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.
As a rural white (I’m one of the good ones i swear): we are ignored, it’s an objective reality that the better parts of the country neither attempt to understand rural America or the problems it faces. No blame here tho, i spend most of my time trying to ignore this shithole too. Some places in America are nearly third world levels of bad, even when the was an economic reason for these places to exist they were terrible and the people are awful in so many ways. There is no ‘but’ here if anyone was expecting one, no saving grace, no happy ending.
The only way i see this working out well is if it starts in the cities, though. Organize our cities better and force reasonable housing costs, then relocate most of rural America to someplace better now that it’s not insanely expensive for basic survival there. Sure an actual farming town might not be and to be relocated, but shitty coal town #4642 shouldn’t have ever existed in the first place and rail stop #556 has been dying for over 100 years. It’ll be good for future generations to not be in places like that.
And no one ignores the plight of rural folk as much as Republicans. Indeed they want to make it worse to gin up more discomfort. I’m from deep rural Alabama. To say my family votes against their own interests is a given, for the two choices, but they vote for the most extreme antithesis to their best interest every time because frankly, they’re committed to the “invisible war against “”“other””“”.
I agree they should escape, but I also am not going to extend them some bullshit about how they’re “forgotten” or “ignored”. They know exactly what they’re doing. They are making their choices.
I’m not saying they’re good people, in fact i don’t think most people who live out here can be saved. Making cities livable and consolidating the population just prevents new generations of subhumans. Or at least, this particular brand of subhuman.
Edit: and i don’t think you understood anything i typed out. The people are the issue being ignored.
as someone who hates city living, and suburbia, isn’t the entire point of living rurally to be left alone? I suppose it depends on how you classify it though. Seems rather ironic to me, to live rurally, and then bitch about rural living being hard.
No one chooses to be born out here, but yes that is part of the attitude people foster, which is part of the problem.
yeah, i suppose given the cost of moving to a more urban place, that it would be rather restrictive wouldn’t it?
Having grown up in suburbia all my life, and disliking it. Rural america seems like a nice escape. Guess that’s just the one sided nature of my experience though.
If we weren’t talking America I’d tell you rural is better in every single way when compared to suburban, suburban living is a hellscape that has no right to exist imo. It’s just that rural in America means you are actually disconnected from society at large. You aren’t outliers surrounding and supporting a large city, not a tight knit community, but a single person or family living far away from anything or anyone with delusions of true independence. It fosters incredibly anti social attitudes, where anything that is different is bad.
The only replacement for the society they are missing out on for most people out here is whatever hick church they go to. And that feeds into many of the awful aspects of life out here.
the whole reason i’d want to live rurally is so that i can experience something other than city life, part of the allure of that is that you can just do whatever the fuck you want out there, without bothering other people. Therefore, nobody else has a reason to be bothered by you.
Church could definitely influence that. But rural living is a very disciplined thing and you need to approach it specifically. Otherwise it’s a mess.