admits in his book that he is a huge beneficiary of government aid (Pell grants, military service, GI Bill, scholarship to Ohio State, Yale education), yet refuses to acknowledge that the government should provide the same assistance to the people he left behind in Ohio.

The historic narrative told about America is not only neglected but actively misrepresented, and the book 'White Trash' recovers 400 years of overlooked history about class that cuts across the entire arc of American history from founding to present.

Arlie Russell Hochschild's 'Strangers in Their Own Land' shows that lower-class white Louisianans vote for Bobby Jindal even as he pollutes their water and environment, voting against their material interests, yet both Hochschild (liberal) and Vance (conservative) argue this has nothing to do with race—suggesting class resentment is the real driver.

The Affordable Care Act/Obamacare expanded health care access to millions of working-class Americans, including those in economically depressed regions where drug addiction is endemic; new addiction treatment clinics opened in Ohio and Pennsylvania for the first time, yet Trump supporters voted against the very program that was helping them.

Race and racism are deeply intertwined with class in determining political behavior; people do not vote against their economic interests primarily because of racism alone, but race dynamics interact with class identity and historical trauma to shape political choices.

The appeal to 'complete freedom' in American discourse is an illusion, as Janis Joplin captured in the song 'Me and Bobby McGee': 'freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.'