The rise of the bigoted reactionary populist Donald Trump has the US Republican establishment exasperated. One indication of the crisis in the party is the sight of leading conservatives spitting vitriol at their own base.

Take Kevin Williamson, correspondent for the National Review, the historic magazine of US conservatism founded by William F. Buckley. In March he wrote of “the incomprehensible malice of poor white America” – many of whom have rallied to Trump’s presidential campaign, stymieing the party elite’s expectation that one of their preferred low energy tools would smooth-sail to the Republican nomination.

“The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die”, wrote Williamson in a rare moment of conservative candour. “Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns …

“The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin.”

Few passages capture the cynicism of the Republican establishment better – an establishment that historically has gainfully exploited the grievances of poverty-stricken whites to push a pro-rich agenda, further impoverishing those they claim to represent.

Reading Williamson, I was reminded of the “Southern hospitality” I experienced in the US almost 20 years ago. It wasn’t the Deep South, but lower Pennsylvania – one of the areas where thus far Trump has polled strongly among Republicans.

Lancaster County doesn’t resemble eastern Kentucky, but like most places it has pockets of poverty. It sits just north of the Mason-Dixon Line, which historically symbolised the border between the slave and free states; just south of the Lehigh Valley, which was once a steel centre but suffered decades of manufacturing decline during the “restructuring” from the 1970s; and a little east of the devastated Appalachian region, which stretches along the east coast from New York though to northern Mississippi.

I worked for a day asphalting with a guy for some cash. He took me afterwards to a barbeque at his family home – a trailer housing five or perhaps six. His friends also dropped by. The conditions of life were incredibly modest, though they accepted them and were proud of their patch.

You couldn’t play the “salt of the earth” card – these were not left wingers to say the least – but the family was generous and accommodating (I say that with an understanding that things would have been different were I not a white Australian). They struggled on with life, with medical and other bills, and tried to make the best of it while having a good time when moments allowed.

Regardless of the political positions they held, you know that if your cheap car broke down on a lonely road and only one other vehicle were to pass in a lifetime, that you’d want it to be people like them.

Why? Because they know what it’s like to break down, what it’s like to struggle. They are the sort of people who stop. And because you know that middle class progressives, with all their so-called sophistication navigating intersectionality theory, are less likely to get their hands dirty when on their way to a dinner party at which they tick all the political boxes and go home to comfort feeling righteous.

The people I met opened up their home at the drop of a hat, fed me and plied me with beer (and perhaps bourbon – I don’t remember for what should be obvious reasons) even though they clearly seriously struggled economically.

Their sort is derided as “white trash”. The weaknesses of the labour movement and the disintegration of industry have left many of their communities and families fractured and in disarray.

They were told flourishing would be the result of hard work, stoicism and dedication to family. It was a lie, and now some of them are voting “the wrong way”. So their erstwhile champions publicly vilify them as dogs and scum.

But progressive politics has also failed them.

The rightful recognition that, when it comes to oppression, “class isn’t everything” has fuelled a liberal politics obsessed with proliferating identities, which in turn has propelled the conceptual construction of hierarchies of oppression that often simply translate as “class is nothing”.

No matter the unemployment, poverty, depression and declining life expectancies – the white working class is, according to prevailing liberal opinion, a priori privileged. Such filthy designations as “white trash” are made palatable because their so-called advantages in life’s lottery make them the undeserving poor.

That their grievances have been manipulated cynically by an ultra-wealthy Republican establishment and channelled into bigoted and destructive dead ends makes them all the more detestable to a certain set of progressives – who often deride them not for their politics but for their poverty, which manifests in their appearance and lack of formal education.

Trump is a billionaire bigot who encourages the most reactionary attitudes of his followers. And he is just as cynical as the establishment he claims to oppose. But with his fuck you attitude and preparedness to validate people’s rage at their situation, is it any wonder that a section of the working class that is maligned by both the liberal left and the establishment right is drawn to him?