This is an excerpt from Robert Leonard’s Jan. 5 opinion piece in the New York Times, describing how he came to understand the mindset of rural Trump voters:
For me, it took a 2015 pre-caucus stop in Pella by J. C. Watts, a Baptist minister raised in the small town of Eufaula, Okla., who was a Republican congressman from 1995 to 2003, to begin to understand my neighbors — and most likely other rural Americans as well.
“The difference between Republicans and Democrats is that Republicans believe people are fundamentally bad, while Democrats see people as fundamentally good,” said Mr. Watts, who was in the area to campaign for Senator Rand Paul. “We are born bad,” he said and added that children did not need to be taught to behave badly — they are born knowing how to do that.
“We teach them how to be good,” he said. “We become good by being reborn — born again.”
He continued: “Democrats believe that we are born good, that we create God, not that he created us. If we are our own God, as the Democrats say, then we need to look at something else to blame when things go wrong — not us.
Republicans believe people are born bad? Then why on earth are they in favor of laissez faire capitalism (talking to you, Rand Paul) which allows the bad inclination toward greed to flourish? Why are they against regulations which would mitigate the results of bad actions by bad actors, whether pollution or gun violence?
And the idea that “Democrats believe we are born good, that we create God” is certainly not true in my case, or that of most Democrats I know. Born good? Hardly! As for creating God, I take great offense at that characterization (God does, too): I’m a practicing as in not yet perfect Catholic. Most Dems I know would agree that society should be structured to make being good easier.
Yes, Virginia, the world is a scary place. And Republican policies, from gutting social programs to relaxing gun laws to repealing the ACA to cutting taxes on the richest, make it scarier. Libertarian notions like privatizing roads (and everything else) and letting businesses and oligarchs do whatever they want fly in the face of rural community morality. It is in fact the libertarian not the liberal who believes that everyone is good and by making self interested choices will make society better. I don’t think the majority of either urban or rural people agree with that.
Rural people believe in rules for personal conduct; urban dwellers believe in structuring society to work for the welfare of all. Perhaps this is where the dialogue can start: a combination of both rules and regulations could make things better for everyone.
