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Why ‘White Rural Rage’ Is a Threat to American Democracy
Bucks County Beacon ^ | April 8, 2024 | Thomas F. Schaller, University of Maryland

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.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Front Page News; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; US: Maryland; US: Pennsylvania
KEYWORDS: baltimore; christianity; electoralcollege; electors; enemieslist; faggotry; homosexuals; lgbtq; lgbtqactivism; paulwaldman; pervs; prri; ruralphobia; schaller; thomasfschaller; thomasschaller; waldman
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To: nickcarraway

White man bad.

Orange man badder.


81 posted on 04/14/2024 2:04:25 PM PDT by Biblebelter
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To: nickcarraway

All this is racist.

The FBI is already monitoring registered Republicans and people with American flags in front of their homes. And agents are pretending to be part of Catholic congregations to spy on them for anti woke views.


82 posted on 04/14/2024 2:06:22 PM PDT by frank ballenger (There's a battle outside and it's raging. It'll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls.)
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To: neverevergiveup

<>we are a Republic<>

You funny.


83 posted on 04/14/2024 2:06:27 PM PDT by Jacquerie (ArticleVBlog.com)
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To: nickcarraway

VDH spoke about this trash book on one of his recent podcasts. He stated it was one of the worst books he’s ever read Trash.


84 posted on 04/14/2024 2:07:15 PM PDT by murrie (Mark Levin: Prosecuting stupidity nightly.)
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To: All

The writer doesn’t even believe what he wrote.


85 posted on 04/14/2024 2:07:46 PM PDT by escapefromboston (Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.)
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To: Skywise

You mean like the ones in daily violent crime stories from all the Dem controlled cities?

Me, too.


86 posted on 04/14/2024 2:09:01 PM PDT by frank ballenger (There's a battle outside and it's raging. It'll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls.)
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To: Skywise

So am I.


87 posted on 04/14/2024 2:09:36 PM PDT by No name given (Anonymous is who you’ll know me as)
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To: Steely Tom

That’s correct.


88 posted on 04/14/2024 2:09:47 PM PDT by No name given (Anonymous is who you’ll know me as)
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To: Skywise
#10: "I'm more concerned about the Black Urban Rage myself..."

A black person can walk across a rural white community safely.

A white person can not walk across an urban black community safely.

I once had to bid a contract at a black urban school. The black principal of the school warned me before my site visit:

“Park directly in front of the school; walk directly in the school's front door. Do not walk or park in the neighborhood.”


89 posted on 04/14/2024 2:11:09 PM PDT by Governor Dinwiddie (LORD, grant thy people grace to withstand the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil.)
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To: nickcarraway
That white rural rage is being adopted & overtaken by the Black urban rage, along with the Hispanic rage as well.

But they never discuss that do they.

90 posted on 04/14/2024 2:12:47 PM PDT by Robert DeLong
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To: nickcarraway
ALL LIES. Based on his own glorious and handsome mind.

Show us the raw data, Professor. Just saying so proves nothing.

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.

Seriously? Have you polled or interviewed blacks and Hispanics, because these groups are far more racist. And you should hear what the blacks in Chicago and NYC are saying about the hordes of migrants sucking up all the cash set aside for the ghetto. UNLESS, of course, you're one of those "people of color can't be racist" because they are oppressed. Guess what? That oppression stopped decades ago.

– Subscribe at the highest rates to conspiracy theories about QAnon, the 2020 presidential election, Barack Obama’s citizenship and COVID-19 vaccines.

LOL! Did you decide all on your own what the truth on all these matters are? Guess what? The Leftist establishment (Media, Hollywood, Internet, Political elites) lie far more than the Right. I'm not wrong to consider tropes about white or Republicans plotting some crime or fraud on every single tv detective show a conspiracy theory, also. But you reserve that term exclusively for the Right, don't you? The "Gun Lobby" isn't made up of weapon manufacturers--like you Leftists believe-- but by individual citizens. We've heard so many of your Leftist conspiracy theories most people don't even realize they are just that. You call them what? Facts? Bwahahaha!

