RUSSELL: New Book ‘White Rural Rage’ Reveals True Extent Of Urban Liberal Hate

The latest screed against flyover country comes, as expected, from an urban academic (Tom Schaller) and a journalist (Paul Waldman), authors of the hotly debated new book “White Rural Rage.”

Those who lament the rural/urban divide in the U.S. would be best advised to visit both places. Asking people why they believe and act the way they do is not only the best way to get accurate information, but also a sign of operating in good faith. The unstated assumption is that the people you speak with are rational people who are sensible enough to act and vote in their own best interests.

This sort of study, one would think, would come naturally to a social scientist and a journalist. Unfortunately, in the case of Schaller and Waldman, this is not so. Treating rural whites more like the Bolsheviks treated the Kulaks, the two authors do their best to gaslight the subject of their rage.

Rural whites, they say, aren’t voting in their own interests. How could a rational person vote for Republicans when Republicans refuse to shell out all manner of government favors and subsidies for them? Rural whites would be so much better off, say the authors, if they didn’t have school choice! They’d be so much better off if they let the town government run their broadband, instead of having a choice of which broadband company to patronize! 

Of course, Schaller and Waldman don’t frame these issues in this way. Their ideology prevents them from seeing the rationale of rural white voters’ choices. Instead, they make inane statements like the following: 

College professors didn’t pour mountains of opioids into rural communities. Immigrants didn’t shutter rural hospitals and let rural infrastructure decay.

These non sequiturs make it clear that Schaller and Waldman aren’t interested in understanding the plight of rural communities. They refuse to even consider that the leftist policies they promote might be ultimate causes of these problems. Rather, they want to concern troll rural voters into pressuring Republicans to be more like Democrats.

If the Republican agenda were still stuck in the George W. Bush era, Democrats might have more success wooing rural voters. Rural voters wouldn’t have candidates who actually represented their concerns, as they do today. Schaller and Waldman would likely tell you that they are big fans of democracy. In fact, they accuse rural whites of threatening it. 

But, in their obvious partisan hatred, they show their hand. They make it clear that they don’t want rural voters to have a choice to democratically elect those who represent their interests. What they want is a non-choice that ends with more support, on net, for Schaller and Waldman’s preferred policies. 

The rural/urban divide and the policy disagreements associated with it are not solved by the rage-filled partisan nonsense Schaller and Waldman offer. When one side considers what is in fact a policy disagreement to be a war between enlightened urban elites and the stupid rural whites, a resolution to the disagreement cannot be had. By demonizing rural whites, Schaller and Waldman exacerbate our polarization.

I’ve lived almost my entire life in small-town, rural America. I was born and raised in it. Though I’m an academic social scientist, I don’t see the solutions to the problems in rural America coming from academia. They will come from rural Americans doing what they believe is in their best interests. Ignoring Schaller and Waldman is a great first step.