The Rural divide in America

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

The political divide between rural and urban America is more cultural than it is economic, rooted in rural residents’ deep misgivings about the nation’s rapidly changing demographics, their sense that Christianity is under siege and their perception that the federal government caters most to the needs of people in big cities, according to a wide-ranging poll that examines cultural attitudes across the United States.

The Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation survey of nearly 1,700 Americans — including more than 1,000 adults living in rural areas and small towns — finds deep-seated kinship in rural America, coupled with a stark sense of estrangement from people who live in urban areas. Nearly 7 in 10 rural residents say their values differ from people who live in big cities, including about 4 in 10 who say their values are “very different.”

That divide is felt more extensively in rural America than in cities: About half of urban residents say their values differ from rural people, with about 20 percent of urbanites saying rural values are “very different.”

Alongside a strong rural social identity, the survey shows that disagreements between rural and urban America ultimately center on fairness: Who wins and loses in the new American economy, who deserves the most help in society and whether the federal government shows preferential treatment to certain types of people. President Trump’s contentious, anti-immigrant rhetoric, for example, touched on many of the frustrations felt most acutely by rural Americans.

The Post-Kaiser survey focused on rural and small-town areas that are home to nearly one-quarter of the U.S. population. These range from counties that fall outside metropolitan areas such as Brunswick, Va. (population 16,243) to counties near population centers with up to 250,000 residents such as Augusta, Va. (population 74,997), close to Charlottesville and the University of Virginia. Urban residents live in counties that are part of major cities with populations of at least 1 million, while suburban counties include all those in between.

The results highlight the growing political divisions between rural and urban Americans. . While urban counties favored Hillary Clinton by 32 percentage points in the 2016 election, rural and small-town voters backed Trump by a 26-point margin, significantly wider than GOP nominee Mitt Romney’s 16 points four years earlier.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/national/rural-america/?utm_term=.bf613f2c7cbc&wpisrc=al_alert-COMBO-politics%252Bnation&wpmk=1

[tazkcmo]

1. Bunch of twits

Surprise, surprise surprise! There's nothing in rural America including entertainment, employment, mass transit, comprehensive healthcare facilities, fire departments in many cases and apparently an inability to study historic trends like urbanization, farm consolidation and technological advances in energy production.

I guess they want hand outs they hate from the government they despise so much because it's not fair their way of life is dying! Not fair, not fair, NOT FAIR!!!!!

I have a family member that sings the virtues of country living while bitching about the 48% unemployment rate and low wages for those few available jobs. Genius.

[uppityperson]

3. How about not trying to paint all us rural dwellers like that?

From the article :
"The rural unemployment rate is only slightly higher than in cities, 5.3 percent vs. 4.8 percent. But rural areas have been affected by a shrinking workforce as people have left towns or stopped looking for work, while the workforce has grown in suburbs and cities.

Still, when asked about their personal situations, rural residents described financial experiences that largely mirror those of urban respondents. The share of people who report experiencing severe economic hardship is roughly equal in urban and rural America: About 1 in 5 say there was a time in the past year when they couldn’t pay their bills. Similarly, about 1 in 5 in both areas say they rely on the federal government at least a fair amount to get by."

Of course there are areas both rural and urban that fall outside this range.

[MuseRider]

5. Thanks.

Me too. We are not all the same and most of those insults come from people who have not one fricking clue except for an in-law or a cousin.

[flibbitygiblets]

18. Agreed, comments like that aren't helpful. I'm a liberal Dem living 50 miles from nearest big city

I can't even see any neighbors from my house, it's so rural.

I live here because it's beautiful and peaceful, definitely not for my politics.

[Delphinus]

21. Politics

and small-mindedness (as well as religion) are the reasons it scares me to live in a small town. I would love the beauty and peace, but could I live in a place where I felt I was the odd-one out. Heck, right now in a city of over 250,000, I feel the odd-one out. I have a great community, but it's sometimes not enough.

[tazkcmo]

25. I also lived there.

Along with 2 siblings and my father, as grown ups and multiple years with one still there, as I mentioned. I do apologize for using a broad brush and but stand by my statement that there are bunches of these twits.

I used to have sympathy and empathy for the twits I speak of until I lived, played, and worked with them while I also watched them bitch, moan and complain about liberals, minorities and gays while either not voting or voting R and not lifting one grubby, fat finger to do anything about their situation themselves besides filing for government assistance that their lily white skin entitles them to. Oh, and E-MAILS/BENGAHZI!!!

A book? A return to education? Moving? A shower? Comb your hair? I had one of these cretins, way back in 2008 call Obama the n word. I stopped the car, told him Obama went to an Ivy League school while all you've managed to do is lose your ride home. Then I kicked him out of my car. I wish he was an exception. I'm afraid you and other's like you are not the rule.

[tazkcmo]

23. You are correct.

And I do apologize for the broad brush. Not all in rural America are twits, make a good living and contribute positively to their community.

[Wounded Bear]

2. Opinions that have been shaped by decades of propaganda...

from RW talk radio and TV "news" commentary.

[cilla4progress]

4. I live in rural America and I guess I'm an anomaly

because I'm a progressive. I'm college educated, part of the back to the land movement of the 1970s, as are many of my friends here.

