On August 21, 2017, a total solar eclipse will sweep across the landmass currently known as the United States of America. Although the darkness will last scarcely two minutes, millions of people will travel to the narrow path of totality to witness the rare event. The moon’s disc will cross the sun and continue onward through space. Sunlight will return, and things will be as they were.
Meanwhile, a larger and more persistent shadow has arrived on our shores. It has been growing for decades. We can argue about its origins and its extent, but it is here.
Much has been written about the election outcome, with many theories for the cause and many suggestions for what Democrats should do next. None of this will amount to much unless we look at what is going on in rural America.
When I was growing up at the edge of a Midwestern town of 25,000, suburbia crowded the family home on two sides. In the other direction were woods, pastures, and a creek with fishing holes. It was that direction that I preferred to go. As a teenager, I bicycled thousands of miles on country roads, completely wearing out two bikes. When it came time for college, I majored in forestry instead of choosing a course of study that would take me to a better-paying job in a big city.
Aside from a few years in Portland, Oregon, my homes have been in the smaller cities where the farms and forests were never far away. My career choices always involved jobs that were heavy on field work and light on office work. That trend continues to this very day. Even though I’ve reached an age where my contemporaries are retiring, I still go to the woods. As many DKos readers already know, I wander back and forth between Georgia and the Pacific Northwest to take advantage of weather and work opportunities: Winter and spring in Georgia, summer and early fall in the Northwest. I have taken so many different routes across the USA that I’m running out of new roads to try.
Not only have I been in all 50 states, I’ve also been in every county in most of the southern and western states. Take a look at a map and consider how many back roads you’d have to take to duplicate that feat.
This does not make me an expert in rural affairs. I have neither the time nor the inclination to stop in every small town and discuss politics with strangers. However, I do have broad exposure to rural America over the span of more than half a century, and the trends do not bode well for Democrats.
Once upon a time, the lines between Republican and Democrat were blurry enough that ticket-splitting was common. You could discuss an upcoming election with family, friends, and neighbors without having to worry that any of those people would sever their relationship with you (I recall attending a debate during my college years where the entire slate of candidates for statewide office shared the same stage, and being appalled that one of them chose to engage in personal attacks). Sure, politics has always been a contact sport, but the gap between liberal and conservative, between urban and rural, has widened into a chasm.
How did we reach this state of affairs? I place the blame largely on the right-wing bubble. Let me explain. Consider the sources of information for those who live outside the cities: Churches, schools, television, radio, newspapers, social media, and of course personal contact.
I listed churches first because of their longtime involvement in politics, and their authoritarian hold over the lives of true believers. Beginning with the 1980 campaign, conservative churches have joined with the Republican Party to garner support for three major goals: Outlaw abortion, interfere with LGBT rights, and replace the teaching of evolution with biblical creationism. The latter led directly to a general mistrust of science, enabling the denial of climate change to spread across the country. The pastor of a country church, or the leader of a suburban megachurch, is not likely to ask congregants to study the issues and make a reasoned choice. Nope, this is God’s decree, and to defy it means a one-way trip to hell in the afterlife. Strangely enough, God’s will and the Republican platform seem to be one and the same.
In the South, one reaction to the integration of public schools was to create a network of private schools – academies as they are often called. Since they are not free, attendance is limited to students whose parents can afford the tuition. White students tend to be concentrated in the academies, while minorities are disproportionately represented at public schools. Then there are the home-schooled kids, who are even further insulated from contact with people of a different skin color, or even a different faith.
Television? The channel of choice in any public space, be it a doctor’s waiting room, a car-repair shop, or a restaurant, is Fox News. If you go to the home of a friend, relative, or work associate and they’re watching the news, it’s probably Fox. Likewise for radio. Right-wing talk stations echo through the small towns, delivering the latest anti-liberal outrage to anyone who happens to be away from the teevee.
