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Buck County is a Phillyburb...hardly "rural"!
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.
“American democrazy” is a myth. There is no such thing as an “American democrazy”. America is a REPUBLIC! All of us who paid attention in middle school, knew that. We also know that a REPUBLIC is an organized government while a “democrazy” is a sh*thouse mob who likes to block roads and bridges when they get a wild hair up their “love machine.”
I notice the left has to fabricate *crimes* for white, rural people to commit to vilify them.
Because they don’t commit any real ones.
For the last couple of years, the RATS’ “democrazy” has been nothing more than a hate filled, baby killing LYNCH MOB. You can take that to the bank.
Wow. Your United States history sucks!
The United States of America is and has always been a republic.
“Well, Doctor, what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?”
“A Republic, if you can keep it.” - Benjamin Franklin - close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, when queried as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation.
Democrats ALWAYS accuse the right of what they do themselves.
We’re not a democracy so there is no threat.
“according to polls from the Public Religion Research Institute in 2021 and the University of Chicago Institute of Politics in 2022.” Who are these people and who pays them? My question.
Reads like something from Der Sturmer. I wonder if the author knows this or he just has the self awareness of a bowl of cold oatmeal?
Pennsylvania Ping!
Please ping me with articles of interest.
FReepmail me to be added to the list.
Buck County is a Phillyburb...hardly "rural"!
“Rural white voters have long enjoyed outsize power in American politics.” Not in Illinois, New York, or California.
Putrid meat-puppet spawns of Satan masquerade as academics while plotting genocide against whites... especially white, Christian men.
Those who vote for more tax should be taxed.
Those who vote for gun confiscation should have their guns taken.
Those who vote for tyranny should be enslaved.
Those who vote for genocide should be executed.
Not “Democracy”; DEMOCRATcy.
Besides, as everyone here already knows: America is a Constitutional Representative Republic. (Or at least it is supposed to be)
White rural people = Kulaks. Prepare accordingly.
Thomas F. Schaller needs a broader brush . . .
Why would this ever see print in Bucks County, PA? Lots of white rural people there. Are they supposed to be chastised and go sit in a corner?
Stop threatening demoncrazy, you crackers./s
They have no idea what “white rural rage” is all about. But they will.
I NEVER would have guessed. Not in a million years.
I doubt this guy and his ilk have ever set foot in a rural area, seen where their energy comes from where their food comes from and what those folks are like. But they know ALL about them.
It is laughable when they accuse rural folk of being "undemocratic." This from the liberals who brought us 10 million illiterate diseased people including lots of probably terrorists from all over the world, who want to pack the Supreme Court, who want to abolish the Electoral College, who want to add DC and PR as new states, who try to remove Trump from the ballot, who have subjected Trump to kangaroo court after kangaroo court so they can scream "you don't want to vote for a Convicted Felon," who set up and PAID for the ridiculous "Russia" collusion hoax, who have obliterated the rule of law.
Just who is trying to destroy the USA? It isn't rural folks who believe in God, Guns, the Consituttion, and the Rule of Law.
Is this some sort of weird parody? Gaslighting? Rural America hasn’t wielded much power for well over100 years. Rural America is the forgotten child because of population density.
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