Thomas and His cohorts have always had a "Unique" view of the World.
Posted on 04/14/2024 12:28:27 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Rural white people, as a group, now pose four interconnected threats to the fate of the United States’ pluralist, constitutional democracy.
Rural white voters have long enjoyed outsize power in American politics. They have inflated voting power in the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House and the Electoral College.
Although there is no uniform definition of “rural,” and even federal agencies cannot agree on a single standard, roughly 20% of Americans live in rural communities, according to the Census Bureau’s definition. And three-quarters of them – or approximately 15% of the U.S. population – are white.
Since the rise of Jacksonian democracy and the expansion of the vote to all white men in the late 1820s, however, the support of rural white people has been vital to the governing power of almost every major party coalition. Which is why my co-author Paul Waldman and I describe rural white people as America’s “essential minority” in our book “White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy.”
As a political scientist, I’ve written or co-written five books addressing issues of racial politics at some level of government or part of the country. My latest, “White Rural Rage,” seeks to understand the complex intersections of race, place and opinion and the implications they hold for our political system.
The unfortunate fact is that polls suggest many rural white people’s commitment to the American political system is eroding. Even when they are not members of militant organizations, rural white people, as a group, now pose four interconnected threats to the fate of the United States’ pluralist, constitutional democracy.
Although these do not apply to all rural white people, nor exclusively to them in general, when compared with other Americans, rural white people:
– Express the most racist, least inclusive, most xenophobic, most anti-LGBTQ+ and most anti-immigrant sentiments.
– Subscribe at the highest rates to conspiracy theories about QAnon, the 2020 presidential election, Barack Obama’s citizenship and COVID-19 vaccines.
– Support a variety of antidemocratic and unconstitutional positions and exhibit strong attachments to white nationalist and white Christian nationalist movements inimical to secular, constitutional governance.
– Are most likely to justify, if not call for, force or violence as acceptable alternatives to deliberative, peaceful democracy.
Let’s examine a few data points.
XENOPHOBIA fewer rural residents hold inclusive views on social issues - Bucks County Beacon - Why 'White Rural Rage' Is a Threat to American Democracy In a Pew Research Center poll conducted in 2018, 46% of white rural Americans said it is important to live in a diverse community. That’s a lower proportion than urban and suburban dwellers and even nonwhite rural residents.
And in rural areas, fewer than half the people said white people have advantages Black people do not, approve of the legalization of same-sex marriage, and say immigrants make American society stronger.
In addition, Cornell researchers found that rural whites reported feeling less comfortable with gay and lesbian people than urban whites do. And 49% of rural LGBTQ+ people between the ages of 10 and 24 called their own towns “unaccepting” of LGBTQ+ people – nearly twice the rate of suburban and urban LGBTQ+ young people who said the same about their communities.
CONSPIRACISM rural dwellers are more likely to believe conspiracy theories - Bucks County Beacon - Why 'White Rural Rage' Is a Threat to American Democracy Polls in 2020 and 2021 indicated that QAnon supporters are 1.5 times more likely to live in rural areas than urban ones, and 49% of rural residents – 10 points higher than the national average – believe a “deep state” undermines Trump.
Rural residents are also more likely than urban and suburban residents to believe the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, according to 2021 polling by the Public Religion Research Institute.
And people who live in rural areas are also less confident as a whole than those who live in urban areas that votes will be counted accurately and fairly in their state or across the country, according to a 2022 poll from the Bipartisan Policy Center.
In addition, by our analysis, of the 139 U.S. House members who voted to reject the certification of Joe Biden’s presidential election just hours after a violent mob of Trump supporters rampaged through the Capitol, 103 – 74% – represented either “purely rural” or “rural/suburban” districts, as categorized by Bloomberg’s CityLab project.
ANTIDEMOCRATIC BELIEFS more rural residents hold antidemocratic views - Bucks County Beacon - Why 'White Rural Rage' Is a Threat to American Democracy A scholarly analysis of multiyear data from the American National Election Studies project finds that rural citizens are “much more likely (than urban residents) to favor restrictions on the press” and to say it would be “helpful if the president could unilaterally work” without regard to Congress or the courts.
In addition, more than half of rural residents surveyed by the Public Religion Research Institute said being a Christian is important to “being truly American” – 10 percentage points more than in surburban or urban areas.
This is one of several signals that rural residents are disproportionately likely to support white Christian nationalism, an ideology that reaches beyond Christian ideas of faith and morality and into government. Its followers want the United States to base its laws on Christian values rather than maintain the centuries-old separation of church and state the founders saw as fundamental to a secular democracy.
