First Blog Post!

Hi blog! My name is Hannah Pickett. I am 17 years old and live on a small island called Vashon. I have never made a blog before so excuse me if I am doing it wrong. I really do not know how to work this thing hahaha. The purpose of this blog post is to find someone who is politically different than me and tell that person’s story. For this project I have chosen someone close to me who has opposite political views than I but will remain ANONYMOUS.

My inspiration for this blog is from Arlie Hochschild’s book Strangers in Their Own Land. In this book she has set out to do the same as I in regards to finding someone different to compare thoughts to. The first example I will be comparing between my blog and Hochschild’s piece is how they both start. For example the book starts with describing what she grew up around, and I will start by describing how I grew up around the person I will be interviewing. For my second example, in the book, Hochschild states that there are two political parties that seem like they are being divided more and more, I agree with this and can relate this back to my own political views within my family. For my third and fourth example I would like to focus on the quoted “Wrapped around these puzzles was a bigger one: how can a system both create pain and deflect blame for that pain” (page 10, Hochschild) and “reminders of the racial divide were everywhere” (page 20, Hochschild). I think both of these points relate to one another and are important in deciding your own political view. Lastly, I would like to use the example of when Hochschild talks about whether a political party member would be willing to let their child date someone from the other party. She states that “… Not more than 5% of either party answered “yes” but in 2010 33% of democrats and 40% of republicans answered ‘yes.” I found these facts very interesting and can not wait to conduct my own study!

Citation: Hochschild, Arlie Russell. Strangers in Their Own Land. New York; London: New Press, 2016.