I live in a red and rural state that put a convicted felon back into the highest office in the land. And while I appreciate the analysis—it’s spot on—I have no confidence that rural voters are recognizing the betrayal or would even vote differently today.
Keep in mind very low rates of education, high rates of poverty and the difficulty of recognizing a mistake given the sea of misinformation they consume ala FAUX news. It is really hard to admit to a mistake—their whole world view is bound up in this shit and like a religious fanatic confronted with evidence that runs counter to those beliefs, it’s far easier to dismiss counter evidence and cling to that belief. I’m not slamming anyone for their right to worship as they see fit, I’m just pointing out that it’s easier to blot out or ignore anything that runs counter to those beliefs than to change them and the same is true for political beliefs.
This is a land of misogyny and racism and though they would never admit it, it’s fear of the other and the different that motivates them. Fear—whether it is reasonable or unreasonable—overwhelms and overpowers the most valuable qualities of human nature: compassion, empathy, curiosity, long-term thinking, and restraint on the use of force and violence. Fear comes with an urgency that eliminates the appraisal of fact or evidence.
Many of the people in this state are afraid to drive in the state’s largest community of under 200,000 people—let alone go to say Minneapolis. The same level of fear allowed our ancestors to annihilate the native Americans whose land we stole when this state was founded. Again, most of these people are good people. They would lend a hand to a neighbor. They love and support their children and grandchildren, they contribute to good causes, but levels of engagement necessary to understand politics, is shockingly low.
Take that largest city for example, fewer thant three percent of eligible voters just elected people to a school board responsible for a budget of over 320 million dollars. That’s typical, so no, I don’t think folks in this state are either capable or ready to admit they might be worse off now—in a few weeks when we begin to absorb more of the price increases caused by their choice for president and putting food on the table becomes exponentially more difficult, they will feel that pain or if they lose their medicaid or medicare or social security, but it won’t change their minds.
I totally agree. I live in MO (St Louis County) and every time we have elections, the rural population votes for Republicans even though they've had a stranglehold on our state legislature for more than 20 years and have not improved much of anything. But, these same Republican voters vote for ballot initiatives (defeating right-to-work, expanding Medicaid, legalizing medical and recreational marijuana, raising the minimum wage, adding sick pay, and returning our abortion laws to a Roe type rule). But, once these ballot initiatives go into effect, Republican legislators try to write new laws to overturn these results. One went so far as to say that we didn't know what we were voting for so they have to overturn the result. Obviously, our motto of the "Show Me" state doesn't apply anymore because you can show rural voters how they're being hurt but it won't change their voting habit. MO rural voters hate Democrats and can't see past the label. Maybe MO Democrats should run as Independents and caucus with Democrats.
I am not surprised that many rural farmers supported Trump, as I noted many Trump signs in rural Indiana and rural Michigan in the fall before the election. They seemed to remember the check he sent them but not that he was responsible for their needing the check in the first place. Rare indeed was the Harris Walz sign. Most of the signs are now gone, but a few still remain. On the road to Warsaw, a particularly rabid Trump supporter's house is still decked out, including a new flag (likely made in China) with Trump pictured after the assassination attempt with the words, "Legends Never Die." After the election, the house also had a homemade sign: "Communism has been defeated again."
Meanwhile, a local farmer, here in rural Indiana, who did not vote for Trump, is struggling after Trump froze the money from year two of a three-year federal grant that required the farmer to spend the money, then be reimbursed. That is $7000, which is significant for anyone, particularly for a small farm. Who expects the federal government to default?
This was a fascinating essay. Sad, but fascinating. I grew up in a white, rural area in PA and know the mindset. I left at 17 for a college education in a big city and never looked back. I recently went to my 50th high school reunion. The people who never left were the exact same small-minded people they always were. I couldn’t get away fast enough. And there were Trump signs everywhere.
