An Honest Assessment of Rural White Resentment Is Long Overdue
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.
Yet that doesn’t give any answers. Conservatives lie, misdirect, scapegoat, and seem to act against their constituents’ interests. That’s the common view from the other side.
But why do they still get elected? Why do those constituents not see through the BS? Why does it continue to happen?
Is it all they know? Is demonization so successful? Are they that gullible? Is there something positive to conservative politicians we don’t recognize?
The answers are all here:
https://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-one-talks-about
Nothing I've read makes more sense regarding Trump's support. I get it now.
What's so weird about donnie in particular is that he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, spent much of his life trying to be accepted by elite culture in Manhattan, was given a game show in which he played a businessman.
He's like the embodiment of every single douchebag in an 80s flick. I grew up in an extremely rural area, and most people I remember, left and right, hated donnie and his antics as a so-called businessman. I just don't get how he has transformed into someone they think represents them. Does he insult other elitists? Okay, yeah. Is he still an 80s caricature of a douchebag who flies around in his own jet and plays a lot of golf? You bet.
Because he doesn't tell them they're wrong.
The biggest thing I absolutely hate about Biden is how fucking arrogant he is. His voters have spoken: Stop sending weapons to Israel and the fucking prick just keeps doing it anyway. U.S. politicians have gotten so used to telling the public to go fuck themselves they have no idea how to fight someone who just agrees with them all the time.
Isn’t cracked.com supposed to be comedy?
That essay covers it pretty well and maybe I’m in the same boat as the author. The small town I grew up in was a great place but dominated by a single large employer. When they left, they left a huge gap still not filled decades later. I left, and the few times I’ve visited have been mostly sad at what is left.
I did go to a high school reunion at some big number like 20, and it was even sadder. It was mostly people who stayed local and they hadn’t changed at all from high school. My best friend has the same hobbies so can’t talk about anything new after 20 years, and claimed he had never been more than 50 miles from where he grew up. What the ever living fuck? My brothers best friend still lives in his Mom’s basement and works on his Camaro on weekends. What else can I feel except pity?
However the large employer in our town was a tech employer so this is new, playing out in a single lifetime. For most of these small rural towns, their way of life has already died long ago, but the people either don’t understand or don’t want to understand. The article talks about farming mechanization requiring far fewer people, but there’s also the rise of large corporate farms and global trade making it much harder to succeed at a family farm. But that’s half a century or a century in the making. You can’t blame the current president, nor can some blowhard change that with BS. Your way of life is already gone and your desperation is from clinging to it, doing the same thing over and over for years. Somehow expecting something to change. I know change is hard and I wouldn’t want to, but your actions are locking your children, your town, yourself in the same cycle of desperation that will keep getting worse. It’s long past time to rip off the bandaid, to face the music. To take responsibility for your future instead of hiding from reality
And how do you expect people to do that exactly? Move to the city with what money? Start new businesses with what money?
I’m not claiming it’s easy or fun, but trying anything is more likely to work than just digging in your heels. Trying anything is more likely to work than falling for some grifter bs’ing you. Facing reality and at least looking for ways to overcome or listening to others ideas is more likely to work than hiding from reality.
Maybe this is just the usual media rage bait, but every time I read about such an area voting for someone just to throw a monkey wrench in the works to hurt others too or someone conservative ready to try the same things that haven’t worked before or someone promising the stars without a space program, I have to think a lot of this is self-inflicted. Every time you cut investments in education or science, or the environment, it’s self-inflicted, every time you want to cut safety nets when you or your neighbors are likely to need a hand up at some point, youre hurting yourself. Most importantly, every time you reject new technology, new businesses, new attempts to help your future, because the old isn’t serving you well, it’s self-inflicted.
I’m sure I’m getting it wrong since i can’t walk in their shoes but I know my area has lots of advantages, and many are our choices, our attitudes, our votes, our investments. Why does it seem like some people use their choices, votes, attitudes only to hurt or limit themselves?
Yeah, but... what options do these people have outside of Vote Blue and hope some social program opens up to lift them out? One that's meant to target poor people in the city and not necessarily the rural area.
WOW
As a former Republican who lives deep in MAGA territory that article resonates so hard I'm sure a nearby Geologist just looked at their seismograph in alarm.
Wow, just...wow.
That's such an excellent article. I have it bookmarked. I grew up in the South, moved to California, and it's spot on.
This basically hits the nail on the head.
Republicans have a huge and extensive propaganda network that feeds their constituents a steady stream of misinformation, fear, hatred, intolerance, and ignorance. Fox News primes them, Republicans parrot Fox or whatever right-wing news outlet people get their news from, and get elected because most people don't have the media literacy to see that they're being lied to.
We can't reason with them, because they live in a world that has been carefully crafted to keep them compliant. The only way to fix this is to break the GOP's propaganda machine. Until we can do that, they are lost to us.
I don't know if there's a single reason, but I would suspect a large part of it is that the alternative is giving in and conceding on pretty much everything. Sure, there's a possibility that if they suddenly started voting for Democrats, they might see some more funding sent their way, more programs to help them get by, or possibly even create jobs. It doesn't seem too likely they'll be the same old jobs that used to sustain those rural towns, though. They also won't be able to dominate the discourse of the party with a worldview built around Evangelical Christianity. That's going to mean just flat out giving up on a lot of the culture war battles they're fighting via the GOP at the moment. I don't see them getting the Democrats to walk back support for gay rights, for example. A lot of the anti-immigrant rhetoric basically just has to die off, or else urban Democratic voters will not support them.
For me, the real question is why they think they should be able to hold the vast majority of the population to their decidedly minority views? I'm sympathetic to wanting to be able to live the way you and your family have for generations, but there's no bringing that back at this point, so they need to try something new.
The republicans convince their constituents that as bad as things are now, they can easily get worse, and these are people who have lived in shit so long they literally cannot envision anything better.
That's the secret