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.
I’ve always had the perspective that they are making the poor of their states into the new slave class, with the belief that they will be above the cut-off line somehow and be better off. Do you see the same from the inside?
I grew up rural south, and I can see how that mindset will avail them right until the day their home is taken and they’re the underclass they’ve worked so hard to oppress.
No, i dont think they plan ahead like that. I think their train of thought just stops at wanting revenge on the people they feel get undeserved rewards. Its a lot of at least mildly abusive childhoods here, and just accepting that as how things should be. Ive heard sooooo many times kids arent being beaten enough here. And without a drop of self awareness that theyre not exactly a positive example of the outcomes of that abuse. And none of them really have aspirations, or saying theyre waiting for their day to come. Generally its pretty cynical outlooks, like everything is already doomed, theyre just waitin on goin to heaven.