Jess Piper, who writes a Substack column and works with Blue Missouri says that some rural schools are on a four-day week because the districts cannot afford five-day a week instruction. Her own district can have a five-day week but only because wind power, which Trump is trying to kill, is in the area.
I call education the antibiotic that is needed to save us from MAGA.
I live on the Left Coast and the big cities are pretty liberal but out in the rural areas, even here, there are alot of Trump yard signs in evidence. I don't think Trump's popularity with the rural folks is going to diminish in the coming years. If he fails or succeeds they will love him in either case. If his policies hurt them they will still not lose their faith so long as he tells them things will get better.
Great overview of the rural situation, which most of them willingly have done to *themselves.* I find myself in the odd position of agreeing with libertarians, and Republicans like David Brooks. Farmers should not get a cent of money borrowed by the federal government to compensate them for the Trump tariffs they voted for. Nor do I really care all that much for the damage white, rural Republicans have done to their own Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. My Mom complained over the weekend that where she lives in rural Virginia it's "almost impossible" to get a PCP appointment without a wait of a month or more.
After four plus years of Trump, an insurrection, and thousands of layoffs throughout the federal government caused by *decades* of lies about government employees? My response is "Too bad, so sad! You did this to yourselves. Don't go looking for those of us who aren't racist and stupid enough to have imbibed a constant diet of Limbaugh and other RW talk radio and Fox News to clean up your mess!"
Republicans have (falsely) been claiming for decades that they're the party of personal and fiscal responsibility. What they're getting now is *exactly* what Republican voters have said they wanted since Reagan entered the White House in 1980! Furthermore, the people Republicans vote for are *still* using the zombie economic "theory" that the federal budget is equivalent to a household budget to claim we're "broke"...although we still "need" to extend the Trump tax cuts. White, rural voters may have soured on Trump, but I haven't seen evidence that zombie economic "theory" doesn't still work with them and regardless of what they're willing to admit to pollsters, LBJ's comment about a poor white man not carimg if you're picking his pocket as long as he has a poor black man to look down upon still works too.
I was going to comment about the NYT Op Ed appearing in the wrong publication for the people who most need to read it, but then it "dawned" upon me that because local newspapers have all but gone extinct since the Web started making it possible to access news for "free" over 30 years ago, there really isn't a place for white, rural voters to easily be exposed to content and facts, they *need* to see...even if they really want to (finally) join the rest of us in a non-alternativ fact, non-conspiratorial world. IMO, thats potentially the hardest problem we face with rural voters, because the disappearance of local journalism wasn't caused by stupid anti-government policy that can be fxed by "voting the bums out!"
When I graduated with my BA in communications in 2000, I thought I wanted to be a journalist. This was back when nearly every major newspaper's website still operated on the "free model." I can still recall the interview I had with the EIC/publisher of a small town newspaper in North Carolina who told me he had no intention of "giving away" the content of the newspaper for free on the web. I was appalled at what I thought was his short sided opinion. Over 30 years later, it turns out it's *my* opinion that was shortsided. It's not easy to fix a 30+ year mistake that is at least partially responsible for creating "news deserts" in rural America because we can't just fix one factor, and then the rest of the solution flows from fixing that one thing. Even if the federal government did a New Deal style program to fund the start up of rural newxpapers (and to be clear, a snowball has a better chance of survival in Death Valley than this program would have in getting through Congress) we also would need to change the 30+ year expectation that news should be "free." If we don't change that expecatation *and* rural Ameticans don't have the disposible income to spend on a newspaper subscription either in print or digitally, the federal government would have to fund rural newspapers indefinitely. Furthermore, we're *never* going to get things like the NYT Op Ed to, visually, "appear" on Fox News and any other current news outlet where rural voters already get their news because it's not in Murdoch (or any other oligarch's) interest.