JUSTIFICATION OF VIOLENCE rural americans more likely to support political violence - Bucks County Beacon - Why 'White Rural Rage' Is a Threat to American Democracy Rural residents are more likely than urban or suburban residents to say the political situation in the country is heading to a point where violence may be necessary to preserve the nation, according to polls from the Public Religion Research Institute in 2021 and the University of Chicago Institute of Politics in 2022.
Of the estimated 21 million Americans who in late 2021 said Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential win was “illegitimate,” according to the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, 30% lived in rural areas. And 27% of Americans who say Trump should be returned to office even if “by force” are rural residents. Those are minority views, but both proportions are significantly higher than the rural proportion of the overall population.
With the 2024 election fast approaching, the views of rural white people are once again of vital importance because they and the members of Congress who represent them disproportionately believe the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump by Joe Biden. A Pew Research Center study found 71% of rural white voters voted for Trump in 2020, so their preference in November will be key to who returns to the White House for a second term.
Thomas F. Schaller is Professor of Political Science at University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
Rural white voters have long enjoyed outsize power in American politics. They have inflated voting power in the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House and the Electoral College.
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How do they have “inflated” voting power in Electoral College? Are they somehow bending the rules? On the other hand, how is it that relatively small numbers of urban areas are increasingly determining elections for the whole nation?
that's why they are called Useful Idiots
Thomas and His cohorts have always had a "Unique" view of the World.
SpelChunk substituted Democracy for Leftist Aggresive Policies again.
I'm beginning to get suspious!
That view of the world is, unfortunately, quite common.
I don’t care about that, as they say these days, ‘performative’ stuff.
I just think the basic message of it is absolute nonsense.
I didn’t get past the first sentence.. :P
>> The FBI is already monitoring registered Republicans and people with American flags in front of their homes.
My Trump 2020 sign has been perma-screwed to my fence for almost four years. I speak regularly against “library materials” at my local school board meetings. And... (cover your kids’ ears)... I buy BIBLES!!! And Christian books. Probably 50 or so in the last year alone. Mostly to give away... so I’m not only extremist, I’m spreading the subversive ideas around!
You probably should break off all contact with me for your own safety. ;-)
I had suspicions about you being a troublemaker. 😉
Lol! I live in a rural community and my neighbors have degrees in agriculture, agronomics, chemistry, biology and business. Some people have funny ideas about the farming community.
Why ‘White Rural Rage’ Is a Threat to American Democracy
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HOW,,,exactly???????
Baseball bats and dark parking lots.
As opposed to tens of millions of Leftist who tear up our
nation’s cities and businesses, at will?
Yeah, what a dumb ass theory.
And note that in the link, it states that some 35% of “rural” (which they admit they can’t define) residents believe violence against the govt may be necessary soon while suburban & urban residents clock in at 20-25%. Isn’t this to be expected? Instead of asking why increasing percentages of residents whether rural, suburban, or urban trust the government less, they fix all the blame on the kulaks, clearly those rurals are a “threat to democracy”
Utter tripe.
Likewise, I live in such a rural community.These are Marxists who do not educate, they indoctrinate. To indoctrinate they play off stereotypes they have worked so hard to establish for years.The purposefully divide Americans from each other, hoping that the Union will not remain strong.They do the same with race.
So what if rural America used a stereotype of a smooth talking city slicker walking into our local general store who tries to debauch a fifteen year old girl because he is urbanely sexually liberated . Then lets assign that stereotype to everyone from the city who comes out to a rural area, as sodomites who destroy any thing righteous, pure or Godly. And then write a book about that and teach an indoctrination course at university about that.I reckon that would be tit for tat.
I reckon I have my guns a lot more accessible than they do. And there is the rub.
People like Thomas F. Schaller know we have no hesitation to employ the bibles and guns to which we cling WITHOUT BITTERNESS. That bothers the living hell right out of them.
And whats more , we are closely related to the founding principles of our nation , while men and women like are not. We rural folk have very similar views have been established , tried and true over 23 generations, the Marxist crowd does not, and so they are not strong. Our strength in that way bothers the hell out of them too.So they attack us using false stereotypes.
Here is an example of our historical precedent that the left does NOT have and it is also a message to men like Thomas F. Schaller:
Samual Adams,from Speech at Philadelphia State House , August 1st, 1776
“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.
Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: first, a right to life; secondly, to liberty; thirdly to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can.
The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men. “
I have no problem ridiculing such Marxists as I take joy in it.This completely dis-empowers them and renders their academic tripe ineffective.
There must have been millions in the 1950s in the USA who privately admired Stalin and his ideas. Now there are tens of millions that do. So many Americans have gone full communist even if they don’t understand what they have done.
The author is not going to consider the possibility that he is lying by omission. "White rural rage" is clearly much worse.
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