https://newrepublic.com/article/180570/trump-rural-white-resentment-honest-assessment

An Honest Assessment of #Rural White Resentment Is Long Overdue
Paul Waldman, Tom Schaller
April 11, 2024

When it comes to rural resentments, again and again these scholars insist that if rural whites are mad, it’s only because they have good reason to be. We are hardly unaware of the sufferings of rural #America, many of which are born from late-stage #capitalism. In fact, we dedicate the second chapter of our book to the causes and consequences of declining #economic opportunities, outmigration of ambitious young people, hospital and pharmacy closures, and other very serious problems that pervade rural American communities, white and nonwhite alike. In our reporting, we heard many moving stories about the challenges rural communities face.

What isn’t said enough is that rural whites are being told to blame all the wrong people for their very real problems. As we argue in the book, Hollywood liberals didn’t destroy the family farm, college professors didn’t move manufacturing jobs overseas, immigrants didn’t pour opioids into rural communities, and critical race theory didn’t close hundreds of rural hospitals. When Republican politicians and the conservative media tell rural whites to aim their anger at those targets, it’s so they won’t ask why the people they keep electing haven’t done anything to improve life in their communities.
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Those nonwhite rural Americans are almost invisible in the national media, as well as in the work of many scholars. Because we thought their stories are important, we traveled to rural communities with large nonwhite populations, including in the Albemarle region of North Carolina and Arizona’s “Copper Corridor.” The experience of people in those places—who are mostly ignored and enjoy little of the deference and political power their white counterparts do—only highlights the privileging of the white rural experience.
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Those who have risen to defend the honor of rural whites insist that they have good reason to feel resentful; Jacobs even elevates resentment to a kind of virtue (“Resentment is rational, a reaction based on some sort of negative experience,” he writes). But if the rural experience justifies resentment, should not rural minorities be equally if not more resentful than rural whites? Why aren’t they threatening their local elected officials, or marinating in conspiracy theories, or supporting demagogues eager to tear down American democracy? Too few scholars of rural politics confront these questions.
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As we confront a presidential election in which one of the candidates is counting on white rural support to return him to the Oval Office so he can begin dismantling our democratic system, we can’t turn away and say everything in rural politics is fine."…