Why do Democrats do so poorly with rural voters?

[leveymg]

272. You mentioned the more democratic culture on the coast and islands.

I wonder if that is due to the ability of freedmen to become self-sufficient economically as watermen without the need to acquire large plots of land and to hire labor, both of which were made extremely difficult during the Jim Crow era.

There's an interesting branch of cultural anthropology that holds that organized agriculture and large scale plantations, and its need for labor beyond the village unit, was the source of slavery as a social institution and the formation of states, such as the Mayans (and the antebellum South), based in forced labor and conquest.

The kicker to this is the insight that the religious practices of scapegoating and ritual sacrifice likely stem from the same form of social organization. You should read "Violence and the Sacred" by Rene Girard.