A Rural White American’s Reflection of White Rural Rage: Resentment is Toxic

In the months leading up to the 2020 presidential election, the Democratic Party claimed that their platform was going to be one of unity. They said it was time to turn the page on the toxicity that had defined American political discourse since that fateful moment when Donald Trump descended on the escalator in 2015, initiating his first presidential campaign. After a summer’s worth of rioting in 2020, nearly a year of lockdowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the January 6^th riot at the United States Capitol, the Democrats had their chance to unify the country, which had not been this divided for sixty years, perhaps even one hundred and sixty years. Sadly, things haven’t improved as we now approach another presidential election. What went wrong? A good place to begin answering this question might be White Rural Rage.

The subtitle, The Threat to American Democracy, makes the anti-rural sentiments of authors Tom Schaller, a professor of political science at the University of Maryland, and Paul Waldman, a former op-ed writer for the Washington Post, quite clear. Using personal interviews and both historical and empirical analysis, Schaller and Waldman attempt to prove that rural white Americans are a unique political demographic for their disproportionate political power-to-population ratio, their exorbitant hatred of minorities and elites (or really anyone different than them), and their loyalty to the Republican party, which continuously refuses to promote policies that are most in rural America’s interest.

I want to be as charitable to Schaller and Waldman as possible; they do a good job at pointing out problems facing rural America, perhaps none more serious than the opioid crisis that is poisoning rural Americans every day. My home state of Ohio in 2022 had 4,915 drug overdoses, of which 81% of these were due to either illicit fentanyl or fentanyl analogs. This was in the aftermath of the record 5,164 drug deaths in 2021. Jefferson County, where I reside, has an overdose rate of 54 people per 100,000 and Scioto County, where much of my family resides has a rate of 106.2 per 100,000, the highest in the state.

Even when they acknowledge such problems, however, the book’s pattern is to immediately point out that countless other demographics suffer more than rural whites. It seems the authors are not interested in the plight of rural America and would rather attack this group in order to boost their own prestige as superior members of the knowledge class. Many other reviews of this book have detailed the faulty evidence and reasoning in White Rural Rage. Read Nicholas F. Jacobs’ review if you’re interested in those details: the review’s title pretty much sums it up: “New Book on Rural America Started with False Conclusion, Then Looked for Evidence.”

The question I am most interested in, however, is what this book, and the attitude beneath it, says about the Democratic Party’s continued efforts to unify America. The question which drives Schaller and Waldman is different, but related: how did Donald Trump become President, and why did rural America vote for him so overwhelmingly? They conclude it is because Trump tapped into all the worst instincts of rural Americans (racism, xenophobia, conspiracism, etc.). But this is not why Trump resonated with so many of my neighbors and loved ones. He resonated with them because despite all the inflated political power Schaller and Waldman claim rural America has, Trump was the first president in many years that seemed to listen to and care about their plight.

For decades, countless rural communities have suffered from loss of industry, lack of education, and military intervention in foreign lands. Rural Americans have felt abandoned as both parties voted in trade deals like NAFTA and promoted immigration policies that acquiesced to large corporations’ demands for new sources of cheap labor, a push which was supported by many labor unions. Often the jobs that were outsourced due to these trade and immigration policies were the only means of income for many people given the low rates of education in rural communities. Recent studies have shown that 35% of rural Americans tested at a “below basic” reading level, making them “functionally illiterate.” Similarly, rural students are underperforming in STEM fields with only 13% of rural students majoring in math and science fields. Lastly, rural Americans are much more likely to join the military than any other demographic in the country. The irresponsibility of American foreign policy over the past 70 years has created generation after generation of victims of seemingly endless and unsuccessful foreign military campaigns.

Many rural Americans have begun to ask questions. They want to know why they are not entitled to a quality education. Why should they support politicians who send their jobs overseas and then receive money from the very corporations that laid off their employees? Are the only possible foreign policy strategies either to send our sons and daughters to die in a country we cannot even point to on a map, or to fund the deaths of those countries’ own children through proxy wars?

For rural Americans, Trump seemed to provide answers to these questions. His pro-school choice stance and promotion of “opportunity zones” that used tax incentives to increase investment in depressed census tracts designated by state governors resonated with rural people. His robust condemnation of the Vietnam, Gulf, and Iraq Wars spoke to the many rural Americans who have spent lifetimes reflecting on their lost friends and family; asking the question “for what purpose?” Contrast this with Trump’s 2016 opponent who labelled many rural Americans a “basket of deplorables” (a sentiment echoed throughout this entire book). Despite Trump’s own divisive rhetoric, he makes rural Americans feel heard in ways neither majority party has in decades. Any politician or scholar who actually wants to address the root causes of polarization needs to reckon seriously with this reality.

Schaller and Waldman utterly fail to do this, and I think they are dead wrong throughout nearly all of their book. However, I think they are correct about one thing: it is time for rural Americans to wield their political power to finally get policies that are in their interest. It’s time that they demand their plight be heard. The first step toward this goal would be to reject all these empty platitudes offered by both political parties and exchange them for an actual set of policies that will benefit not only rural Americans, but the countless other groups of people that have been forgotten by our political class. I truly think this is possible, because despite Schaller and Walden’s rhetoric, in my experience rural Americans see the suffering of their fellow Americans, even if they don’t fully understand it. This has been especially true of Native Americans confined to federal reservations, or African Americans stuck in failing inner cities, or immigrants caught in the nightmare chaos of US immigration law. Politicians may want to pit these groups against one another to secure constituencies for themselves, but the rural Americans I know sympathize with the plight of others suffering from decades of failed policy. The first obstacle toward realizing this unity agenda is the victim hierarchy and zero-sum system of racial and demographic divisions sold to us by both political parties. My hope as a rural American is that we abandon such resentments and instead pursue our inclination to love and show charity to our fellow Americans.

Image via Flickr