Coastal Elites Agree! Rednecks are the Source of All of America's Problems

Bashing white trash: a proud tradition held daily by the worst people on earth.

“Just as rednecks seem to be the last remaining identifiably ethnic villains, so hillbillies appear to be the last acceptable ethnic fools. These derogatory lower class types…serve the same “mudsill” function they did when ladies and gentlemen of the antebellum south found that in thinking in terms of these types allowed them to think comforting things about themselves” -John Shelton Reed, Southern Folk, Plain and Fancy, 1988

“Fuck Off” -Kid Rock (ft. Eminem), 1998

We’ve been doing this shit for a long time.

I remember in 2016 when a conservative magazine wrote a piece saying everyone from struggling small towns should just move away. I remember, before that, Thomas Frank’s “What’s the Matter with Kansas?”, and more importantly, the way people interpreted is as to mean "There is something the matter with people in Kansas (the heartland)”. I remember reading J.D. Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy” with a stomach full of rage; a book that was credulously embraced by owners of NPR tote bags, despite being written by a conservative Republican (now a sitting Republican Senator). This piece of vile, blame the victim propaganda sat at the top of bestseller lists for years, providing a convenient way for urban liberals to pin all of rural Americas problems on their (our) “culture” of violence and addiction. An argument that would be shockingly racist if made about the “culture” of, say, Chicago or Detroit (two other places with lots of violence and addiction). Nice to wiggle out of any sense of responsibility though (Vance, of course, was all too happy to provide an insiders expertise on this culture despite a) being a damn venture capitalist in San Francisco of all places when he wrote it and b) confessing right there in the pages of the book that he didn’t live in rural America as a child, rather a suburb in Ohio, and that his parents made six figures during most of his childhood. He also, famously, went to Yale. Screw you JD. Your meemaw would hate what you’ve become). What was Vance’s prescription for the ills of his adopted rural people? Why, to suck it up and quit whining of course! No opioid crises or outsourcing epidemic that a little elbow grease couldn’t fix! You can picture the liberals in the various Gross Pointes of the world nodding sagely. We’re nothing like those backwards hillbillies. Get it together hicks.

Of course, who could forget our oh so “qualified” presidential nominee and her “basket of deplorables”. Or the guy from the other party and his 47 percent.

The latest entry in this proud tradition of trash-bashing is “White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy”, by Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman, a book that, I’m sorry to say, is being covered rapturously by all the usual mainstream media subjects from the New York Times to NPR and MSNBC (the MSNBC segment was particularly insane, at one point claiming that today’s white rural residents are the most racist people in the history of America. More racist than the people that, you know, owned black people??). It’s all getting pretty old hat at this point, but it still fills me with, ironically, rage. I’m not mad at the people that write this garbage, or the people that cover it breathlessly, for being smug, condescending, self satisfied pricks. I used to be, but I got used to that. Now I’m just mad at them for being so stupid. And getting away with it. How does anyone think these people are smart?

I haven’t read the book. You couldn’t pay me enough (like I said, angry enough already, thanks). But I bet I can guess the gist of it! Here’s what the book says. Please, if I’m wrong, email me! No one is going to, because I’m not.

1. Rural Americans somehow have it better than we realize (the suck it up argument). Something about unemployment being low (as if being employed means being able to pay for anything in this economy). Also some vague gestures to “white privilege”.

2. Rural Americans have been duped or tricked into “voting against their self interest”. But only by Trump! Certainly the Democrats would never deceive or manipulate anyone. Or the more noble republicans of a bygone era, who always had rural peoples best interests at heart.

3. Rural people have some sort of unique kind of rage, unlike other civilized members of society (ooooh scary…almost like we’re…animalistic!). Also we are all bigots so the rage is directed at (and only directed at) people of color, LGBT people, etc.

4. This misguided rage leads these people to vote for “fascist” or some such nonsense, which means we are an “existential threat to American Democracy”.

