With the exception of several Army Bases and time pursuing degrees at the University of Missouri and Auburn, I have spent most of my life in four rural counties: Chariton County, Missouri, Baker County, Georgia, and two in Alabama: Escambia and Covington Counties. I know rural, red America, inside and out.
These four counties are representative of the vast red swath reflected in the electoral map that produced Lord Trump.
Over the last four decades, I’ve had a front-row seat to the decline of rural America. The kids with gumption go to college, and mostly, don’t come back. The gay kids are run out of town, sometimes before they can even finish high school. Minorities are looked down upon, and actively discouraged from moving into many communities. The populations age, becoming: whiter, poorer, less educated, more obese, and requiring more medical care than the people on the west coast and the northeast.
But these people are superior to most of America. Trump and Limbaugh helped them to drop the political correctness, so many feel comfortable expressing their views openly. They are more moral than you are, because they are Christians. They are heterosexual. Their skin color is the same as the Founding Fathers. They are simply better people because they were raised in rural, white, heterosexual, Christian communities, and to deviate from any of these traits, is to lower one’s self in their eyes.
But many of these communities are dying, and it’s not their fault. It’s the fault of unions, blacks, Mexicans, and liberals in general. They are to blame, for all that ails rural America. And the only cure, is to put white, heterosexual, Christian men in charge, from top to bottom.
Trump is fulfilling their wildest dreams, white billionaires and generals for virtually every cabinet position. Men who know how to end the welfare state that is propping up all those lazy liberals, except…..
Rural America forgot, or didn’t notice, the only thing keeping most rural hospitals, stores, and communities propped up, are all those programs headed for the chopping block: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and an alphabet soup of other programs.
The rural America I know, I live in today, I have lived in virtually my entire life, that rural America pays $1.00 in federal taxes and gets $2.00 back in programs designed to provide health care, food, and housing to our older, sicker, less educated populace.
In Red America’s minds, these programs are not “welfare” if they go to white people, but these programs lead to the destruction of society, if allocated to the “others.”
Rural, red America just voted to cut its own throat. Now it is laying on the ground, bleeding out. And we, being the good liberals we are, want to rush in and stop the bleeding, but there are two problems with this assistance.
First, tourniquets aren’t workable solutions for neck wounds.
Second, let’s say we stop the bleeding, stabilize the patient, and they regain consciousness. The first thing they will do is pick that knife back up and stick it in our gut. Then, they’ll cut their throat again in the next election.
We can’t save everyone, so we best save ourselves. It’s time to gear up for whatever is coming. I’m developing my contingency plan, because the writing is on the wall; rural America is on the way down, and she wants to drag you down with her. Fight while you can.