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Sometimes this can actually resonate with the target audience. It's kind of a classic in self-help seminars: Life isn't hard! life is easy, you suck!
I think the draw is, if someone's problems are their own fault for sucking, at least that's something that they can understand and change. It's a weirdly hopeful message- you have the power to stop sucking and turn things around! If you tell someone instead that their problems are from deep socio-economic issues that screwed them over before they were even born, well... it can feel nice to know you're not the one to blame, but it's also deeply depressing to think there's nothing you can personally do. That's more of a message for politicians and other influential people, who can think like "oh the problem with rural appalachia is that they just don't good schools, but if I fund $1 billion of education there I can save them!"
Right. He spends much of the book complaining about his mother being a dysfunctional addict (and life being made much harder than it had to be by bad financial decisions rather than real poverty), but apparently she sobered up (Maybe the book was a wake-up call?) and they reconciled. He brought her to the RNC and bragged to the crowd that she's nearing 10 years sober, suggesting that she should celebrate her 10 year anniversary at the White House.
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I wonder if this is one of those red/blue tribal divides. Something like, the Red Tribe wants to be told you suck because then they can stop sucking, whereas the Blue Tribe wants to be told society sucks because then they can stop blaming themselves.
Not a whole worked-out theory here or anything, just something that sprang to mind upon reading your comment.
Probably some correlation there, yeah. Also somewhat related: the famous Bertrand Russel quote: "While economics is about how people make choice, sociology is about how they don't have any choice to make." Probably not a coincidence that economics is more right-wing while sociology is more left-wing.
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