And are totally inept to do so

Half of the USA (164 million) lives in a metropolitan area of 1.6 million or more - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_statistical_areas . 183 million live in an area of over a million, which I'd say is urban by any normal definition.

Add up all those areas in that list, and it's 282 million, out of 328 million for the USA in 2018. So perhaps the rural population is 46 million - 14%.

the reason they voted for trump. No. It really isn't.

You've selected 4 negative portrayals of rural people to prove your point. I could provide about a thousand off the top of my head that portray "the heartland" as the moral center of the world and the "big city" the center of corruption. Your own source has a few of the examples I'd use.

This "we're so persecuted and unrepresented because we're rural" crap is bullshit.

The reason why rural people voted for trump is the same as the reason why the urban people who voted for him did so. Because they are racist and sexist imbeciles. Thats it. The end.

We have been over and over this, it has been studied from every angle, and every scientific or data driven study agrees: they're racist and sexist. The end.

This! So much this.

No group is nearly as pandered to as rural America, no group is as disproportionately represented in the halls of power, house, senate, and electoral college. They voted for Trump because they’re bigots, gullible, and stupid. Just like everyone else that voted for him. End of story.

You are exactly correct, Squinch

Racist and sexist imbeciles, along with greedy motherfucking sociopaths, are the Republican party. They are everywhere.

to hear. He lied to them and has done none of what he said he would. They voted for liberal ideas.

some is generational, sure. but until we address that question the rest is moot.

I get the fear and frustration and the "brick through the window," but there are many other factors in play. Just for starters there's the alternative facts/fake news/bang the table problem.

they've made it very obvious. If they turned off their effing TV's, they might catch up.

fuck that.

I grew up in rural America. I moved away because I COULD. I got a college degree by working my way through college. I have an exceptional brain... I've known this since grade school.

Now I need to understand the Trump voter... fuck that. I pay 48% of my income (which is substantial compared to the average rural wage earner) in various income taxes... and even more in sales tax should I spend the rest of it. It pays for the social welfare that most rural Americans, in far greater percentage than the city dwellers, take advantage of. It also pays for all of that shiny new military hardware that THEY voted the Orange Idiot and his gang of traitorous assholes into office to use to rain death around the world, mostly to support "America's" (oops, really the billionaires) interests.

Here is my major complaint. My vote counts much less than the typical rural voter counts. If they live in a state like Wyoming or Montana, their vote for Senate gets them 20 TIMES more clout than my vote for my California Senator. Their vote for their state government allows that government to completely marginalize ANY local democrats running for federal office because of gerrymandering. That hurts ME because it makes it harder for my representative to find the votes in the House to pass legislation I and the majority of Americans (people like me) want. Lastly, because of a completely outdated and incomprehensible electoral college system, their vote for idiots like Trump count more that my vote for a reasonable person as President. Where is the FUCKING OUTRAGE about this! Where is the demand that TRUMP VOTERS understand that they are, in fact, a minority in this country who are imposing a tyranny on the majority?

I'm sorry they didn't get 21st century jobs... I'm sorry they feel stuck in rural America. None of that, or the changing economy, is MY FAULT. All I want is for my vote to count as much as theirs.

And, oh, btw, a lot of the Trump rural voters are, in fact, racist Nazi's who are reacting to the changing demographics in America. Whites will be (if not now) just another minority (the biggest minority) in this country within a few years. That is why they want their guns (you don't use an AR-15 to defend yourself from intruders, it is a military weapon).

When I moved from the city to the rural I was shocked by the resentment. It is handed down from one generation to the next. A lot of parents handicap their kids with it and truly have no desire to see their kids do better than they did. They have many enemies but they consider themselves the real Americans.

It is never spoken about but we are embroiled in a class/culture war due to the exploitation of trump and the republicans.

Excellent point about the electoral college. This artifact will be our demise.

the cities of the great country they supposedly love, and take extra care to consider the cities when it came to casting their more powerful votes. With all that extra voting power, they claim to be oppressed.

To the extent they think city slickers look down on them, why are they such snowflakes? Why don't they start their own Hollywood? How can they think that isn't even an idea when they are so entrepreneurial and capitalist?

where city folk are evil and greedy and small town folk are honest and wonderful.