Because we're likely stuck with at least some of the Trump/Muskovite "policy" for three more years regardless of what happens in the November 2026, midterm election, I will be interested to see if the continuation of destructive policies and further decline in the number of white, rural, Boomer voters leads to younger white, currently rural voters to engage in sort of a reverse white flight back into the suburban areas surrounding the major city/cities in each state. This might also oddly be assisted by Elon's DOGE Dunning-Kruger kids in some areas, partucularly where I live in "the DMV" (the District, Maryland and Virginia.) Thanks at least in part to DOGE the area's seeing a record-breaking increase (up 25% in Aptil) in home listings, bucking the nationwide 5.9% decrease in home sales in April, and more sellers have been willing to accept lower all cash offers rather than financed because they want to sell quickly.
C’mon now! If rural Americans suffer it’s for the major good—a $400 million gift jet needs fuel, no? An American military needs a parade, no? Patriotic America (unwillingly) responds.
They voted for him because they're bigoted assholes who wanted revenge. Thinking they're going to magically figure out that trump is bad for them and the country, that they'll "see the light" is like charlie brown thinking lucy will actually let him kick the football this time. It's never going to happen.
They care more about hurting everyone who isn't a straight, white christian like them than they care about their own livelihood. As evidenced by the fact that they vote republican.
These people are the definition of a write-off. Any damage control that gets done, much less any actual progress or healing is only going to happen DESPITE these people, not because of them.
It appears that these people with great wealth and power think their progeny will escape any negative consequences of the extreme, destructive policies they are promoting.
I sense something more insidious in all of this. It feels like they want the people in rural areas to move to cities. This is about America being for sale, the land and it's resources.
We are in a death spiral as a nation. Look at the national map on any issue, overlay with the electoral map, and see the entrenched split. Our solutions will not be through any conventional precedents and methods. Just how oppressive and unfair will our environment become? Yale professor Timothy Snyder is leaving the country. We have become lawless. This is dire and dangerous.
I live in a red and rural state that put a convicted felon back into the highest office in the land. And while I appreciate the analysis—it’s spot on—I have no confidence that rural voters are recognizing the betrayal or would even vote differently today.
Keep in mind very low rates of education, high rates of poverty and the difficulty of recognizing a mistake given the sea of misinformation they consume ala FAUX news. It is really hard to admit to a mistake—their whole world view is bound up in this shit and like a religious fanatic confronted with evidence that runs counter to those beliefs, it’s far easier to dismiss counter evidence and cling to that belief. I’m not slamming anyone for their right to worship as they see fit, I’m just pointing out that it’s easier to blot out or ignore anything that runs counter to those beliefs than to change them and the same is true for political beliefs.
This is a land of misogyny and racism and though they would never admit it, it’s fear of the other and the different that motivates them. Fear—whether it is reasonable or unreasonable—overwhelms and overpowers the most valuable qualities of human nature: compassion, empathy, curiosity, long-term thinking, and restraint on the use of force and violence. Fear comes with an urgency that eliminates the appraisal of fact or evidence.
Many of the people in this state are afraid to drive in the state’s largest community of under 200,000 people—let alone go to say Minneapolis. The same level of fear allowed our ancestors to annihilate the native Americans whose land we stole when this state was founded. Again, most of these people are good people. They would lend a hand to a neighbor. They love and support their children and grandchildren, they contribute to good causes, but levels of engagement necessary to understand politics, is shockingly low.
Take that largest city for example, fewer thant three percent of eligible voters just elected people to a school board responsible for a budget of over 320 million dollars. That’s typical, so no, I don’t think folks in this state are either capable or ready to admit they might be worse off now—in a few weeks when we begin to absorb more of the price increases caused by their choice for president and putting food on the table becomes exponentially more difficult, they will feel that pain or if they lose their medicaid or medicare or social security, but it won’t change their minds.
