One of the most memorable periods of my 1970s childhood was when the workers at a local factory went on strike for a year. Kids were fighting on the playground (as in actually knocking each other out and breaking noses), some of my friends had to go to the union hall for free food, and the neighbor got a brick thrown…

Canadian here, and POC. In late November 2016, after Trump won the election, my family had to drive over the border and through 12 hours of Trump country to get to a family wedding. WE WERE TERRIFIED. I’m not kidding. Some of us didn’t want to stop for lunch for fear of running into the locals because it seems to us…

I love the conceit that Trump will save the coal industry by making oil and natural gas insanely cheap. It’s almost as good as the idea that the only thing stopping companies from paying their employees more money is that they have to pay taxes.

It’s amazing how the media paints farmers and other rural folks as predominately white, poor and uneducated. The demographics in my area a bit different than other parts of the nation but my grandfather was a farmer. He received a fine education at U of A and that isn’t even an unusual thing. Most farmers around here…

Whenever someone talks of the nebulous “good ol days”, I have to wonder what, exactly, they consider “good”: Was it the economic freedom to survive on a single income in rural areas based on a single factory or industry? Or was it the ability to hang minorities from a tree and risk only a fine in most states? (Or…

Eyup. Penn and Teller came after this, saying that most people idolized the era in which they were children, because they didn’t have to worry about all the terrible ass adult shit going on in the world. For me, that would be the ‘80s, but I’m not a fucking moron and realize that Reagan was beginning to fuck up our…

If I hear one more hunyuck from my hometown pining about “simpler times” ... I will probably not be invited to the next Big (2nd or 3rd) Wedding.

Residents always and inevitably tell reporters that Trump’s promise to revive the coal industry will bring back good paying jobs, thereby restoring the local culture, and the pride inherent to it.

This is an excellent post and someone should pull you permanently out of the grays.

“Since Nov. 7, 2016, the rush to blame the rural poor for Trump (despite the hard numbers revealing that his real base is comfortably middle-class whites living in suburbia) has created a thirsty market for this kind of drivel.”

I would add that there is absolutely no attempt to grapple with the actual, functional policies that are messing these people’s lives up. You would think that given how celebrated articles like Ta-Nehisi Coates’ article on redlining or reparations was, you might see attempts to imitate it rather than simply dutifully…

As both a member of the effete, liberal coastal media and a member of a family with deep (and current) roots in confluence of Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky and North Carolina, I have watched this narrative with some interest. There is a lot of truth to this new stereotype that is emerging - these were in fact thriving…

But but but... economic anxiety! Jerbs!

Journalists who engage in this type of cultural tourism are part of the real “problem” with rural America.

You nailed it. The media seems to find it easy to paint the rural, lower-educated people as those who’d “fall” for Trump. But they’ve yet to do an indepth report on the people that live right next door to them, who make as much money as them and have as much education as them why they voted for Trump. I don’t think…

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">The focus on white voters in media is a reflection of who we value in society. Its why white Trump voters always get favorable coverage and the benefit of the doubt when Black people do not. This bias is a cultural problem in our society in…

I read one of these profiles earlier in the week. The people who live in those towns are all older people and they do nothing but talk about how things were better “back in the day”. It was crazy, they were so “nostalgic”, their local eateries and such still use CRT TVs, they will not change. They’re like Amish…

Stassa, this is a superb article and the following:

This particular hot take is more insightful than 99% of the Trump County profiles I’ve read.

I believe that “Trump Country” is populated entirely by people who are highly resistant to change because they have a major stake in maintaining the status quo. The interesting part is that the reasons for their resistance are so many and so varied that it makes these various attempts to define “Trump Country”…