…"rural whites express more racist attitudes. “And yet,” they go on, “for many rural residents, attitudes about races are intimately linked to perceptions of hard work, self-reliance, a disdain for government handouts, and the dangers of elites.”
…"they think nonwhites don’t work hard, aren’t self-reliant, and are the clients of nefarious “elites.”
…"those who harbor higher levels of rural resentment—are more likely, on average, to support violence against the state.”
The dogs and I see tens of kangaroos around our property when on our morning walks. Most of the 'roos are quite used to us and just stand and watch us as we pass by.
“One of the more unfortunate developments is that people have started injecting meth.”
We partnered with the Daily Yonder for a Q&A with William Garriot, an anthropologist who says the impact of meth on rural communities in the U.S. has only gotten worse (but it’s not just a rural problem):
“Name a force or impulse that threatens the stability of the American political system – distrust in the fairness of elections, conspiracy theorizing, the embrace of authoritarianism – and it is always more prevalent among rural Whites than among those living elsewhere."
~ Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman, White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy (New York: Random House, 2024), p. 5
Schaller and Waldman point to a dialogue Elaine Godfrey had with Theda Skocpol in 2022 (“‘Stop the Steal’ Is a Metaphor,” The Atlantic [12 August 2022]).
Skocpol says,
"[T]he turning point in American history may have happened in November 2016.”
Elaine Godfrey asks, "The turning point toward what?"
Theda Skocpol replies, “Toward a locking-in of minority rule along ethno-nationalist lines. The objective is to disenfranchise metro people, period. I see a real chance of a long-term federal takeover by forces that are determined to maintain a fiction of a white, Christian, Trumpist version of America.”
“If a small-town, blue-collar man is the most authentic American, then the fact that his vote counts for more than that of a Black urban lawyer or a Latino suburban government worker won't arouse the outrage and demand for change that it might were he not so valorized.”
“When people realize that they'll continue to get older, that America will continue to get more diverse, that ‘traditional’ values on sexuality will continue to evolve, and that the people they hate will not disappear, what will happen?" (see continuation in /31)
~ Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman, White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy (New York: Random House, 2024), p. 117
"There is no easy way to predict, but authoritarian and radical right-wing movements have always found many of their adherents among those who felt they once had power and status and were losing it."
“‘Try to see America through their eyes,’ read a November 2022 Associated Press report about people in rural Wisconsin who are increasingly convinced that dark conspiracies are bent on destroying everything they believe in and are gathering weapons in case a civil war comes."
"This instruction – you, reader, must make an effort to understand the perspective not just of people in rural areas but of the most politically radical and the most disconnected from reality among them – is one that news consumers have been given for years. We're encouraged to sympathize with even extremely dangerous people who are literally stockpiling weapons, but only if they come from the places where the ‘essential minority’ resides."
"There are no articles about radical Black nationalists preparing for civil war that begin, ‘Try to see America through their eyes.’ But rural Whites are given greater moral latitude. Their excesses may not quite be excused, but were called upon to understand these people – the implication being that whatever dangers they may present, it's only because the rest of us haven't given them the consideration they deserve.”
“The increase in geographic polarization between the parties has become a regular topic for national news outlets, yet stories about Republicans’ inability to win in cities are far rarer than stories about Democratic struggles among rural voters."
"There is an implicit judgment at work, one that says that Democrats’ failure to win over rural voters is a kind of moral failing, one that can only be bred of insensitivity or contempt. Republicans’ struggles in cities, however, are seldom examined and less often judged; it's just how things are."
"This double standard is reinforced by the fact that journalists are always ready to amplify those few cases in which a Democrat says something dismissive about rural areas and the people who live there."
“Denigrating cities and the people who live in them doesn't come just from Trump. The supposed depravity and danger of American cities is hammered home again and again on conservative media, frequently with the implication that the more Black people a city contains, the more dangerous that city must be."
“Whether Trump succeeds in returning to the White House in 2024, his curious appeal to rural Americans is the most important rural political story in decades. Whatever the future holds for Trump, he has left an indelible mark on rural America and, in the process, revealed fundamental truths about the people who find him so compelling.”
“This is what rural people mean when they say that Trump ‘speaks our language,’ something we were told more than once during our travels. It's not that he understands their culture in any substantive way; instead, it's more visceral. Trump stroked people’s darkest impulses and said: 'You deserve to feel this way. You have been wronged and cheated and mocked.'"
'"Now I will be your wrath. Look at everyone you hate – those overeducated liberals and Hollywood elites and arrogant city people and social justice warriors trying to make you feel bad for being White and being a man and being American. They despise me just as much as they despise you. Let's show them who this country really belongs to.'”
“To understand Donald Trump, you have to start with Barack Obama. Trump’s successful candidacy would not have been possible in the wake of any other presidency; It was the backlash against America's first Black president that pushed Trump into the White House.”
“When one looks to the places where Trump’s support was most intense, again and again one arrives in majority-White rural areas.”
"For many years, it was assumed that successful racial appeals had to be offered subtly, to provide voters a kind of internal plausible deniability, so that they could tell themselves they weren't being racist when they responded to such appeals. By the time 2016 came around, this was no longer true. White identity had become important enough that Trump could succeed by wearing his bigotry on his sleeve.”
“Even the common, and perfectly accurate, criticism that Trump doesn't practice what he preaches likely resonates in rural areas, where you often find a strong moral code that is regularly violated by many of the people who live there."
"The fact that rural areas have plenty of infidelity and teen parenthood (which occurs at significantly higher rates among rural Americans than city dwellers) doesn't necessarily make people reject traditional family values; it can make them cling to those values all the more fervently, as they consider them under constant, visible threat.”
“Even if Trump fails in 2024 and becomes nothing more than the laughable two-bit grifter he always has been at heart, his effect on the politics of rural America will be felt for a generation, if not more. He showed every Republican what rural Whites, and the GOP base more broadly, really want and how to give it to them."