We say very clearly that rural America is hurting. But we refuse to justify attitudes that some scholars try to underplay.
Something remarkable happened among rural whites between the 2016 and 2020 elections: According to the Pew Research Center’s validated voter study, as the rest of the country moved away from Donald Trump, rural whites lurched toward him by nine points, from 62 percent to 71 percent support. And among the 100 counties where Trump performed best in 2016, almost all of them small and rural, he got a higher percentage of the vote in 91 of them in 2020. Yet Trump’s extraordinary rural white support—the most important story in rural politics in decades—is something many scholars and commentators are reluctant to explore in an honest way.
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What isn’t said enough is that rural whites are being told to blame all the wrong people for their very real problems. As we argue in the book, Hollywood liberals didn’t destroy the family farm, college professors didn’t move manufacturing jobs overseas, immigrants didn’t pour opioids into rural communities, and critical race theory didn’t close hundreds of rural hospitals. When Republican politicians and the conservative media tell rural whites to aim their anger at those targets, it’s so they won’t ask why the people they keep electing haven’t done anything to improve life in their communities.
“all the way down” is missing the heart of it. The article is describing people with real issues, who have really been let down and really need better from their government.
That this has been channelled into racism is awful and sad for everyone, for all the victims of misinformation.
A huge portion of the country has been let down by the government. You don’t have to be rural for that. Lack of healthcare, education, and support are nationwide. Not everyone decided to be racist because of it.
You do realize that all of those issues you listed are a direct result of Republican policy, correct?
Of course I’m aware. What I’m saying is that it’s stupid to give rural white Americans a pass for being shitty and racist just because life hard.
They want to blame everyone else for the problems and double down on a party of grifters and con men, because that is more appealing than admitting they have been wrong. That the propaganda they have been fed their whole lives is a pile of garbage they have been happily eating.
They would rather continue swimming in shit as long as they are told that they are better than everyone else, which is what the right has been telling them for decades.
It’s not giving them a pass. But you can blame them and do nothing, or you can try and lift them up.
And you propose I do what exactly? They are dead set on ignoring reality and substituting their supremacist fantasy. Any program that is aimed at uplifting people is deemed communist and assaulted by the very people it’s aimed at helping. Any influx of people and capital that could replace all the lost industry is viewed as an invasion of “elites” or whatever enemy of the day is.
They are ruled by fear and hate of everything that outside of their safe propaganda bubble. They cannot be helped until they are willing to do a bit of introspection, and decide they are open to listening and learning. I will not feel sorry for the people who would happily destroy the world around them just because it doesn’t align with what they want it to be.
I grew up with this. I know these people. I got away from it, and I am happy to never go back.
School funding and broader educational reform. More teachers, more training for teachers, better curriculums for students and teachers.
Give us a viable path fom here to there, given that capitalism doesn’t give a shit about them and that they have been trained to hate SoCiaLisM?
Seriously, if you had a magic wand that could cause the entirety of our federal, state and local governments to want to improve the lot of poor rural Americans, what would result from that?
Because most of the things I can think of, like universal basic income, universal free (at point of access) healthcare, etc, are exactly things that conservative poor rurals have for decades been propagandized to hate as SoCiaLisM.
Myself, I grow tired of hearing that I need to better understand those folks and why they vote as they do. I’ve lived in rural areas, in my youth. It’s among the reasons that I don’t live there now.
Republican policy and Democrat “failures”. How many times do the Democrats get to fumble the ball or side with corporations over workers before this becomes a widely accepted fact? This isn’t intended to give the Republicans a free pass, but just to call out that the Democrats are either too stupid or simply not interested in solving the problem.
Biden bad
It’s been channeled into racism, on purpose, by the representatives in government who are doing the “really need better from their government.” to the people. They’ve managed to implement policies that are actively harmful to their constituents, while convincing their constituents that it’s all some other group’s fault.
I agree this is why I described them as victims
Except this happened for over 60 years.
The efforts to create a Great Society were stopped when it became apparent that the benefits of the Great Society would be shared by all. Responses to racial integration included closing school districts for years and filing public pools with cement.
The government was trying to do better, but since it wasn’t hurting the wrong people, the response was to make the government worse.
