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.
Digital nomads moving into these places and driving up the cost of living are a big complaint in rural areas. They’ve been complaining about the influx of Californians in Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana for the last few decades now, but it has really accelerated since the pandemic.
But if there’s no industry and no-one moves there, how does the town survive?
They commute to other places to work. They also don’t typically make enough money to actually move and be closer to better jobs.
You’re missing my point. If there’s no industry, and they don’t allow anyone to move in, then the town will slowly die. They basically don’t want anything to change while at the same time they demand everything get better. It just doesn’t work that way.
Reminds me of the meme of a dog with a ball in its mouth: “Throw ball”
“No give, just throw ball”