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.
We’ve had a constant selection pressure for people who are economically and socially adaptable to move away from small towns since the start of the industrial revolution.
The issue is who is left in the towns. It’s people who are socially and economically highly resistant to change.
What’s interesting is why they are so resistant, studies show it’s an overdeveloped sense of fear. They are terrified of moving to a new location. I know many people who refuse to visit any city because “it’s too dangerous”. People in small towns today live in a constant state of fear. Political and religious organizations have stoked that fear to a fever pitch.
Unsurprisingly, depression and anxiety rates are high in rural communities. Areas that also have poor mental health services. So they use drugs and alcohol at a higher as a form of self-medication.
Fear is absolutely part of it, but there’s also a lot of people who just don’t like cities.
Do you have a source for this? I’m not doubting you because it seems plausible, it just seems like interesting reading