I’m white. I’m rural. And I have more than enough rage to spread a little around. I also spend a lot of time with blue collar rural people, friends, family, people I work with, something I’m betting these chuckleheads haven’t done (too scary). I moved away for a while but I’m back in rural Michigan. Would the rednecks claim me as one of their own? I don’t know, some would and some wouldn’t. I go to the Laughing Horse Saloon and drink Busch Light cans, but I still drive a Prius, even if it has a few Mountain Dew bottles rattling around. It’s complicated. What’s certain is that I made a decision a long time ago that I would always stand with white trash over whites with cash. Never wavered in that. And what’s also certain is that I’ve spent a thousand times more of my life with angry rural whites than 99.9 percent of people who write about them. I’ve learned some things too.

A hell of a lot of rural Americans do have a lot of rage. They’re pissed off. And they DAMN WELL SHOULD BE! Obviously Schaller and Waldman aren’t interested in thinking about the legitimate reasons for rural peoples anger, nor are any of the countless others who have written similar books and articles. It might make them feel icky, and they’d rather pathologize us so they can keep shoveling their shit out in to the countryside. But lets, just us, think about it. Why would rural people be pissed off? Is there any reason to be angry?

I mean, why be mad when an opioid crisis was manufactured by big pharma to specifically target rural America, and has killed thousands of our people? Why be mad when NAFTA devastates our economy? Why be mad when you suddenly can’t afford a place to live anymore? Who could be angry that 700 hospitals have closed or are about to close in our communities? Just drive a couple hours if you get hurt losers! If you don’t have a decent car, that’s your fault! Shouldn’t have been poor! Or drive even farther if you want to have a baby (the hospital I was born in no longer has a maternity ward. If you live in Manistee County you have to drive over an hour to give birth. Hope there’s no complications!).

I’m not done.

I mean, how could anyone be angry, what, just because there’s nowhere safe or affordable to leave your kid while you work? But you also can’t afford not to work? Some callous people might say: “should have thought about that before you had kids” but these are problems that have significantly worsened in just the last few years. The deal was better when people chose to have their kids (also, so what, we’re just gonna let children be homeless?). Why be mad? Just because your kids school doesn’t have enough teachers, or if they do, the teachers stink? Or because you can’t find a doctor in your whole county, and if you can, he’s usually a quack?

Or what, maybe you’re just mad because your entire way of life is disappearing before your eyes? Your town and culture are being wiped away? Your children face a choice between underemployment or moving to the other side of the state, or country? Your friends and family are overdosing or committing suicide at alarming rates? Rates much higher than in urban or suburban areas? And no one is doing anything about it?

Yea, suck it up.

What’s to be mad about?

I assume the authors would argue that white rural rage leads to white rural people voting for Trump/Republicans/Fascism or whatever. That their rage is misdirected, that we’re all white supremacists. Clinging to our guns and our religion. That’s always the argument. As if it was that simple.

First of all, yes, of course, it is true that Trump won a a majority of rural counties, by pretty wide margins. And, of course, rural states hold outsized power due to the electoral college. There’s no arguing these two facts. But there’s a lot up for debate as to what they mean. An important point to make, that is never made, is that because Trump won most rural areas does not mean most rural people voted for Trump. Even in the Upper Peninsula, for example, the most rural part of our state, a typical, 100 percent rural county went for Trump 65-35 percent. That’s over a third of voters voting for a Democrat despite decades of not even a pretense of an appeal to them by the party (and countless examples of open derision). That’s a lot of people voting against the guy you assume they all support. Certainly a lot more than zero.

It’s also important to remember most people don’t vote. Many of them are children who are of course, blameless in all of this, but don’t think they aren’t affected by being raised bullseye of societies disdain. Some small but admirable minority have made a principled stand, refusing to eat the shit that is lumped on their plates. And a huge number of voting age people are bored by the very idea of it. They just don’t see the point, especially in rural areas where it’s so obvious that none of the candidates care about us. So even in the Trump heaviest areas of the U.S., most people didn’t vote for Trump. Yet they all get lumped together by coastal elites who see rural America as a monolith.

