March, 2024
Lincoln and Washington — White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy, a new book by political scientist Thomas Schaller and journalist Paul Waldman, is such worthy documentation of the current state of rural collapse in America that a dozen copies of it should be placed in every rural library across the country.
That is, if any such libraries are left. The same goes for other places where people might read it: schools, nursing homes, doctor's offices. Rural America has been hollowed out. Some rural denizens, who will see the book as a slur on their character, will instead offer the book as kindling for an American Bebelplatz.
The book deserves our most solemn attention. The authors' impressive collection of statistical evidence and anecdotal information is frightening, even if sometimes presented as over-generalization. Societal dysfunction is leading to authoritarianism and violence across a culture. Most helpful is a technical note to understand the statistics, "What We Mean When We Talk About 'Rural'."
Also helpful is an up-front acknowledgement that many will dismiss the book as the biased product of two "coastal cosmopolitans." Indeed, more should have been done to allay such concerns. The book, for all its strengths, is regrettably weak in citing authoritative and readily available rural sources like the policy-oriented Center for Rural Affairs and the rural journalist nonpareil Art Cullen.
A book like this should likewise not have omitted mention of key moments in the demise of rural America. Richard Nixon's Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz told farmers "get big or get out," accelerating depopulation. His blunt directive was representative of decades of federal Farm Bills that wiped out generations of family farms in favor of corporate agriculture. Later, other countries' reactions to Donald Trump's misguided imposition of tariffs hit rural America hardest. Trump's plundering of Commodity Credit Corporation funds to send welfare checks to producers to make up for it has turned farm country into a federal vassalage. Columnist Alan Guebert tells these sad tales from the deep heartland as few others can, and references to his work would have dispelled the book's coastal cosmopolitan bias.
Another omission is an explanation of how the rural communication networks established by land grant universities have become conduits for the spread of rural rage. The Cooperative Extension Service, established by the Smith Lever Act to convey university research, never completely cut its former ties to the Farm Bureau, a powerful interest group aligned with corporate agriculture and monopolies. To many, they are still synonymous, or at least compatible in outlook. Trump relies heavily on the Farm Bureau to do his business in the heartland.
The most striking omission in the book becomes apparent as readers surely scream at virtually every page, "So what is anybody doing about this!" There are few if any anecdotes about Democrats' efforts to counter the authoritarian Republican takeover. Instead, in chapter after chapter, the disproportionate influence of rural areas in our constitutional system, especially in the Electoral College and the Senate, is highlighted and blamed. The question of why Democrats don't compete in rural areas, if this is where the most consequential votes exist, is not seriously addressed.
A reason for this may be that one of the authors once advocated that Democrats could safely give up on winning votes in the South, which in many places heavily overlaps with rural. It is a strategy that national Democrats have pursued nationwide — essentially giving up on rural voters and trying to rely on identitarianism to win. Many rural Democrats have fought this abandonment intensely, and lost. Their anecdotes are sorely missing from this book. It's long past time to name the names responsible.
In the final chapter, remedies for white rural rage are offered but they are not convincing. Nobel laureate Paul Krugman reviewed the book and concluded that the demise of rural America was inevitable and the situation is fundamentally hopeless. Neither is true, but that is not an erroneous reading of the book, sadly.
The authors end with hope that a movement with a better vision of the future will be created. But just who would lead this movement is a big blank. The authors do not develop a case along the way that a change in Democrats' strategy, or courageous leadership from the nation's land grant universities, or less counterproductive Farm and Food Bills could show the way. Actually, those three in combination could make a huge difference.
Maybe a quick second edition could overcome these shortcomings? That's a scream and a plea.
