Nicholas F. Jacobs is an assistant professor of government at Colby College, where Daniel M. Shea is a professor of government. They are the authors of “A good American progressive is meant to disapprove of disparaging political stereotypes. But that hasn’t stopped them gleefully embracing the caricature of the enraged rural American.
Still, rageful stereotypes sell better than complex backstories. And they’re easier for our political and media ecosystems to make sense of. Reference some data point about QAnon conspiracies in the heartlands, and you’ll raise more money from nervous liberals in the city . Lash out against the xenophobia in small towns, and you’ll mobilize your city voters to the polls. Rage draws clicks. It makes a splash.
What we do see in rural America are a unique set of resentments or grievances that arise from real and perceived slights against rural communities. These include economic policies that have devastated local industries, a lack of investment in rural infrastructure and education, and a sense of cultural dismissal from urban-centric media and politics.Such failures help to explain the deep-rooted skepticism in many rural areas toward government policy solutions.
In some circles, this lack of empathy stems from the fact that these so-called deplorables are blamed for having brought Donald Trump to power. As Paul Waldman, the second: “If Donald Trump gets back to the Oval Office, it will be because — once again — rural Whites put him there.”But rural America is not responsible for Trump. If simply voting for Trump makes you “enraged,” then the residents of cities and suburbs, from which Trump derived 80 percent of his, are downright furious.
We’ve also noticed that city dwellers tend use stereotypes as a crutch to disguise the fact that they know very little about how different people live their lives. Both rural and urban people see the “other” as having. Many of these differences are overblown, but some of them are, undoubtedly, true. We see it in our own lives: As college professors who choose to live in the countryside, we hear colleagues playfully say we’ve “gone native,” and our neighbors think we’re squirrelly.
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