Some of the posts disparage Trump voters, especially rural whites. I do this much too often myself. And, as if in answer to this fault, the
article "What Liberals Get Wrong About ‘White Rural Rage’ — Almost Everything' appeared in my news-feed.
Taken as a whole, rural voters are not merely reacting against change — be it demographic or economic. They are actively seeking to preserve a sense of agency over their future and a continuity of their community’s values and social structures. Some might call this conservatism, but I think it is the same thing motivating fears of gentrification in urban areas, or the desire to “keep Portland weird.” Place matters for a whole bunch of people — but especially for rural folks.
Consider the fact, as I discuss in my book, that rural Americans are the most likely to say that if given the chance, they would never want to leave their community, while at the same time they are the most likely to say that children growing up in their specific community will have to leave in order to live productive lives. Could any single policy solve that dilemma?
Instead of a politics that seeks to understand and represent these contradictions, the left wants to simplify ruralness into something it’s not. In the immediate aftermath of 2016, blaming rural people was a way to make sense of the surprise of Trump’s election. This latest obsession with rage is the next chapter, a kind of collective cry of frustration from tired progressives: “We give up!” There is a general tendency among the readers of the New York Times and viewers of MSNBC to think about politics in purely transactional terms: We give you these benefits, you give us your votes. And rural voters, as Waldman is right to note, aren’t living up to that supposed bargain.
But this flies in the face of what research on resentment actually tells us. For many rural residents, the solutions they seek may not always come neatly packaged as government policies, white papers or policy briefs pumped out of a campaign war room. I’ve found that resentments exist because self-reliance and local problem-solving is intrinsic to rural identity, and self-reliance is something by nature resistant to government policies emanating from Washington, D.C.
One of the favorite pastimes of progressives is to brag about
Inclusiveness. Perhaps the perspective of rural Americans should be
included too.
You are asking a lot of progressives there.
On what issues? Progressives are more than happy to address issues that face rural communities, in my experience. Plenty of progressives are rural dwellers themselves, despite what certain country singers would have you believe, and are very much involved in local politics, often at considerable risk to themselves. Is it your idea that progressives, upon hearing a conversation about farming, or water use, or paucity of medical services, or underfunding of rural schools, refuse to engage in discussions of those issues? This has not been my experience, having grown up in a small town myself.
Hell, in what parts of the country are progressives in a
position to allow or deny inclusion to anyone? In most American small towns, if a progressive is sitting on the city council or the local water board / grange or what have you, they are the only one there with values even remotely appriximating their own. They are in no position to tell anyone not to speak, just securing their own right to speak will be a constant challenge. Even in urban regions, it's rare to see a progressive
majority within any policymaking body. Liberal, yes, progressive, no. So even if they wanted someone excluded, who's going to listen?