In the popular imagination of many Americans, particularly those on the left side of the political spectrum, the typical MAGA supporter is a rural resident who hates Black and Brown people, loathes liberals, loves gods and guns, believes in myriad conspiracy theories, has little faith in democracy, and is willing to use violence to achieve their goals, as thousands did on Jan. 6.
According to a new book, White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy, these aren’t hurtful, elitist stereotypes by Acela Corridor denizens and bubble-dwelling liberals… they’re facts.
The authors, Tom Schaller, a professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and Paul Waldman, a former columnist at The Washington Post, persuasively argue that most of the negative stereotypes liberals hold about rural Americans are actually true.
My friend’s in-laws in rural Missouri are cutting holes into the walls to store guns in for whatever version of the apocalypse they believe is coming.
They are just more empathetic than you realize. They just put themselves in the shoes of the black/brown people and were like:
For what!?!
What the hell did some stupid farmer in the bumbfuck middle of nowhere do to warrant being shot in their home by people of a different skin color?
Some racist asshole living in a rural inbred community where everyone looks the same because their family tree has the same roots of people who never left their own poverty stricken hellhole didn’t actually do shit to anyone outside of voting the way they were themselves indoctrinated.
There’s definitely a lot of far right idiots being worked up into a frenzy of normalized violence that’s very concerning.
But in one of the rare instances of legit “both sides-ism” I’m starting to see a very concerning trend of the far left giving in more and more to the language of normalized violence too.
I have a feeling both sides of this are useful idiots with the same hand pulling the strings, but c’mon dude - use your critical thinking skills before regurgitating rhetoric like that mindlessly.
Perhaps, you just missed out the sarcastic use of “empathetic” in my post.
The media made them paranoid. No one is actually coming for them. Also, many rural communities put so much effort into making non-white lives miserable (that includes voting to sustain systematic racism); to them retaliation isn’t out of the realms of possibility because that is what THEY would do if THEY were put in the same position.
How can you complain about “both sides-ism” when you randomly bring up leftists? What even are the two sides here? There’s paranoid rural people and their news. That’s all.
Isn’t this a tad much? Not all rural people are racist and inbred.