Try 300 years
What happened in the 1720’s?
Sugar.
That’s about when these people decided the government needs to hurt other people or they’d start making it not work.
I’m pretty sure the colonial government at the time was more than willing to hurt the right people to protect the white people.
Not really. One of the issues of the day was the colonial government preventing British people from “settling” farther west, which of course would have meant settlers massacring the Indians who already lived there.
This was something the British wanted, but the colonial governments themselves were generally pro-settlement.
They’re the ones keeping the government from doing better. And you can’t help those who reject help.
Until they genuinely ask for help. And stop blaming others. May they enjoy how much they’ve fucked themselves.
We’re going to have to, at some point. Or they’ll be forever holding us back.
We may have to force on them things like good schools and living wages, before they’ll be able to grow past the “hate liberals” phase
You use The Airliner method. You put on your own oxygen mask before you put on a child’s. We need to take care of ourselves before we can take care of them.
There are plenty of things we can and should be doing at the local levels. To accomplish this that we aren’t. It’s the problem of all politics in america. People are waiting for someone responsible at the top to do the right thing. And actually help people. The people at the top don’t care enough to actually do anything. And yet people only vote in a national elections like the presidential election. Many of them not bothering to vote in their local elections at all. Where they would actually stand to have the biggest impact.
Perhaps we should look into kick starting and crowdfunding solar punk technocratic communes in rural middle america. Getting started would of course be the hardest part. Finding knowledgeable educated people willing to devote time and energy to helping develop something new unique and bigger than themselves. But I am sure there are people out there with the knowledge and the interest. It’s just a matter of getting everyone together. Once you have the first few built and sustainable. You can start building more. And more and more and more. Till eventually they become rather common and actually start helping people like them after they’ve been exposed to it long enough for their irrational fear instincts to die down.
Not to poo poo your fantasy or whatever, but this sounds like every tech bro’s “build an island country” when they get their first billion.
Most cities weren’t built where they were purely by chance or coincidence. Infrastructure is hard and complicated to build, and relies on natural resources being somewhat available locally in most cases.
Even if you manage to build it, there’s no guarantee they will come.
In the very last sentence. And especially in the context in which we were discussing. It’s literally the opposite of that. Likely buying up rural land that had already been a town at one time but ceased to be because of industrialization. And revitalizing and rebuilding it in a more socialist / communist model along with other interested people. But still integrating into the larger society and environment around it. Building A Better Community from within. Not some outside Island to play King on.
All these people fantasizing about 15 minute towns and cities here in the United states. Let’s fucking go let’s do it. Solar panels, windmills, tight high-density communities. The power that be don’t want it. We gotta do it ourselves.
So you rebuilding the railroad? A lot of small towns only existed because of the railroad. Now some of them only exist because of the interstate.
A lot of towns are rotting because there’s no real reason for them to exist anymore, and for some of them there wasn’t a real reason besides a truck stop for them to have existed in the first place.
If it’s needed sure. But again there’s other avenues other ways. However you’re focusing on rebuilding them how they used to be. Not rebuilding them better or anew.
These days we’d probably be better off building somewhere close to Interstate access. And then worrying more about data access. Than something like building our own private Railroad. Or railroad access in general.
That’s just starting a new liberal city in the middle of Trumpistan. It’ll be like Austin or Atlanta even if everything goes perfectly.
I say we get a few California and New York billionaires to just buy a small shithole town in rural Appalachia or Louisiana or something. Give every resident $70k a year, for free. Free healthcare, college, job training, for life. Fix up their houses and their infrastructure. You could probably do it all for just one billion dolllars. And slap banners everywhere saying COURTESY OF THE US DEMOCRATIC PARTY.
Shower these dumb fuckers with cash so they’ll shut up about the culture war shit. And then in a generation when their kids are educated, they’ll be normal, non hate filled people.
Only if you ignore all the talk about communism communes and socialism. And yes of course there will be pushback and unrest. You have to win them over. But it can be done. Especially by showing them a way to preserve their communities and ways a life.You’re not going to win anyone over if you never try.
You ever try begging Kentuckians to accept that they’ll need to do something, anything, other than mine coal and to let the government fund them learning how? I have. They did not like that.