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White Rural Rage

The Threat to American Democracy

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0 of 1 copy available
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A searing portrait and damning takedown of America’s proudest citizens—who are also the least likely to defend its core principles
“This is an important book that ought to be read by anyone who wants to understand politics in the perilous Age of Trump.”—David Corn, New York Times bestselling author of American Psychosis
White rural voters hold the greatest electoral sway of any demographic group in the United States, yet rural communities suffer from poor healthcare access, failing infrastructure, and severe manufacturing and farming job losses. Rural voters believe our nation has betrayed them, and to some degree, they’re right. In White Rural Rage, Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman explore why rural Whites have failed to reap the benefits from their outsize political power and why, as a result, they are the most likely group to abandon democratic norms and traditions. Their rage—stoked daily by Republican politicians and the conservative media—now poses an existential threat to the United States.
Schaller and Waldman show how vulnerable U.S. democracy has become to rural Whites who, despite legitimate grievances, are increasingly inclined to hold racist and xenophobic beliefs, to believe in conspiracy theories, to accept violence as a legitimate course of political action, and to exhibit antidemocratic tendencies. Rural White Americans’ attitude might best be described as “I love my country, but not our country,” Schaller and Waldman argue. This phenomenon is the patriot paradox of rural America: The citizens who take such pride in their patriotism are also the least likely to defend core American principles. And by stoking rural Whites’ anger rather than addressing the hard problems they face, conservative politicians and talking heads create a feedback loop of resentments that are undermining American democracy.
Schaller and Waldman provocatively critique both the structures that permit rural Whites’ disproportionate influence over American governance and the prospects for creating a pluralist, inclusive democracy that delivers policy solutions that benefit rural communities. They conclude with a political reimagining that offers a better future for both rural people and the rest of America.
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    • Kirkus

      January 1, 2024
      A view of rural America as a font of white privilege--and of resentment that the privileges aren't greater. Political scientist Schaller and journalist Waldman open with an example taken straight from the headlines: the uproar over Jason Aldean's song "Try That in a Small Town," with its implied promises of retribution in a "fantasy of vigilante violence meted out against urbanites supposedly ready to bring their criminal mayhem to the idyll of rural America." While it's true that rural America has been suffering, rural Americans haven't exactly helped themselves. "There is no demographic group in America as loyal to one political party as rural Whites are to the GOP that gets less out of the deal," write the authors, showing how this situation arose because no rural political organization exists to make the vast region an object of true interest for either Republicans or Democrats. Schaller and Waldman come close to blaming the victim in that analysis, but, as they painstakingly document, rural white Americans actually enjoy outsize influence in such things as electoral votes, to say nothing of the increasing rightward radicalization of the GOP. It's no coincidence, they note, that nearly 75% of the votes opposing the certification of Joe Biden for president came from rural congressional districts. There's a certain vicious circularity at work: With few news sources reaching out to rural audiences, radio is king, and radio is almost invariably hard right in orientation, eager to fuel the resentment that comes from the sense that the "real America" is disappearing in the face of demographic change. So it is that while white rural America is getting poorer, sicker, and more isolated, it's also getting angrier--and that anger is poisoning the rest of the nation. A book of broad explanatory power that's not likely to help mend any fences.

      COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Booklist

      January 1, 2024
      Acknowledging the real and worrisome state of political disaffection in America, Schaller and Waldman outline why and how rural voter disaffection is especially problematic. Four factors have led to what the authors call white rural rage: despair over a lost past and little hope for a better future, outsized representation that skews self sense of power, xenophobia, and media triggering. These factors transmogrify into the threats of racism, xenophobia, anti-urban disdain, and anti-immigrant sentiment, all of which create a stew of anti-democratic discontent that often manifests in violence. So, while white rural voters often fly American flags, as a demographic they are also prone to taking matters into their own hands rather than adhere to the constitution. The authors are especially deft at pointing out the important differences between rural whites and rural people of color. The only way out of the morass, they write, is to bring all rural folks together, leaven the discontent, disconnect from media that feed conspiracy theories, and form a political movement. The only hope is to replace rage with action.

      COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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