Newspapers might be dying, but that has not stopped wealthy conservatives from buying up small-market publications. If the local paper still has editorials, you can be assured that Democrats are offered no quarter. Chances are that paper’s owner is printing that same editorial in other towns, too.
Social media has created even more ways to remain immersed in the bubble. Users can easily share falsehoods and fake stories, shutting themselves off from any dissenting viewpoints. Gossip that previously required a phone call or face-to-face contact can now be spread as fast as selecting “share” on a screen.
More about fake news stories here and here.
So here we are, facing a nearly monolithic wall of Republican voters in every election. Conservative leaders, having access to serious money from wealthy donors, have patiently tended to this movement for decades, immersing much of America in an alternate reality for which progressives have little answer. A small-town resident who does not travel might go for months without hearing an opposing point of view. A young person 20-30 years old who has been home schooled might regard liberalism as a totally alien concept, to be feared and resisted. We tend to think of that age group as our great salvation, but an entire new generation of conservatives is being nurtured in the hinterlands.
Where logic and reason once had a fighting chance in political conversations, the bubble now prevails.
Citizens of coastal cities, as well as farmers whose livelihoods depend on steady weather patterns, will look you in the eye and proclaim that climate change is a hoax.
Residents of coal country cling to promises that good times are coming their way, even though they’ve been hearing the same lie for 100 years, and global markets are turning towards renewable energy. Oil-field workers, who make their living from fossil fuels millions of years old, will vote for a candidate who claims that the earth has only been here 6,000 years.
Closeted small-town gays will vote for those who promise to take away what modest rights they have.
Independent contractors, and owners of small businesses, will vote for a man has made a career of not paying his workers and contractors.
Citizens who have only recently begun to benefit from Obamacare will vote for the party that promises to repeal while offering no replacement.
Veterans who served during the Cold War are willing to give the nuclear codes to a man who professes to know more than the generals, and expresses fondness for Vladimir Putin.
Women vote for the groper-in-chief. Ministers vote for the liar-in-chief. Parents vote for a man who is the opposite of what they want their children to become.
Call it Bizarro World, call it Upside-Down World, call it what you like. But it’s real, and the shadow it casts is long indeed.
There has been no shortage of diaries offering explanations for Hillary’s loss, along with a wide spectrum of suggestions for how the Democratic Party should change. Personally, I believe that Hillary ran a very good campaign. She was far more forceful than Gore in 2000 or Kerry in 2004. She could have personally walked from Milwaukee to Philadelphia, speaking with voters every mile of the way, and she still might not have pulled enough voters out of the right-wing bubble to change the outcome. As Paul Waldman writes in The American Prospect,
Hillary Clinton could have kidnapped every one of those voters and forced them to listen to her read her plan for paid family leave, and it wouldn't have made a difference, because Trump was reaching them on a much more visceral level. And nothing she could have said would have been a match for the white nationalist appeal Trump presented.
Somehow we must chip away at the rural Republican fortress. There are progressives everywhere, even in the deepest-red rural counties. Many of them feel so outnumbered that they hesitate to speak up or display a yard sign. We need to throw them a lifeline, and let them know that they are not alone. We must create an environment where at least a few conservatives are faced with a “Santa Claus moment.” Remember when you first learned that Santa Claus was a myth? The Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy quickly went by the wayside, and you began questioning the other things being said by your parents and teachers. Conservatives need to be exposed to life outside the bubble often enough that it can no longer be ignored.
It won’t happen overnight. We will probably endure more elections where we get drubbed in the rural areas. But we must turn the corner and build for future majorities, as Chris Reeves wrote last week in Hello America From Kansas.
If we are unwilling to make that commitment, this could be our future:
I’d like to hear from those of you who live in rural America, and from anyone who was a candidate, campaign manager, or volunteer in red states and counties. The more constructive we can make the conversation, the better. Blaming our allies won’t do much towards dislodging the Republican majorities. Action and solidarity will.