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.
Well, by comparison to the rural conservative, even if they didn’t include rural conservatives in their inclusiveness, they would still be more incluseive than the rural conservative, by a long margin.
They're not bad people, they're not stupid. But they live in a carefully developed information desert, run by the Right Wing Misinformation Conglomerate which includes the Russian, Chinese, NK, Indonesian and other governments, along with the very Party of their fathers and grandfathers. We are in DEEP trouble.
This.
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.
Yes they are happy to address these things. And say so at the rural level.
Plenty of progressives are rural dwellers themselves,
Indeed we are.
despite what certain country singers would have you believe, and are very much involved in local politics, often at considerable risk to themselves.
Raises hand for multiple flat tires and gun threats.
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.
Bingo.
They are in no position to tell anyone not to speak, just securing their own right to speak will be a constant challenge.
Amen.
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?
Not that it stops the conservatives from claiming to have no agency, WHILE in a public meeting having agency.
I am best placed to comment about Australia rather than the US but there does appear to be much overlap between our countries. These fora are a good place to meet, discuss and compare POVs.
Australia loaded with many who call themselves "progressives". They are very vocal on our airwaves, media etc.
Very opposite here in rural America.
There are very few airwaves carrying very vocal progressives.
One of their cry's is that many voters are voting against their best interest. It took me quite a while to work out that they mean those who are not as "progressive" (whatever that may mean) as themselves .
Oh, you’d like some examples? What we mean by that is them voting against the things THEY SAY that they are interested in.
Voting against Medicare expansion while on Medicare.
Voting against Obamacare while needing Obamacare.
Voting against additional buses for the school district while their kids have to ride 90 minutes to school
Voting for a politician who wants to lower taxes DURING the fracking boom instead of making the frackers pay full price and using the proceeds to offset spending on highway trucks that will last long after the boom is gone.
Voting for fracking WHILE their neighbors are showing filthy contaminated well water to the board.
Saying they love the cops while voting to eliminate the only cop we’ve got.
Voting to expand the agriculture exemption until it is small enough that people like me who own land for the view get to reduce my taxes like a farmer if I just plant a 20 square foot garden, thereby
increasing the farmers’ taxes while giving wealthy landowners a significant tax break.
Voting to elect a partisan, petty, vengeful assessor and then complaining when she doesn’t show up to work for 3 years but draws her paycheck every week.
Is this “most rural people”. Well, all I can say is that they won those votes, so they are at the least “most of the rural voters”.
Their plaintive cry is quite ironic as it is my experience having met, worked, socialised with these self-identified progressives for > 40 years that most of them have absolutely no idea what the self-interest of any non-progressive may be.
We listen to what they say is their self interest, and go with their own volunteered information and how they vote to undermine it.
I say this as I have been on the receiving end of "progressives" telling so many times that I do not know what my or my families best interests actually are. Funnily enough the best judge of my best interests is generally myself rather than another. All it takes is the expression of an opinion that the the progressive considers so ignorant or gauche to be given a serve on how, why you are so wrong and how much better your life would be if only you would listen and obey your superiors.
So many times, eh? Well, I guess I agree that the conservatives here would say they want lower taxes, vote in a way that raises their taxes and
still call the progressive an asshole for pointing it out. So possibly that happens to you as well.
They do not know because they so rarely listen or even care. They are too busy telling non-progressives what is supposedly in their best interests and why they should vote, act in a certain direction. I am constantly astounded that the alleged self-interests of the non-progressive align neatly with the interests of the progressives.
Interesting topic here - think about this; humans in general have very similar self interests most of the time, don’t we. Safety, food and shelter security, health care. We disagree on how we think we should get them. But often the data sort of settles the deabte on that score.
On those exceptionally rare ocassions when these progressives deign to talk, or even more rarely actually listen as well, to non-progressives they are rude, condescending, patronising, dismissive, interrupt etc.
And you seem to be claiming that conservatives do not do this?
And the progressives wonder why they are rarely listened to.
Wait, you said above that listening to the other side was the minimum of social obligation. Is that only for the progressives, then?
Or are you saying that, after a while of getting treated like shit it’s okay to not listen any more?
‘Cause, if you’re saying that… should conservatives wonder why they are rarely listened to, or, what?