Look, I’m willing to admit that there are plenty of rural people who have messed up beliefs. I’ve heard plenty of racist, sexist, or straight up crazy shit in my day. But neither will I deny that there’s all manner of hateful beliefs held by well off suburbanites and POC’s in urban centers. Louis Farrakhan still draws big crowds. Try going for a run on the west side of Detroit or in Bloomfield Hills. In running shorts. See how quick you get called a gay slur out of a car window.

Setting all that aside though, I simply do not believe that voting for Trump places someone beyond the pale, worthy of endless derision and scapegoating, and unworthy of basic human rights like health care or decent wages. This may sound like a straw man, but to anyone that has a social media account or can execute a quick google search it’s obviously an argument that was made by snobs like Schaller and Waldman, and their many small scale elitist clones. Nary a day goes by without an article about how some coal miners in West Virginia don’t deserve healthcare because they voted for Trump. Like I said, google it if you don’t believe me. And that’s what makes the Schaller and Waldman types just as much my enemy as Trump is. The difference between me and them is I don’t believe who you vote for should determine whether you are entitled to the basics of a decent, dignified life. They do.

Years ago, I used to see this redneck bashing and get mad at the cowardice of it. These dorks are afraid to pick a fight with the actual bad guys, because they know where their bread is buttered, so instead they scapegoat powerless people they’ll never meet, and who they know no one in their social circles will stand up for. But their cowardice no longer surprises me. You see it enough and you just figure that’s who these people are. What makes me angry now is the sheer stupidity. I mean, these aren’t the brightest guys around. Their arguments that are very obviously deeply flawed, and yet these people get trotted out as enlightened academics, get tenure, get cush no-show gigs at think tanks. And no one will ever just tell them straight up that they’re idiots, call them on their bullshit.

I mean really, how dumb to you have to be to really believe that some poor sap driving a pickup truck to his construction job in Luther, Michigan is (and I quote) “THE threat to American democracy”? Really???? What, because he’s angry? That guy is the threat? Me and my friends are the threat? To democracy?? Not Raytheon and Northrup Gruman, defense contractors buying off congressmembers by the boatload who then turn around and vote for endless, pointless, evil, wars? Or Wall Street, the revolving door of choice between government and the private sector, who’s lobbyists secure them bailout after trillion dollar bailout when they tank our economy, leaving the rest of us to fight over crumbs if we’re lucky. What about silicon valley, spending hundreds of millions on campaign donations while they simultaneously censor us and scheme up new ways to worm their way into our brains? What about the foreign country to which we give 4 billion dollars a year in military aid and who’s prime minister is regularly invited to address congress as if he were the President? Or the other foreign country who’s wars we fund? Or the OTHER foreign country who’s wars we fund? Or our corporate controlled media, pitting us against each other like crabs in a barrel, making every issue out to be black and white, and preying on our attention like parasites while they shorten our attention spans.

Or you could point to, you know, our two major political parties, which habitually refuse to do the will of the American people and only seem to get out of bed to a) start wars and b) crush any third party challengers.

The list goes on and on. Whichever way you slice it, when you think about who has their hands on the levers of power in this country (and who doesn’t) the scapegoating of rednecks gets pretty absurd pretty quickly. The mind of the liberal elitist can never reconcile the contradictions it holds about rural whites. That somehow we are the dumbest people in America and also the most powerful. That we live in filth and squalor but also secretly control the politics of this country, like some kind of hayseed illuminati. That people who live in trailer parks and have only met a powerful white man when the boss yells at them have somehow conspired to rule the world, and just forgot to use any of their power to get themselves a better house or job.

I love to have a drink at the great halls of American power, where important decisions are made. Like the Horseshoe Bar in Manton, Michigan

It’s all extremely silly. You could make a list of the biggest threats to American Democracy and “white rural rage” wouldn’t make the top 100. All it takes is a quick power analysis to see Waldman and Schaller (and all the rest of these snobs) aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed.

Unfortunately it’s not about a compelling argument or anything like that. For them its about a lot of things, but being right ain’t among them. For one, I’ve always had a sneaking suspicion that these people are nerds out to get revenge for some slight (real or perceived) that they received at the hands of a real, live, working class white person in high school, the last time they would have been around such a character. I mean look at this smug dork and tell me that’s not plausible.

