White people and people of color. Christians and non-Christians. Old and young. College-educated and non-college-educated. Men and women. There are a plenty of divides within the American electorate. But in their new book, White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy, Tom Schaller, a political scientist at the University of Maryland, and Paul Waldman, a journalist, identify the urban-rural split as the most significant and cite white rural voters as the slice of the public that endangers the constitutional future of the republic.

The pair asked me to provide a promotional blurb for the book. After reading an advance copy—I make it a point to read the books I blurb—I sent them this statement: “Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman have the guts to ask a crucial question: Why do so many rural white Americans fall for the authoritarian demagoguery now being peddled by the GOP? Moreover, how does this threaten the entire nation? Deploying a deft combination of data analysis and reporting from the heartland, they chronicle the decline of rural America and the rise of grievances that are exploited and weaponized by Republicans to serve a far-right agenda that undermines Middle America and elsewhere. Schaller and Waldman illuminate a critical truth: The main problem with Trumpism is not Donald Trump but Trump voters. This is an important book that ought to be read by anyone who wants to understand politics in the perilous Age of Trump.”

A few days ago, I spoke with Schaller and Waldman about the book.

In White Rural Rage, you write, “Rural discontent and grievances are hardly new. But more than any point in modern history, the survival of the United States as a modern, stable, multi-ethnic democracy is threatened by a White rural minority that wields outsize electoral power.” That's a hell of a statement. Explain.

TS: We see this group’s outsize power in two ways: mathematical and mythological. Let’s start with the numbers. As you know, rural voters generally and rural white non-college voters wield inflated power. They do so in the highly malapportioned Senate, where smaller rural states get their two senators. And because the Electoral College is based on the number of House seats and two senators in every state, they possess outsize power there. There wouldn't be a President Bush 43 or a President Trump if it were not for the fact that Republicans dominate in the smaller, rural white states. So you can win an Electoral College majority, despite losing the popular vote by millions. Rural Americans are about 20 percent of the country, but purely rural or rural/suburban-influence districts account for 42 percent of US House seats—though there are more people who live in cities. The more populous urban areas have half as much representation in the US House as their rural neighbors.

PW: I can pick up on the cultural and political aspects of this. People in rural areas often complain, with justification, that a lot of cultural representation of them is derogatory: hillbilly, redneck, yokel. There’s a tradition of mockery. But there's also a tradition that has gotten stronger in recent years of cultural representations that present them as a kind of the ideal: the most patriotic, the most honest, the most real and authentic. You see Hallmark and Lifetime movies with the same plotline: A young woman from the city finds herself stranded in a small town or a rural area and discovers her first true love with a hunky rural guy. She dumps her no-good boyfriend back in the city and learns that this place is where she can find her true self. In the political realm, we've all heard politicians say what we need in Washington is small-town values. No politician ever runs for office saying we need big-city values in Washington, though you can make a case that's more valuable when it comes to governing. Democrats and Republicans are asked to pay tribute to rural Americans. They are an honored minority in our political culture.

You call white rural voters a threat to American democracy and write, “Name a force or impulse that threatens the stability of the American political system—distrust in the fairness of elections, conspiracy theorizing, the embrace of authoritarianism—and it is almost always more prevalent among rural Whites than among those living elsewhere.” What is the nature of this threat?

TS: We can't talk about threats to American constitutional democracy without talking about who poses those threats. There have been a lot of discussions about Trumpers and MAGA. But there's been a hesitation, including within the mainstream and liberal media, to point out that white rural Americans, while not exclusively creating this democratic instability, are the tip of the spear. We cite about three dozen polls that are all public. Whether you look at levels of racism, xenophobia, anti-gay sentiment, and anti-immigrant sentiment, white rural Americans exceed the levels of not just minorities but of other whites who live in the suburbs and cities. In terms of conspiracism, they have the highest subscriber rates to QAnon conspiracies, election denialism, COVID denialism, and vaccine skepticism. They had higher rates among Republicans in believing that Barack Obama was not born in the United States.