– 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.

This is just an outright smear. HOW MANY people are in known "white nationalist and white Christian nationalist movements"? 300? 500? 1000? In a nation of 330 million. The entire rural population is around 60 million. Are you using the word white because of their color (you racist!) or because of their avowed tenets? And let me ask you how many university professors and students are avowed communists, Antifa, or members of LGBTQ militant groups? Far more than the wackos in Idaho.

– Are most likely to justify, if not call for, force or violence as acceptable alternatives to deliberative, peaceful democracy.

Yeah, because we see all those mass street fights, fights in Disneyland, driveby shootings, swarm robberies at malls, polar bear hunting, etc, by rural whites, possibly the Amish no doubt?

91 posted on 04/14/2024 2:13:05 PM PDT by Alas Babylon! (Repeal the Patriot Act; Abolish the DHS; reform FBI top to bottom!)
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To: nickcarraway

What an arrogant piece of sH## this guy is. He could have saved a lot of worthless words by just saying Rural White folks don’t buy his worthless crap and therefore he hates us.


92 posted on 04/14/2024 2:14:16 PM PDT by Midwesterner53
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To: nickcarraway

“Rural white voters have long enjoyed outsize power in American politics.”


I’m not sure how we enjoy “outsize power” in politics. As far as I know, we get just one vote which is the same as the dead people in Chicago.


93 posted on 04/14/2024 2:15:12 PM PDT by CFW (I will not comply!)
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To: nickcarraway
white rural rage

Full disclosure. I qualify for two of the three.

As for "rage"----"You ain't heard nothin' yet"--Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer.

His original statement he made up when the Warner family told him to say something for the first words in a talking movie. He said later he meant it to have a dual meaning that no one had heard people in movies talk up to then and he envisioned a long future of advances in entertainment technology that no one could have believed.

94 posted on 04/14/2024 2:15:30 PM PDT by frank ballenger (There's a battle outside and it's raging. It'll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls.)
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To: Macoozie

And it’s not paranoia, either!


95 posted on 04/14/2024 2:16:48 PM PDT by curious7
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To: nickcarraway

If rural Whites are so politically powerful and such a threat, NY and CA would be red states.


96 posted on 04/14/2024 2:18:45 PM PDT by mikey_hates_everything
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To: nickcarraway

Ay, por favor-esta mierda otra vez...

In the 1st place, the idiot is so poorly educated that he does not know that the US is a republic-not a democracy and I doubt that he knows that most Hispanics-myself included are Caucasian-aka “White. I live in a rural area where WASP and Hispanic ethnicity are about equally divided. there are also Black families, Asian families and several from India, Pakistan, etc. I’m sure everyone out here would be just delighted to know that people like that liberal ass**** thinks we are all “white supremacists” and in a rage all the time, etc. Most of the serious crimes are committed by tourists and “Summer people” from the city. We do have a few meth cookers in the woods, but vehicle theft and murder, etc are not something they do...


97 posted on 04/14/2024 2:21:20 PM PDT by Texan5 ("You've got to saddle up your boys, you've got to draw a hard line"...)
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To: nickcarraway

Only left wing idiots think QANON was anything other than some nuts typing silly crap on the internet.

But it’s free speech. Something the left HATE!


98 posted on 04/14/2024 2:21:46 PM PDT by Fledermaus (Is it me, or all of a sudden have the buried trolls come out on FR like cicadas? It's all noise.)
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To: nickcarraway

Tommy Boy (the author) needs to be on the receiving end of some of that white rural rage. All the other moron academics as well.


99 posted on 04/14/2024 2:24:05 PM PDT by JimRed (TERM LIMITS, NOW! Finish the damned WALL! TRUTH is the new HATE SPEECH!)
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To: nickcarraway

No, Tommy...GOVERNMENT SUPREMACISTS are the problem.


100 posted on 04/14/2024 2:30:59 PM PDT by goodnesswins (The Tree of Liberty is getting thirsty...)
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