There is an "intellectual" trope that goes: "I know something you don't know: rural people feel alienated and we should listen to them." I am deeply concerned about every word and nuance of this trope.
It's emerging again as it did in 2016, just in time for the election.
Authors, can you at least see how this trope can be used by the ultra right.
Part of what is so disturbing about the trope is the “this is a totally new take on things that you simply must pay attention to, it’s the key!”…the fact that one has read this amazing insight about a thousand times already.
Another aspect is, of course, the fact that “rural” is not very subtle code for “white” with a lot of extra bells and whistles: some kind of disturbing fusion of ignorance and authenticity, like the bigoted old Hobbits in the Ivy Bush Tavern.
I was in the doctor’s office in Davis, CA, when a surly teenager’s phone went off. He had the studied appearance of a “rural” person, and his ring tone was “I like a chicken fry, / Cold beer on a Friday night”…which for me is the idiotic menace of fascist enjoyment in two simple phrases.
I understand about the need to talk to the part of the brain where the memes are wired in, the part that processes 50 billion bits per second as opposed to the frontal cortex to which the left is keen to craft its messages.
...but you're not talking to that part. You're talking to the frontal lobe of a left wing reader. This isn't reaching "rural" people. This is a threat, whether you meant for it to be a threat or not.
2 comments:
Thanks for pointing this out! Here in a supposed blue Washington state we have 39 counties and all but a handful of those counties are red and vote Republican. Yet the population of that blue handful of counties is so much higher that the Democrats have dominated state politics for decades.
It may be true that rural red counties dominate the geography and those rural white folk have good reason to be upset about not doing well economically because the land has been unsustainably depleted of the natural resources that financed the establishment of those counties, but to your point, that's where angry MAGA can be pumped up the most.
And it doesn't make any difference because the population of blue Western Washington has way more voters and are more diverse and better educated. We know that's a political strength, not a weakness...
The huge majority of red counties on the other hand are a minority with little political influence in our state other than MAGA supporting media that is desperate to make them seem bigger than they are.
I'm also in western WA; 5th gen Seattleite (not counting Native ancestry.) When I lived near Sequim, I'd hear how the decline in logging was the fault of "those dam-ed environmentalists." I might say similar of the smug variety, bur that's not germane to the real issue. Which is: "How many old growth trees do you see around here?"
I'm a former blue collar union activist and local Dem campaign mgr. I fought the leveraged buy out of the party by elitist neolibs who subsequently ditched the New Deal and abandoned labor. And thereby the majority working class. As one of the unimportant lessers myself, I understand rage coded as "rural" but which actually includes everyone serving as economic cannon fodder.
I've confirmed my own bitter experience by reading solid academic research and data. For example //Deaths of Despair// by Anne Case and Angus Deaton. I highly recommend Les Leopold's //Wall Street's War on Workers.// In particular, consider the W. VA data. While the Ds may mention these issues, doing anything effective would require challenging the trickle up economics they've enabled for decades.
So now what? As a long time veteran of anomalous encounters and transcendent realities such that I've been one of Jeff Kripal's correspondents for a decade, I'll be looking there. BTW, I'm well aware of the dark side of such experiences.
Being raised with local plant lore it was 'natural' for me, when I finally returned to college, to earn a degree in botany (forestry minor) from the U. of WA. It was a shock, though, to find out most people born and raised in Seattle couldn't even identify a Douglas-fir. Same for people in the SF Bay area re: Monterey cypress. The colonist attitude of living on top of the land with no roots in it thus no feel for it. Now that I'm back in the Pac NW I'm renewing my own symbiotic roots and catching up with the research on plant behavior.
Rural people have connections with the land and so we do have common grounds. However, as trans and as an old labor leftie (not to mention just plain old) I admit I don't have the patience it takes to be a good mediator.
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