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.
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.