White Rural Trump Supporters Are a Threat to Democracy DEAL WITH IT

[EebilKitteh]

In the popular imagination of many Americans, particularly those on the left side of the political spectrum, the typical MAGA supporter is a rural resident who hates Black and Brown people, loathes liberals, loves gods and guns, believes in myriad conspiracy theories, has little faith in democracy, and is willing to use violence to achieve their goals, as thousands did on Jan. 6.

According to a new book, White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy, these aren’t hurtful, elitist stereotypes by Acela Corridor denizens and bubble-dwelling liberals… they’re facts.

The authors, Tom Schaller, a professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and Paul Waldman, a former columnist at The Washington Post, persuasively argue that most of the negative stereotypes liberals hold about rural Americans are actually true.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/white-rur ... -democracy

[Slimshandy]

I wonder if he’s ever been to Christmas dinner with any of them.

[MonarchMom]

The authors seem sympathetic to the pain of people facing economic hardship as business models shift away from rural life. But they are also realistic in the threats to democracy as that hardship becoming anger, and that anger is fanned by political opportunists.

...the process can be devastating economically and socially for those who find themselves on the destruction side of the equation. This is especially true when technological change undermines not just individual workers but whole communities.

This isn’t a hypothetical proposition. It’s a big part of what has happened to rural America.

Technology is the main driver of rural decline, Schaller and Waldman argue. Indeed, American farms produce more than five times as much as they did 75 years ago, but the agricultural work force declined by about two-thirds over the same period, thanks to machinery, improved seeds, fertilizers and pesticides. Coal production has been falling recently, but thanks partly to technologies like mountaintop removal, coal mining as a way of life largely disappeared long ago, with the number of miners falling 80 percent even as production roughly doubled.

Technology, then, has made America as a whole richer, but it has reduced economic opportunities in rural areas.

So shouldn’t we aid these communities? We do. Federal programs — Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and more — are available to all Americans but are disproportionately financed from taxes paid by affluent urban areas. As a result, there are huge de facto transfers of money from rich, urban states like New Jersey to poor, relatively rural states like West Virginia.

While these transfers somewhat mitigate the hardship facing rural America, they don’t restore the sense of dignity that has been lost along with rural jobs. And maybe that loss of dignity explains both white rural rage and why that rage is so misdirected...

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/26/opin ... oters.html

[WellPreserved]

https://books.google.com/books?id=zDvcE ... &q&f=false

The prologue and first chapter of the book are really interesting and as a resident of rural Appalachia, I find it really relevant and revealing. Good read to start and if interested, looks like a good read as a whole.

[Della]

I wonder if he’s ever been to Christmas dinner with any of them.

How many have you attended? Somehow I don't see your family and friends as the Clampett type.

[Slimshandy]

I wonder if he’s ever been to Christmas dinner with any of them.

How many have you attended? Somehow I don't see your family and friends as the Clampett type.

What do you see them as?

[MonarchMom]

There is less upward mobility for those without a college education or technical training. This is an economic shift that has left younger populations in rural areas less financially secure than previous generations.

That is hard to accept, and makes people angry. This is why "change" of any kind is so hard to accept. They want someone or something to blame for their downward mobility, and politicians are happy to assign blame so they can harness that anger.

[Della]

I wonder if he’s ever been to Christmas dinner with any of them.

How many have you attended? Somehow I don't see your family and friends as the Clampett type.

What do you see them as?

More the type to hang out with local politicians at the country club

[WellPreserved]

"The story that results is often a disheartening one. Though the various parts of rural America differ in important ways, as a whole, they are weighted down by their struggles: resource economies where powerful interests extracted wealth and left the people who toiled to remove it with little or nothing to show for their decades of labor; manufacturing jobs that fled overseas; inadequate healthcare and physical infrastructure; limited opportunities that push talented young people to leave; and much more. And all this exists within a landscape of political emptiness in which a lack of real competition leaves Democrats believing there's no point in trying to win rural votes and Republicans knowing that they can win those votes without even trying - and give the people who supply them nothing in return."

...

"This coverage insists that the views these people express, no matter how alarming or repellent to coastal-dwelling cosmopolitans, demand consideration and respect. Rural sentiments, even undemocratic ones, must always be validated and amplified."

[Slimshandy]

How many have you attended? Somehow I don't see your family and friends as the Clampett type.

What do you see them as?

More the type to hang out with local politicians at the country club

Fair enough, we were just having afternoon coffee with Steve Womack on Friday lol…


But really, my grandmother grew up in rural Arkansas during the depression where wearing shoes was a winter time thing only. She died in her mansion in Beverly Hills, but we still have all the same family/friend connections that go back to the 1800’s around the area. I’ve been to a lot of celebrations that have the lowest possible budget, but they’re filled with smiling faces and you soon notice, that’s all you need.