"They frankly laugh behind the backs of their own voters": How Republicans bamboozle rural whites

[Nevilledog]

https://www.salon.com/2024/03/05/-the-media-should-stop-treating-rural-people-like-children/

It's become a tedious trope, the Beltway journalist who goes on a red state safari to ask Donald Trump voters if they still like Trump. It frustrates smart readers because invariably the answer is "yes" yet the rationale is typically incoherent babble. Even that would be fine, if these reporters dug an inch deeper, to get at the various bigotries that are actually driving the MAGA movement. Instead, most of them seem too in awe of redhats sitting in diners, as though they've just encountered a rare species of bird in the wild, to bother interrogating them in a way that reveals anything genuinely valuable.

If readers see the title "White Rural Rage: The Threat to Democracy," they might think it's more of the same. But this book, by former Washington Post columnist Paul Waldman and University of Maryland, Baltimore professor Thomas Schaller, is a very different animal. Waldman and Schaller believe that rural white people are functioning adults who have agency and are not the childlike ciphers of Fox News. As such, the book refreshingly holds rural white voters to account for their choices, and for willfully gobbling down right-wing propaganda. It calls on rural Americans to take responsibility for themselves, by asking the harder question of what it would actually take to improve their communities.

Waldman and Schaller spoke to Salon about what rural America actually needs, and why Republican voters stubbornly refuse to admit it.

*snip*

[underpants]

1. Good read. I prefer "Cletus Safari"

and if that’s condescending, so be it.

[Beartracks]

7. The Cletus unidensis, in its natural habitat.

Okay, now I'm just doubling down on the condescension.

=============

[Aristus]

2. Rural whites deserve to get bamboozled.

With their deadly aversion to book-larnin', their sundown towns, their smug 'we work hard in these parts' (because people work hard nowhere else in the world), their Friday Night Lights lighting up the traumatic brain injury cavalcade, and their horror of any human progress that happened after 1850.

Let 'em get bamboozled. I'm in no mood to feel sympathy for the humanoid drones out in East Cornpone. They have no right to feel rage. They got what they wanted; Hillary Clinton did not get to be President. I don't care what monkey's paw they wished that on, but it's time for the twist ending: Trump is going down.

[underpants]

3. 🏆

That was classic.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

12. If Pat Robertson weren't so busy burning, he would call down brimstone on you.

[tanyev]

4. "red state safari"

Nice.

[Diamond_Dog]

5. This article is great. A big K and R.

[Kaleva]

6. About 75% of TFG voters in MI live in urban or mostly urban counties

About as many people in Wayne County (metro Detroit) voted for Trump in 2020 as did all those in the entire Upper Peninsula and most of lower Northern MI combined.

[Diamond_Dog]

8. Why oh why do they continue to vote against their self interests?

[orthoclad]

9. Good question

What do they perceive as their "self interests"?

Sneering only makes us feel better and superior, it achieves no useful goal. Tempting, though.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

13. Fascist Oligarch eXtremists propaganda network + radio.

[B.See]

15. Because "owning the libs" ... i.e. HATE for those considered as "other" is MORE important to them.

Anytime at least 15 MAGA governors turn down federal food money for 8 MILLION (plus) CHILDREN, you know you're dealing with a bunch of sick fk PSYCHOPATHS.

Republican governors in 15 states are turning down food money for 8 million children

15 states mostly led by Republicans refuse federal funds to feed hungry children during the summer months

[themaguffin]

10. "What's the Matter with Kansas" still applies today.

[Johonny]

11. 2.4 stars on Amazon

You know it's a good read because it's getting review bombed

[oasis]

14. Deplorable dipshits.