Democrats must display an honest respect for rural Americans’ desire for independence – Orange County Register

What is cultural identity and why is it so important?

We’re grappling with this question in the United States, and the implications of our national culture wars are being felt across every industry — from politics to work to entertainment.

The latest example of this intensifying conflict came after the publication of “White Rural Rage,” a book aimed at white rural voters, which the authors call a threat to democracy itself. The authors claim that white rural citizens feel irrational anger toward immigrants, progressives, and minorities, and argue that conservative politicians weaponize this hatred to fuel electoral gains. They argue that despite Democratic policies intended to help rural communities, rural anger is fueling a rise in authoritarianism and sympathy for politicians like Donald Trump who display authoritarian tendencies.

But in a powerful counterargument published in Politico by a political scientist whose findings were used in the book — or misused, as he puts it — Nicholas Jacobs points out the inconvenient fact that even rural voters, women and nonwhite men, are turning in greater numbers to the Republican Party. . If intolerance—racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia—was the sole, if not the primary, driving force behind the Republican Party’s growing hold on rural America, why are the oppressed siding of their oppressors?

According to Jacobs, the answer lies in culture.

Jacobs argues, quite convincingly, that the reductionist attitude of progressive and Democratic elites, which mischaracterizes all rural outrage as bigotry, makes liberals unable or unwilling to see that American rural culture is more geographic than demographic. It is their rural identity that informs their political choices, not their racial, sexual or gender identity.

It was the Republican Party’s understanding of this rural culture — not an appeal to bigotry — that did the heavy lifting in convincing voters. The Republican Party understands the tendency of rural Americans to see themselves as independent, self-reliant and, above all, abandoned by a political class out of touch with reality, increasingly corrupt and entrenched.

“When it comes to immigration (changes in Democratic views of rural America), one would have to accept that in some communities, particularly those facing financial hardship, concerns about the social burden of immigration are not always an expression of hatred,” Jacobs writes. “It would involve looking at data on distrust of the media and looking for a reason – perhaps self-critical – why rural populations are most likely to feel that the news does not portray not faithfully their communities.”

In the stories liberals tell themselves about how our country works, Democrats are superheroes fighting for black people, for women, for transgender people and gay people, while the Republican Party simply uses hate as a tool. fuel. What rural voters have found, however, is that government intervention (on both sides) has done little over the years to get anyone in this country out of dire straits, to improve schools, or to improve the physical or financial health of each person.

Whether they vote Republican or Democrat in presidential elections, the lives of rural residents remain the same.

Meanwhile, over the years, the Republican Party has been busy learning rural American culture, the basis of a fierce desire to free itself from manipulation by Congress, educators, and Hollywood . Like everyone else, rural Americans believe in their choices, and they don’t like being told that the only reason they don’t vote Democratic is because they’re too stupid to do so. There is indignation, certainly, but it is in the face of the constant insistence of liberals that rural populations are ignorant people who do not understand the value of Democratic policies and who are too stupid to even realize what point they are sectarian.