You’re mistaking hostility to unions or outsiders as proof of ingrained cultural reaction, when it’s actually proof of how thoroughly the emotional terrain of politics has been shaped by decades of propaganda, repression, and disinvestment. These attitudes weren’t inevitable; they were produced. And that means they can be changed.
We don’t have to romanticize the past. But we do need to remember that working-class people, even in hostile terrain, have shown again and again that they can organize, change, and fight for each other. The idea that it’s never happened is just wrong. And it quietly justifies not trying.