Or how about the portrayal of black people as gang members and uneducated welfare cheats over the last 30+ years.

The door of bias swings both ways.

At Olli (senior classes through universities). Really nice old guy sitting behind me republican and Trumper. They had us go around the room of 70 saying our name and where we get our news from. I was happy most of them got it from PBS and NYT but he admitted he watches Fox all day.

Then I knew this sweet old man was one of the brain washed.

FIFY

(How Trump -- as a native NY real estate baron, -- plays into that narrative is a complete mystery. But then, stupid people have always been a bit of a conundrum)

Spent a large part of life rural, and the "chip on the shoulder" is absolutely true. The PROBLEM is 1) it is a gross misrepresentation of FACT -- rural concerns, attitudes and sentiments, are given far more weight politically, economically and socially than their actual numbers would dictate. And 2) there is no SOLUTION to their perceived grievances -- one, because they are largely imaginary, and two, because that same population is so completely infected with,(long standing) "anti-government" sentiment as to make them recalcitrant and uncooperative in any sort of innovation or outreach that might conceivably be to their benefit.

Oh -- and it's always about "those other people."
Don't believe me? Try living there for a while.

I grew up in a university town in the Midwest, so I was surrounded by liberals and liberal thought. It wasn't until I met my husband that I really spent much time in a rural or conservative area. And your second point really rings true (so do the logic and fact of the first point, of course). There's a sort of truculent attitude from some people (not all) that I never saw growing up.

So at the time, it was an "oh, yeah, that makes sense" perspective that wasn't a one-word dismissal: "racism."

And although I'm as tired as anyone of the willfully-ignorant-Trump-voter-in-a-diner explanations by now, it did make sense that when people whose town's single industry died, and killed the town with it, heard "I'll bring back coal/steel/bullshit," they were going to vote for that candidate. Not everyone is smart or skeptical--that's just a fact. He said what they wanted and needed to hear, and they lapped it up because they were desperate.

This article isn't defending the current Trump voter. There's no excuse for supporting him after three years of racism, hatred, petulance, bullying, incompetence, and an apparent slide into dementia. But I found it encouraging to read a fresh (at the time) explanation for why some non-cult members voted for him, because it makes it seem unlikely that they'll be motivated to vote for him again now that his promises are so obviously empty.

I posted because I have mostly lived in a very liberal area Rural grievance makes no sense to me but this article opened my eyes and made me understand. We can’t change minds until we start to understand

Because it wasn't just parroting the grievances of some Fox-watching moron. It's important to know this stuff instead of only blaming Fox, or racism, or a screw-the-libs attitude. They're all part of what happened and what's still happening.

Rush Limbaugh, and you will hear several suggestions to his listeners
that they, the "salt of the Earth", are victims of the Big Evil City.

Just look at the comments on Twitter feeds from Ilhan Omar and Rashida Talib. There's some absolutely vicious trolling and hateful memes being posted from the right wing there.

And they are becoming more vicious and ruthless with each generation. And social media certainly isn't helping things.

It was total propaganda and lies.(We studied propaganda in high school back in the 60s. It is a cross between two kinds of propaganda technique) Then Fox News got going when they decided it was possible. Just moved it up a notch. Got it more widespread.

Where everyone has their own channel and you can get news tailored to whatever your vice is. After this administration is over, I personally can't see how anyone is going to have anything in common anymore.

...government playing an active role in their lives, like having good health care that actually ends up sending money to the local hospital which then is re-spent in the community, or a generous safety net that helps people deal with the closing of the major employer in a small town, or an industrial policy designed to motivate new business to start there, or a policy that makes high-performance broadband easily available in rural areas so that information industries might find them more attractive and schools and libraries can be more effective. All of this is kryptonite to the Trump voters.

It's really hard to feel sympathy for someone who can't walk because they repeatedly shot themselves in the foot.

They do it with their votes. They do it with their close minded values and by tucking God they are doing with their STUPIDITY. They vote directly for those that neglect them, work against them. I'm not doing shut to them except sending my tax dollars, but I don't hate them for that. I hate them because they want to burn the system down in a way my people never have despite being purposefully and systematically kept at the bottom of the well. Here we are 3 years into a shitshow of epic proportions, half a fuckup from war incited by that Orange pop tart. Yet they are STILL trying to explain why these ducks won't stop being STUPID.