According to Suzanne Mettler at Cornell and her colleagues, in terms of anti-democratic sentiment, distrust of an independent media, opposition to free speech, the belief that the president should be able to act unilaterally, without checks from the bureaucracy, the Congress, or the courts, and the belief in white nationalism—specifically white Christian nationalism—rural white Americans are the leading edge. Whether it's excusing, justifying, or even calling for Trump to be restored by force to the White House, rural white Americans show the highest rates of acceptance for this idea and for endorsing political violence as a suitable alternative to solve our problems. If this were true of any other group—Black Americans, Muslims, pink-hat-wearing lady feminists—we'd know about it because it'd be a chyron permanently on Fox News. Every talk-show host from Maui to Maine would be blaring how these people are undermining our democracy. But these patterns are true of one group, white rural Americans. And it needs to be said, as uncomfortable as that may be.

PW: The House members who voted not to certify Joe Biden's election after 2020 were disproportionately Republicans from rural districts. They get elected because of the prevalence of those beliefs in those districts, but they also then go home and convince their own constituents that the election was stolen, the political process is not legitimate, and that they can't trust the vote counting. These representatives are encouraging their own constituents to be even more extreme. What gets lost is any kind of conception of politics that is about something constructive.

What accounts for the prevalence of these extremist positions within this community?

TS: A lot of scholars have explored this. The underlying consistent thread that explains rural consciousness and rural resentments, which are directed toward cities and faraway elites, is racism and high racial antipathy scores. It’s a little harder to prove that racial antipathy drives people toward believing in pedophile scandals, as with QAnon, or election denialism. But once you have this fear of the other—and fear of cities and faraway elites—once you begin to believe it's us versus them, and you see the city as a threat to your life and livelihood, it becomes easy to traffic in the kind of conspiracies peddled on Fox News and talk radio about how minorities are getting Obama phones and there's nothing for rural America—even though there are 400 federal programs, including 70 alone at the USDA, that serve rural Americans. A lot of it stems from otherism, which is not entirely racial, but it's rooted in a racism that views rural areas as the real America and rapidly pluralizing and changing cities as the threat.

Religion is a big part of it, too. Seventy-six percent of rural America is white. But 38 percent of rural America is white evangelical. That means one out of two whites in rural America is a self-identified evangelical, and 60 percent of them are self-described Christian nationalists who believe that the Constitution should be overrun by the Bible, that to be a true American citizen you have to be both white and Christian. We shouldn’t be surprised that they are the first people who have abandoned their commitments to our democracy.  

You describe in your book how rural America has been slammed by economic setbacks over the past decades that have weakened the foundation of these communities and undermined the self-identity of rural Americans. What are the economic factors driving some of this?

PW: This suffering in rural America is real and profound. It happened because globalization moved manufacturing jobs out of rural America. In some places, resource extraction moved on after local resources were sucked dry. It happened because of the opioid crisis, where rural Americans were targeted by companies, such as Purdue Pharma, for exploitation. There are other factors, such as this constant brain drain in rural America. As economic prospects decline, young people who are ambitious and want to obtain a college education move out and leave behind people who are older and more conservative. You then have a population that is ripe for exploitation by politicians who come along and point their grievances in the wrong directions.

One of our main points is that the people at whom they aim their resentment—they're not the ones causing their problems. Immigrants didn't bring opioids into rural areas. Hollywood liberals didn't make the jobs go to China. But that's who they're being told they should resent. You have these real grievances. And you have a class of politicians with a big investment in not pointing the finger at capitalism. Who is responsible for the death of the family farm? It wasn't urbanites. It's Cargill and ConAgra. You can't talk about what’s happened economically to rural America without talking about the predations of capitalism. That's not a conversation the Republicans whom the rural people elect want to have.

In the book, you observe, “So what do rural Whites get in return for all they bestow on the GOP? Almost nothing. The benefits they receive are nearly all emotional, not material.” That reminded me of the 2004 book What's the Matter With Kansas? by Thomas Frank. He basically asked, “Why are these people voting against their own interests by backing Republicans who undermine the programs that support them?” Maybe these voters are instead receiving emotional backing for their grievances, resentments, and concerns about their own identity, and for them that's the priority.

PW: Those non-material issues are perfectly legitimate. If you care about abortion and gay marriage, you might want representatives who agree with you. But the key is not that they are misunderstanding where their economic interests lie. The key is that they have largely been convinced that neither party can solve their material problems. That's a gift to Republicans. If you have been convinced that neither party has anything to offer you in economics—that the Democratic program is not going to be any better for you than the Republican program—then what's left? Cultural issues and the sense you have that this other party is not people like you.