I totally agree. I live in MO (St Louis County) and every time we have elections, the rural population votes for Republicans even though they've had a stranglehold on our state legislature for more than 20 years and have not improved much of anything. But, these same Republican voters vote for ballot initiatives (defeating right-to-work, expanding Medicaid, legalizing medical and recreational marijuana, raising the minimum wage, adding sick pay, and returning our abortion laws to a Roe type rule). But, once these ballot initiatives go into effect, Republican legislators try to write new laws to overturn these results. One went so far as to say that we didn't know what we were voting for so they have to overturn the result. Obviously, our motto of the "Show Me" state doesn't apply anymore because you can show rural voters how they're being hurt but it won't change their voting habit. MO rural voters hate Democrats and can't see past the label. Maybe MO Democrats should run as Independents and caucus with Democrats.
I am not surprised that many rural farmers supported Trump, as I noted many Trump signs in rural Indiana and rural Michigan in the fall before the election. They seemed to remember the check he sent them but not that he was responsible for their needing the check in the first place. Rare indeed was the Harris Walz sign. Most of the signs are now gone, but a few still remain. On the road to Warsaw, a particularly rabid Trump supporter's house is still decked out, including a new flag (likely made in China) with Trump pictured after the assassination attempt with the words, "Legends Never Die." After the election, the house also had a homemade sign: "Communism has been defeated again."
Meanwhile, a local farmer, here in rural Indiana, who did not vote for Trump, is struggling after Trump froze the money from year two of a three-year federal grant that required the farmer to spend the money, then be reimbursed. That is $7000, which is significant for anyone, particularly for a small farm. Who expects the federal government to default?
Great essay. Great overview of the rural situation.
This was a fascinating essay. Sad, but fascinating. I grew up in a white, rural area in PA and know the mindset. I left at 17 for a college education in a big city and never looked back. I recently went to my 50th high school reunion. The people who never left were the exact same small-minded people they always were. I couldn’t get away fast enough. And there were Trump signs everywhere.
This was wonderful.
You wrote: “… rural schools are shrinking if not closing.” Keep in mind that killing public schools is the 2025 objective, not just rural schools.
Jess Piper, who writes a Substack column and works with Blue Missouri says that some rural schools are on a four-day week because the districts cannot afford five-day a week instruction. Her own district can have a five-day week but only because wind power, which Trump is trying to kill, is in the area.
I call education the antibiotic that is needed to save us from MAGA.
I live on the Left Coast and the big cities are pretty liberal but out in the rural areas, even here, there are alot of Trump yard signs in evidence. I don't think Trump's popularity with the rural folks is going to diminish in the coming years. If he fails or succeeds they will love him in either case. If his policies hurt them they will still not lose their faith so long as he tells them things will get better.
Great overview of the rural situation, which most of them willingly have done to *themselves.* I find myself in the odd position of agreeing with libertarians, and Republicans like David Brooks. Farmers should not get a cent of money borrowed by the federal government to compensate them for the Trump tariffs they voted for. Nor do I really care all that much for the damage white, rural Republicans have done to their own Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. My Mom complained over the weekend that where she lives in rural Virginia it's "almost impossible" to get a PCP appointment without a wait of a month or more.
After four plus years of Trump, an insurrection, and thousands of layoffs throughout the federal government caused by *decades* of lies about government employees? My response is "Too bad, so sad! You did this to yourselves. Don't go looking for those of us who aren't racist and stupid enough to have imbibed a constant diet of Limbaugh and other RW talk radio and Fox News to clean up your mess!"
Republicans have (falsely) been claiming for decades that they're the party of personal and fiscal responsibility. What they're getting now is *exactly* what Republican voters have said they wanted since Reagan entered the White House in 1980! Furthermore, the people Republicans vote for are *still* using the zombie economic "theory" that the federal budget is equivalent to a household budget to claim we're "broke"...although we still "need" to extend the Trump tax cuts. White, rural voters may have soured on Trump, but I haven't seen evidence that zombie economic "theory" doesn't still work with them and regardless of what they're willing to admit to pollsters, LBJ's comment about a poor white man not carimg if you're picking his pocket as long as he has a poor black man to look down upon still works too.