Tom Schaller

More importantly, it’s about selling a guilt free version of reality to a small population of self satisfied liberals with too much disposable income (as my Dad said when I told him about the existence of another one of these books: “sounds like a money grab”). When you can sell a clean conscience to an audience looking to confirm their beliefs about a population who they’re already afraid of and disgusted by, there’s money to be made. It doesn’t matter if they’re full of shit

And full of shit they are, in all the old usual ways, but in new and exciting ways too. On Friday an article was published in The Atlantic (of all places!), detailing in excruciating detail the many, many instances of academic malpractice that Waldman and Schaller engaged in in this book. I’ll spare you the gory details but you should read the article. It’s worth a free trial. Suffice it to say that the jig might be up for these half wits. They pretty clearly distorted data and used extremely shoddy methodology. Possibly flat out lied. All in service of their pre-existing narrative of the dangerous and idiotic redneck. The book never should have been published. After all, elite liberals are supposed to be the ones who care about academic integrity (in this house be believe science is real!). And it never would have been published if it was about any other group of people, up to and including well-off suburbanites. But it did get published. And that Atlantic expose wasn’t in time to stop it from becoming a bestseller

And therein lies the problem. Everyone needs a scapegoat I guess, and us rednecks have been functioning as America’s sin eaters for so long that it’s easy to think you can get away with pretty much anything as long as you’re lobbing your bombs in our general direction. And it turns out you can. Schaller and Waldman have made a pretty penny off of us by now, and no matter what happens, there’s a whole lot of people who have read that book that will never know how dishonest it it. Shit flows downhill. The redneck serves his useful function, the upper class liberal gets to avoid thinking too hard about the way he or she might be a threat to democracy (how’s your 401k doing? order anything cool off Amazon lately??. And the Raytheon’s and Goldman Sachs of the world avoid scrutiny again. It seems like, as long as there’s some insulated group of people willing to shell out for this tripe between shuffling off to their $500 a plate fundraisers for Elissa Slotkin or whoever, the scapegoating could go on forever.

But it can’t and it won’t.

I’d like to make all the coastal and college town elites who write and read this garbage a deal. You can keep hating me, my neighbors and friends. You can alternately fear us and laugh at us. You can keep pointing to us as the source of all America’s problems (I mean, it’s not true, but that never mattered to you). You can look down on us, our way of life, and our belief systems. You can even keep on dehumanizing us.

In return, all we ask is that you stay the hell away. Kick rocks back to Ann Arbor or Indian Village or Lincoln Park. No more vacationing in our neck of the woods. No more waterskiing in your hundred thousand dollar boat you use twice a year. No more bulldozing the woods where we hunt or filling in the marsh where we fish to build your vacation homes. No more driving 30 miles an hour in a 55 for no reason (“isn’t it so charming? I wonder what it’s like in the winter?”). No more driving us out of our towns so you can have endless Air BnB’s and “glamping experiences”. No more tearing down our houses to build mansions that sit empty 11 months of the year. Take your Lexus and go.

Just leave us the hell alone. I think you’ll find this deal more than fair.

And if you don’t, I don’t know…things might get ugly. What, you don’t smell that? The trash is getting pretty ripe. Someday soon, the shit is gonna get so backed up it has to rise. Nowhere else to go. I wake in a sweat, thrashing in my bed, dreaming of a utopian future when trash of all colors will realize how much they have in common and how much our hatred of these smug con men unites us. That we could take them down several pegs if we all got together. I’m actively working toward it every day of my life. Class politics is evergreen. After all, one of many things that a poor black person in Flint and white trash in the UP have in common is that the average coastal elite disdains them. They’re just allowed to be more open about it with the white trash than the black variety.

But we’re on to you. And when the steaming refuse of America rises, from the streets of Saginaw and the backwoods of Delta County, into a mighty wave and crests, it will have no shore to break upon but every Gold Coast and ivory tower, every elite neighborhood with tasteful shrubberies and nary a crushed beer can to be found.

I advise looking deep within yourself and embracing your own rural white rage, your own inner redneck. It’s there. You might even like it. And if you don’t, you can always simply shut the hell up.

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