But what I see is a loss of employment from the resource extraction industries that used to reign here and provide family level wages without a college education: logging, coal, even ranching on ridiculously low priced range allotments. Also farming, which has now gone corporate with multinational interests. Yes, it's part of the economic change you refer to. I think this is part of what leads to a sense of displacement and resentment.

[lunasun]

7. There has been a lot of working class manufacturing lost in cities also

[susanna]

27. Thank you for bringing that up, lunasun.

The manufacturing jobs lost from the cities have been economically devastating and have been going on for decades.

I grew up rural, but chose to move to an urban area. Many, many people in urban areas felt the economic impact via loss of manufacturing jobs just as rural folk have.

Not sure why we - the people - are not on the same team, knowing that is the companies that have done this to ALL of us.

[Iris]

14. I've been thinking about those manufacturing job and family level wages

Nothing replaced them. Jobs that require college degrees don't pay as much as those jobs did. None of my father's 3 children makes more than he did working in the auto industry when salaries are adjusted for inflation and one of them has a master's degre

[lunasun]

6. i agree with them their values are different- the ones who voted for trump at least are

quite different from mine I assume . Most inner city near me did not vote for trump values
The 7 in 10 rural who see the difference I would think will never give up their location or culture for a job in a major metro area

[PSPS]

8. "caters most to the needs of people in big cities"

Um, "big cities" are where 2/3 of the US population lives. This article makes about as much sense as having a sparsely-populated mostly-rural state decide who gets to run for president of the whole country. Oh, wait...

[leftstreet]

17. +1

These articles are irritating. Why not a brief description of the electoral system and the consequences of disproportionate political representation?

Without this bizarre system in the US, the people profiled would be of no interest to the news media

[Proud liberal 80]

9. I am getting so tired

Of these so called Christian "values" that these people try to wrap themselves around. I always knew that these "Christians" were fake self-righteous hypocrites, and their support of Trump proves it.

[customerserviceguy]

10. I encountered this

when I moved from a Seattle suburb to the timber country of the Olympic Peninsula in 1991. People were afraid that I was going to try to change them, and I did have to modify my ways of speaking and acting to assure them that I would not try to impose my lifestyle and ways on them.

In fact, I actually learned to appreciate their views and outlook on life, and it's influenced me ever since. Now, this was a place that voted Democratic, despite being OK with firearms ownership, etc. So, it wasn't a big transition for me, just a bit of easing of the way that I had learned to adjust in the bustling Seattle metro area. I took up an appreciation of country music during that time, and I calmed down considerably.

[hunter]

11. I hesitate to say it, but "brain drain" is a real thing.

The sharper kids, the LGBT kids, the artistic kids... leave.

Their elders blame it on the evil temptations of the outside world and become themselves more isolated.

Coupled with the collapse of rural industries like smaller scale farming and coal mining it becomes a vicious circle.

My own kids and many of my nephews and nieces have moved away to the big Liberal Left Coast cities, even though they grew up in rural, but thoroughly Democratic and cosmopolitan, smaller towns.

I think one of the things that makes my city great is that we have so many immigrants from the international equivalents of depressed "small town" U.S.A.. We also have a lot of people who joined the military out of high school and never returned to the towns they grew up in.

The hell of it is that small town U.S.A. might be thriving if they welcomed immigrants, had good schools, high speed internet, and a diversity of cultural attractions and resources. But those are exactly the things that terrify the people remaining in those depressed towns, and the Republican Party feeds those fears to maintain their electoral college, but not democratic, advantage.

[JI7]

13. that's what happened to Iowa.

[geek tragedy]

12. Rural America has always been the ass end of our body politic.

Uneducated, culturally backwards, politically regressive.

Lots of urbanites are escapees from Trumpistan.

[cilla4progress]

15. Again, I caution you to be judicious in painting

all country-dwellers with a broad brush. That's the kind of thing that gets urban progressives in trouble.

That said, this is an historical trend over centuries. Heathens and pagans both derive from the hinterlands. Not all a bad thing!

[geek tragedy]

16. Certainly there are exceptions to the rule.

But the rule has held for more than a century that progress of any kind finds its fiercest resistance in rural areas.

While 20% of the population in those areas being reasonable people adapted to a modern, diverse society is certainly a lot of people, 80% is a much bigger number.

[Blue_true]

19. Yet, urban and suburban America.

Pays for rural America's roads, schools, hospitals, fire fighting, police. If rural America had to fund those things on taxes collected in their communities, they would have almost nothing.

[Delphinus]

22. Yes and

they never look at it in that light.

[nikibatts]

20. Not all ruralites are like that. Only the ones who want to be and who follow only FOX and Rush.

Half my family is from rural USA covering 8 states. I can count on two fingers the ones who are Trumpsters.

[Skittles]

24. so tired of hearing about "small town values"

they loves them some pussy-grabbing, lying treasonous SHIT

[zipplewrath]

26. Always been so

The Whiskey Rebellion, heck, even when the whole thing went down in Concord and Lexington, Virginia argued about whether to get involved with the "Massachusetts Rebellion". North/South, or urban/suburban/rural has always been a divide in this country. The real issue now is the disfunctional congress/EC/gerrymandering problem because the,"rural" has to much influence.

[LonePirate]

28. Without economic security, people lose their cultural tolerance.

If rural areas were economically secure, rural residents would have less disdain for urban dwellers or for anyone not like them. Yes, some of it would persist but there would be less of it.