One of the foundational things about the rural ethos is that it's rooted in the past. It's nostalgic. Its unchanging nature is part of what attracts people. And the Democratic Party is the party of diversity and change. They always will be somewhat alien to those people. If Democrats can't come and make a plausible case they have a lot to offer—okay, you disagree with us on abortion and LGBTQ rights, but ask your Republican representatives: What are they doing for you? Why don't you have broadband in this town? Why do you have power outages all the time, and your water and sewer system sucks? And you have to drive 50 miles to a hospital if you're having a heart attack? What have the Republicans done to help you on those problems? If the perspective of a rural people is nobody's going to help us with that, the default is going to be to vote for the guys who say they agree with you on all of their cultural issues. Our advice to them is not just start voting for Democrats; it’s get yourself better Republicans, who will not only give you the emotional satisfaction of yelling at the same people that you'd like to yell at, but who might do something to help you.

TS: It's not just that they're voting against their material interests and voting on cultural issues. The other side of the coin is they don't notice and don't reward Democrats when they do solve problems in rural America. Two examples. When Obama took office, 24 percent of rural adults under 65 were uninsured. Obamacare passes in 2010, within nine years that number falls to 16 percent. That's a one-third reduction in the uninsured, a massive success. Of course, rural voters rewarded Obama and Hillary Clinton, right? Wrong. And then Biden comes into office and the COVID vaccine goes online in early 2021. Biden knows that because of all the conspiracies—George Soros, tracking chips—rural white people are the least likely to get vaccinated. He creates a program and puts millions of dollars behind it. He uses faith-based rural organizations and farm-related organizations with local credibility, like the National Milk Producers Federation, and they promote the message that these vaccines are safe and you can save yourself, your family, your parents. It's a huge success. Biden is literally saving the lives of the voters least likely to vote for him, and he doesn't take any credit. Meanwhile, Trump attacks cities, he attacks blue states, he raises their taxes and promises retribution. The Democrats continue to bend over backward to reach out to rural America. Every time they put their hand out, it’s rejected.

Paul Krugman of the New York Times wrote a positive column about your book. But at the end, he noted he had no idea how to address the problem of white rural anger. What can be done? And don't tell me, change the Electoral College.

TS: The national discussion about rural agency needs to change. If you live in a rural county, which has like 10,000 people—and there's hundreds of them—and some are 93, 94, 97 percent white, you know that your sheriff, your county executive, and probably your county legislators are all Republicans, as well as your state representative, your state senator, your member of Congress, and your two US senators. When Trump was in office, from the White House to your school board, it’s not just Republicans, but conservative Republicans, and in some cases, all white male Republicans. Yet every time you turn on the news and something goes wrong in San Francisco, Chicago, LA or New York City, you see Fox News and conservative radio say it's the fault of Democrats and the liberals and the minorities who elect people in the cities. Fine, you want to have that kind of accountability for liberals and Democrats in the cities? Then insist on the same accountability when you're represented at the local, city, county, state, and national level by a parade of conservative white Republicans.

PW: Think about the coalition each party has. For Democrats, it's Black Americans and Latinos and labor unions, environmentalists, and others. For the Republican side, it’s evangelicals, gun rights advocates, and a few other groups. Every one of those groups has a set of demands they make. When a Republican gets elected president, they have to sit down with the parts of their coalition, and it’s an ongoing conversation and negotiation. But rural white Americans, who make up the core of the Republican Party's base, are not at that table. There is no National Association for the Advancement of Rural People. The Republicans don't feel like they have to satisfy the demands, because there are no demands. In the book, we don’t come up with a 10-point plan for rural revitalization. If there's going to be a real movement, people in that movement have to decide what they want.

What I'm hearing is that the rest of us are held hostage and there's not a lot we can do. We’re stuck with this voting bloc with outsize influence for the time being. And the hope is people within that community will shift their perspective and apply political pressure on the GOP and that doing so will lessen the rage they now direct at Democrats and other Americans.

