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The Left Behind: Decline and Rage in Rural America is a book in which Robert Wuthnow's answers three questions:
Of course, that observation is merely what Wuthnow notes based on interviews he conducted between 2006 and 2014 with people in rural towns -- fewer than 25K people and not proximate to suburbs or cities -- in every state. The feedback is what it is and there's no reason to think what Wuthnow relates is anything other than what he was told. The thing is, the responses strike me as provincially myopic, at best.
To wit, why the hell would one trepidatious about a diminution of moral fiber, knowing his character, accord approbation to Trump? Repeatedly, we hear conservative voters say they knew Trump to be cad/cur yet they voted for him. How does one do that while knowing too that a POTUS is necessarily defines the cultural mores of moral and comportmental normality? The responses Wuthnow obtained are what the folks said, but what they said just doesn't make sense. The concerns, though they may be legitimate, don't align with the political solution option chosen as a means to assuaging them.
Then there is matter of rural America's angst/anger issuing from a perception that political Washington existentially threatens pastoral life. Well, how, specifically, does Washington do so?
Washington does no such thing. Where does one see Washington's having mandated that small towns become bustling metropolises with the trappings thereunto? Nowhere; literally nowhere. Rural Americans rightly or wrongly have developed a sense that some things are amiss and from that form and propagate a canard borne of xenophobia and racism that allows them to ascribe the blame for all those ills to others. They misbelieve that Washington has immense power over their lives. Furthermore, they recognize that the federal government controls vast resources and feel threatened upon seeing Washington direct a measure of interest toward urban areas, immigrants, or minority populations. Somehow that observation becomes not "Washington is helping those people too," but rather "Washington is helping those people instead" of the traditional white Anglo population.
Lastly, they think they've been abandoned. BS! The U.S. is not the land of bridling and draggin anyone along for the ride. If anything, they’ve chosen not to keep up and in doing so subsumed a victim's mindset. They had choices and they made one. It’s not as though these people ache to leave and can’t. They understand their communities' problems, but they like knowing their neighbors, the slow pace of life and living in place that feels small and closed. Maybe they’re making the best of a bad situation, but reason notwithstanding, there they remain.
They construe themselves as being left behind because, in fact, they are the ones in their family and in their social networks who are still there. Most of the people interviewed for the book grew up in the small town they live in, or another nearby one. Often their children have already left, either to college or in search of a better job somewhere else. In that sense, they believe, quite correctly, that they’re the ones who stayed in rural towns while young people -- and really the country as a whole -- moved on.
- What is fueling rural America's outrage toward the federal government?
- Why did rural Americans vote overwhelmingly for Donald Trump?
- Beyond economic and demographic decline, is there a more nuanced explanation for the growing rural-urban divide?
Of course, that observation is merely what Wuthnow notes based on interviews he conducted between 2006 and 2014 with people in rural towns -- fewer than 25K people and not proximate to suburbs or cities -- in every state. The feedback is what it is and there's no reason to think what Wuthnow relates is anything other than what he was told. The thing is, the responses strike me as provincially myopic, at best.
To wit, why the hell would one trepidatious about a diminution of moral fiber, knowing his character, accord approbation to Trump? Repeatedly, we hear conservative voters say they knew Trump to be cad/cur yet they voted for him. How does one do that while knowing too that a POTUS is necessarily defines the cultural mores of moral and comportmental normality? The responses Wuthnow obtained are what the folks said, but what they said just doesn't make sense. The concerns, though they may be legitimate, don't align with the political solution option chosen as a means to assuaging them.
Then there is matter of rural America's angst/anger issuing from a perception that political Washington existentially threatens pastoral life. Well, how, specifically, does Washington do so?
Washington does no such thing. Where does one see Washington's having mandated that small towns become bustling metropolises with the trappings thereunto? Nowhere; literally nowhere. Rural Americans rightly or wrongly have developed a sense that some things are amiss and from that form and propagate a canard borne of xenophobia and racism that allows them to ascribe the blame for all those ills to others. They misbelieve that Washington has immense power over their lives. Furthermore, they recognize that the federal government controls vast resources and feel threatened upon seeing Washington direct a measure of interest toward urban areas, immigrants, or minority populations. Somehow that observation becomes not "Washington is helping those people too," but rather "Washington is helping those people instead" of the traditional white Anglo population.
- Does it cross their minds that ~2/3[SUP]rds[/SUP] of federal executive branch jobs are held by white folks? No.
- Does it occur to them that minorities obtain but 13% of government contracts? No.
- Does it occur to them that the mean and median wealth of whites ranges from three to ten times that of everyone else? No.
- See also:
- Net worth by race/ethnicity, 2016 survey
- Table 1 (attached below)
- See also:
Lastly, they think they've been abandoned. BS! The U.S. is not the land of bridling and draggin anyone along for the ride. If anything, they’ve chosen not to keep up and in doing so subsumed a victim's mindset. They had choices and they made one. It’s not as though these people ache to leave and can’t. They understand their communities' problems, but they like knowing their neighbors, the slow pace of life and living in place that feels small and closed. Maybe they’re making the best of a bad situation, but reason notwithstanding, there they remain.
They construe themselves as being left behind because, in fact, they are the ones in their family and in their social networks who are still there. Most of the people interviewed for the book grew up in the small town they live in, or another nearby one. Often their children have already left, either to college or in search of a better job somewhere else. In that sense, they believe, quite correctly, that they’re the ones who stayed in rural towns while young people -- and really the country as a whole -- moved on.