Why don't they pull themselves up by those tucking bootstraps they spent forever telling me to use? Oh, what's that, circumstances outside of your control keeping you down? Ya don't say, it's a dam bit trying to overcome a system working against you; but yea, bootstraps logic and gumption are your alleged friends No??? Going to go with ignoring reality and blaming those who don't directly run your local governments? Fine, vote Republican and you get what you get, nothing and ruination. Do whatever, just stop acting like terrorists and holding the country hostage because you want to ignore reality and wrap yourself in hate, ignorance and victimhood...

I understand their reasons for wanting change just fine. The problem is that they don't and refuse to allow to thought that the problems that affect them affect other communities as well.

I hadn't heard that song in a long time until I ran across it again wandering youtube last week. It's been an ear worm in my head for 2 days now! Great tune, great lyrics, and a message more relevant today even than it was 30 years ago.

Maybe this isn't off topic. The lyrics definitely can apply to Trump and his MAGAt morons. "I know your anger, I know your dreams, ... I tell you one and one makes three,...". He tells them whatever they want to hear over and over again. Gets them all juiced up and then tells them one and one makes three. And they believe it. Cult of Personality. Great music, great message. Classic.

& have been trained to blame all their problems on their fellow Americans.

their own racism and sexism back into their own willing and receptive ears. No one is doing this to them. They have chosen it.

Everyone had enough information about who the IPOTUS was way before the election.
He was a serial business fraud, an alleged (many times alleged) and admittedly a sexual predator, he was a rabid racist, he was a blowhard - hardly anything that could be attractive to any thinking human being.
Hillary was actually from mid-America, albeit a Chicago suburb. She had a long residence in Arkansas of all places. She didn't have any record of chicanery despite how the she was portrayed by her opposition and eagerly aped by the media.
It must be something else....let's see now, what could it be??
Could it be ignorance, racism, white privilege?

The IPOTUS could not care less about the podunks who support him and he never has. How many of his glitzy projects are in these red counties?

Gullible and stupid are no way to go through life - wherever one lives.

. . . more "blame the left and government (liberals) for what Capitalism did to me and mine".

I'm not elite by any stretch of the imagination, I was never raised in a town larger than 20,000 people, and I won't hesitate to call any Dubya/Reagan/Trump voter a stupid motherfucker for ruining this country and selling out the United States to corporate gangsters and the wealthy. And if you voted for Trump, dollars to donuts those Republican voting patterns didn't START with Trump.

Sorry, but we put no gun to anyone's head when they committed the Stupidity Bay of Pigs.

There was NEVER a good reason to make a labor-welching, serial sexual assaulting poster boy for all things bad about Capitalism president. NONE. This was the Boomer's final middle finger.

I grew up in small town America and hated every fucking second of it. The town I was in was so horrible, you couldn't even be the right cishet white guy . . . so you can imagine how anyone who WASN'T got treated.

Don't forget that.

Sorry, but no pity.

A lack of critical thinking along with a victim mentality and a giant helping of an inability to think about things beyond their limited world view. So tired of this shit. I’ve lived and worked in those states. Hell, I’m one generation separated from Arkansas myself, and eggheads like this author are complicating a simple issue. Give it a rest and stop pushing this bullshit notion.

One of its primary failings is in not providing the context of rural and small-town America prior to the flood of right-wing influence beginning with Nixon and Agnew. Back then, the majority of rural Americans voted Democratic Party.

What the article fails to do then, is to point with laser accuracy what caused the economic and moral decline: Republican unregulated free-market policy, a wild-West attitude toward M&A that stripped small towns of factories, mega-farms destroying thousands of small farms, and the right-wing commercialization of many Christian churches. Then, we would need to talk about the saturation of local radio and cable TV media with hard right-wind dogma.

How ironic it is then, as I saw in the area of my small town upbringing in the mid-South, that Republicans have captured the hearts and minds of the very people whose lives and cultures they destroyed.

KY..........

Religious END OF THE WORLD IDIOTS!