TS: The advice Democrats always get regarding appealing to rural Americans is to go in, be respectful, and listen. That's great, but it’s not sufficient to win votes. One thing Democrats haven't done is to go into rural areas and attack Republicans. Say to these voters, “What are you getting from these bozos that you keep electing?” Look at the perverse double standard here: The party that has won the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections is scolded and lectured for not addressing these Americans. Meanwhile, Republicans with impunity attack cities almost daily. Sen. J.D. Vance can send out a tweet about visiting New York City saying it’s like The Walking Dead. Imagine if Chuck Schumer went to southwest Ohio, where Vance lives in a $1.4 million home in a gated community, pointed out that Cincinnati has a higher per capita violent crime rate than New York City, and said, “Hey, do I bring my own overalls and meth, or is that provided locally?” He'd be excoriated for disrespecting the heartland folks. We need a single standard here instead of an asymmetrical double standard, where rural Americans have to be pacified and respected, no matter their views on our Constitution, our pluralistic society, and conspiracism. Otherwise, we're going to continue to have this lopsided politics in which rural America is fawned over but ultimately gutted because one party doesn't do anything for them and the other party, the Democrats, when they try, has its hand bitten off.

Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at ourland@motherjones.com.

Maestro and Napoleon. You might wonder what a film about Leonard Bernstein, the genius conductor and composer, might have in common with the epic about an emperor with an eponymous complex. The two movies share a flaw. In storifying the lives of these influential men, directors Bradley Cooper (Bernstein) and Ridley Scott (Napoleon) each fixate on their main character’s love life at the expense of deeper exploration of what he achieved (or failed) outside the bedroom (or boudoir or hotel room).

Cooper, who also plays Bernstein (helped by the much-commented-upon prosthetic nose), fixates on the musician’s torturous marriage to Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan). Love and adoration did flow between the two, but Bernstein pursued relationships with men, with his wife’s awareness and tacit agreement. But his inability to do so discreetly caused much conflict and prompts the obvious question: How did she put up with it? This is not uninteresting stuff. But many of Bernstein’s musical triumphs and failures are short-changed in this telling. What made him such a standout artistic force? Cooper appears to have been less interested in that than in what kept Montealegre in the marriage. All that said, Netflix’s Maestro is exquisitely directed; the acting from all is superb. The film is worth watching, particularly for the magnificent scene in which Cooper recreates Bernstein’s famous performance conducting the London Symphony Orchestra playing Mahler’s “Resurrection” symphony at Ely Cathedral in 1973. (It starts at the 1:28 mark, if you just want to witness that.)

Napoleon is harder to recommend. The tale of the French commander is fascinating, as is the stretch of history the film spans, from the revolution of 1789 to the second exile of Napoleon in 1815, during which the ever-shifting and complicated alliances among the European powers are loaded with intrigue. But Scott concentrates more on the tug-of-war between the emperor and his empress. The grand game of geopolitical chess is more of a backdrop for this one-on-one battle. The actual warfare scenes—with a cast of thousands (real or CGI-generated)—are what you would expect from Scott: grand and detailed. But the script did not offer Joaquin Phoenix and Vanessa Kirby sufficient opportunity to explain the why’s of Monsieur and Madame Bonaparte. The film feels unbalanced, with Napoleon fretting more about Josephine’s affections than the loss of 300,000 men during his failed invasion of Russia. In fact, the film compresses that disaster—which lasted six months and included the deaths of 200,000 Russians—to a rather short time. At the end of Napoleon, streaming at Apple TV+, a screen card informs us that Napoleon’s campaigns across Europe resulted in the deaths of more than 3 million people. Yet when the credits rolled, I understood less about what led to that carnage than I did about Napoleon’s sexual habits.

“Good People,” Tierney Sutton and the San Gabriel 7. It’s not often you come across a jazz song about the racial wealth gap and redlining—the practice of banks denying loans to low-income and minority neighborhoods. But nine-time Grammy-nominated jazz vocalist Tierney Sutton has co-written (with Trey Henry) a swingy number that traces the financial injustices that have burdened Black Americans over the past century. The song has a touch of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” in it, as Sutton runs through this long and dark history that includes the destruction of Tulsa’s Black Wall Street, the Rosewood Massacre, restrictive covenants, and the construction of highways dead-smack in the middle of Black communities. In notes for the song, Sutton asks, “Who got wealthy and how was that wealth accumulated? And who was and is unfairly hindered from achieving the ‘American Dream’? What has been the response of the surrounding white community when Black communities prospered? What exactly is institutional racism? Follow the money. I believe that answers the question.” The YouTube posting for the song even comes with source notes referencing such titles as Caste by Isabel Wilkerson.

All this might cause you to conclude “Good People” is more heavy-handed moralizing than engaging music. But you would be wrong. The track has a jaunty bounce, and Sutton’s lilting vocals are smooth and delicious, perfectly designed to deliver the right amount of irony for poking at the “good people” who are blind to the past.

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