I was going to comment about the NYT Op Ed appearing in the wrong publication for the people who most need to read it, but then it "dawned" upon me that because local newspapers have all but gone extinct since the Web started making it possible to access news for "free" over 30 years ago, there really isn't a place for white, rural voters to easily be exposed to content and facts, they *need* to see...even if they really want to (finally) join the rest of us in a non-alternativ fact, non-conspiratorial world. IMO, thats potentially the hardest problem we face with rural voters, because the disappearance of local journalism wasn't caused by stupid anti-government policy that can be fxed by "voting the bums out!"
When I graduated with my BA in communications in 2000, I thought I wanted to be a journalist. This was back when nearly every major newspaper's website still operated on the "free model." I can still recall the interview I had with the EIC/publisher of a small town newspaper in North Carolina who told me he had no intention of "giving away" the content of the newspaper for free on the web. I was appalled at what I thought was his short sided opinion. Over 30 years later, it turns out it's *my* opinion that was shortsided. It's not easy to fix a 30+ year mistake that is at least partially responsible for creating "news deserts" in rural America because we can't just fix one factor, and then the rest of the solution flows from fixing that one thing. Even if the federal government did a New Deal style program to fund the start up of rural newxpapers (and to be clear, a snowball has a better chance of survival in Death Valley than this program would have in getting through Congress) we also would need to change the 30+ year expectation that news should be "free." If we don't change that expecatation *and* rural Ameticans don't have the disposible income to spend on a newspaper subscription either in print or digitally, the federal government would have to fund rural newspapers indefinitely. Furthermore, we're *never* going to get things like the NYT Op Ed to, visually, "appear" on Fox News and any other current news outlet where rural voters already get their news because it's not in Murdoch (or any other oligarch's) interest.
Because we're likely stuck with at least some of the Trump/Muskovite "policy" for three more years regardless of what happens in the November 2026, midterm election, I will be interested to see if the continuation of destructive policies and further decline in the number of white, rural, Boomer voters leads to younger white, currently rural voters to engage in sort of a reverse white flight back into the suburban areas surrounding the major city/cities in each state. This might also oddly be assisted by Elon's DOGE Dunning-Kruger kids in some areas, partucularly where I live in "the DMV" (the District, Maryland and Virginia.) Thanks at least in part to DOGE the area's seeing a record-breaking increase (up 25% in Aptil) in home listings, bucking the nationwide 5.9% decrease in home sales in April, and more sellers have been willing to accept lower all cash offers rather than financed because they want to sell quickly.
C’mon now! If rural Americans suffer it’s for the major good—a $400 million gift jet needs fuel, no? An American military needs a parade, no? Patriotic America (unwillingly) responds.
And Kristi Noem needs a new plane too, which will take $50 million from the Coast Guard budget according to one news source.
Two planes — one for her and her makeup, the other for the costumes.
They voted for him because they're bigoted assholes who wanted revenge. Thinking they're going to magically figure out that trump is bad for them and the country, that they'll "see the light" is like charlie brown thinking lucy will actually let him kick the football this time. It's never going to happen.
They care more about hurting everyone who isn't a straight, white christian like them than they care about their own livelihood. As evidenced by the fact that they vote republican.
These people are the definition of a write-off. Any damage control that gets done, much less any actual progress or healing is only going to happen DESPITE these people, not because of them.
It appears that these people with great wealth and power think their progeny will escape any negative consequences of the extreme, destructive policies they are promoting.
I sense something more insidious in all of this. It feels like they want the people in rural areas to move to cities. This is about America being for sale, the land and it's resources.
We are in a death spiral as a nation. Look at the national map on any issue, overlay with the electoral map, and see the entrenched split. Our solutions will not be through any conventional precedents and methods. Just how oppressive and unfair will our environment become? Yale professor Timothy Snyder is leaving the country. We have become lawless. This is dire and dangerous.