#Resistance liberals have been offering their best Mein Kampf impression in recent years as they direct all the scapegoating ire they can muster in their black little hearts against the people of flyover country, as if they are the ones responsible for the sorry state of affairs in the Land of the Free.
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Below is the official synopsis of “White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy,” via Penguin Random House (emphasis added):
A searing portrait and damning takedown of America’s proudest citizens—who are also the least likely to defend its core principles…
White rural voters hold the greatest electoral sway of any demographic group in the United States, yet rural communities suffer from poor healthcare access, failing infrastructure, and severe manufacturing and farming job losses. Rural voters believe our nation has betrayed them, and to some degree, they’re right. In White Rural Rage, Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman explore why rural Whites have failed to reap the benefits from their outsize political power and why, as a result, they are the most likely group to abandon democratic norms and traditions. Their rage—stoked daily by Republican politicians and the conservative media—now poses an existential threat to the United States.
Schaller and Waldman show how vulnerable U.S. democracy has become to rural Whites who, despite legitimate grievances, are increasingly inclined to hold racist and xenophobic beliefs, to believe in conspiracy theories, to accept violence as a legitimate course of political action, and to exhibit antidemocratic tendencies. Rural White Americans’ attitude might best be described as “I love my country, but not our country,” Schaller and Waldman argue. This phenomenon is the patriot paradox of rural America: The citizens who take such pride in their patriotism are also the least likely to defend core American principles. And by stoking rural Whites’ anger rather than addressing the hard problems they face, conservative politicians and talking heads create a feedback loop of resentments that are undermining American democracy.
Schaller and Waldman provocatively critique both the structures that permit rural Whites’ disproportionate influence over American governance and the prospects for creating a pluralist, inclusive democracy that delivers policy solutions that benefit rural communities. They conclude with a political reimagining that offers a better future for both rural people and the rest of America.
It seems they are so close to understanding the true reason for the hatred of the state among the residents of flyover country — a dying middle class, decimated manufacturing bases, the importation of their demographic replacements — but they can’t help themselves from smearing them as racist bigots and chalking it up to that.
Also, the authors make some bold claims about rural whites being the “most likely group to abandon democratic norms and traditions” and holding “disproportionate influence over American governance,” the latter of which is absurd on its face. My guess is that nowhere in their book do they offer any compelling quantitative evidence for these claims; they are merely to be taken at face value because a New York Times and Washington Post columnist say so.
This is a tired point to make, but let’s indulge ourselves for a moment to muse about what exactly would happen to the authors of a book titled “Black Urban Rage: The Threat to Western Civilization.”
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MSNBC is plugging the literature heavily.
(I can no longer say I never learned anything of substance from Morning Joe and his sidepiece Mika; I was not aware until watching this segment that Joseph Biden’s father was a used car salesman, which explains quite a bit about is moral degeneracy.)