Red Versus Blue

Here is an interesting take on the rural-urban divide which is probably the single biggest cultural division in the US right now.  Sean Illing, the interviewer, can barely contain his anger and disgust with rural, social conservatives.  That's an interesting stance, and I think it's a reaction against all these Cleetus Safaris, where the Times sends someone out to East Bumphuck to interview Trump voters to see that they are still Trump voters.

Rural America is substantially different than the rest of the country.  The nature of our Congressional and statehouse districts means that the country will always be over-represented in government.  This helps give American politics an unusually conservative cast. 

The broader question is why have rural communities been left behind.  The issue is that small towns have a nice hermetically sealed culture.  It's unchanging.  That's precisely the appeal.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world is changing at a very rapid pace.  Drive an hour into the cities or even the suburbs and you find out that most people don't care if their kid's teacher is gay, or that their neighbor is from Senegal.  They love that there is a new Burmese restaurant in town, because they've never had Burmese food.  They are cord-cutting their way off regular TV.  They are participating in new ways of employment. 

So, change and diversity is a vital part of urban America, and rural America hates it. 

The reality is that rural America is dealing now with issues like unemployment and the opiod crisis. The modern plague of cities that country folk thought where limited to cities have found their way to small towns.  These plagues, it turns out, were not caused by city values or the fact that black and brown people are morally inferior.  The plagues travel together.  You don't have a job?  Get high.  Get high? You don't get a job. 

Ultimately, we do need to realize that we have an economic system that is incredibly beneficial to a tiny group of people.  Benefits a bare majority of the rest and significantly disadvantages a sizable portion of people.  That anger is then misplaced into racial bigotry, homophobia and xenophobia.  Yet, it's precisely the insular, anti-Enlightenment mindset of these rural villages that makes them poor places to do business.  And so Red America falls farther behind and gets more and more resentful.  Meanwhile, the politicians who animate their racism continue to pursue policies that benefit the 1%.

I'm not sure what breaks the cycle, beyond the actuarial table.