Its fate heading into the 2022 elections
“Pray for democracy,” read a sign spotted Sunday in the window of a Craigsville, West Virginia business. Nicholas County voted for Donald Trump by nearly four to one in 2020. My first reaction in this remote crossroads was, Whose idea of democracy? Likely someone who voted Biden, my wife interjected. Even in the reddest rural places, they are out there.
NBC News released a poll Sunday showing a majority of Americans favor continuing the investigations into “alleged wrongdoing by former President Donald Trump.” More eye-catching was how “threats to democracy” now tops of Americans’ concerns by five points, even over the “cost of living.”
Democracy has become a smear among the Joe McCarthy-adjacent on the right, as Robert Draper wrote last week:
What is different now is the use of “democracy” as a kind of shorthand and even a slur for Democrats themselves, for the left and all the positions espoused by the left, for hordes of would-be but surely unqualified or even illegal voters who are fundamentally anti-American and must be opposed and stopped at all costs. That anti-democracy and anti-“democracy” sentiment, repeatedly voiced over the course of my travels through Arizona, is distinct from anything I have encountered in over two decades of covering conservative politics.
Americans not under Trumpism’s spell have reason for concern. Whether following Trump or Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (a Florida friend calls him Rhonda Santis), it seems a majority on the right (a minority overall, thankfully) now embrace “authoritarianism in the name of liberty and godliness,” writes Ed Kilgore. “Anyone utilizing the democratic process to promote alternative policy visions [to theirs] is deemed un-American, and their successes are dismissed as illegitimate.”
Education is UN-indoctrination
The split is largely but not entirely urban-rural. The Hart Research Associates/Public Opinion Strategies survey of 1,000 registered voters (3/4 on cell phones) accounted for age, sex, race and ethnicity, but not urban/rural locations.
A new study from Canada (I have not had time to review) explores asymmetries in place-based resentments:
First, we ask how place resentment varies across all possible combinations of urban, suburban, and rural in-groups and out-groups. Second, we explore if high-resentment individuals in urban, suburban, and rural areas share similar socio-demographic and political characteristics. Finally, we investigate how citizens’ satisfaction with their elected representatives, and positions on contentious and important policy issues, are related to place-based resentment. We investigate these questions using two large-scale surveys of the Canadian public. We find that place-based resentment is highly asymmetric: resentment is strongest among rural residents regardless of the target (suburban or urban) of their resentment, whereas urban and suburban residents tend to resent each other more than either group resents rural areas. We also find substantial asymmetries in the correlates and political implications of place resentment. Our findings suggest that place resentment is an important and politically consequential phenomenon across all place types, but also that the character and strength of this resentment is quite different in rural, suburban, and urban places.
Something pollsters might want to consider along with education level.
A fascinating Twitter thread on Sunday (self-selected, of course) explored how a college education can profoundly change political and social perspectives among people raised in rural or sequestered communities.
Justin Kanew counters the conservative talking point that universities and liberal professors are indoctrinating students. They don’t have that power. What changes students more is exposure to other students from different places, countries, and walks of life.
“Education is UN-indoctrination. That’s why they resent it,” Kanew says of conservatives.
Browse through the thread for the “testimonies” of people from rural areas whose exposure to new ideas challenged the ones with which they were indoctrinated by parents and preachers.
Education, democracy, multiculturalism, immigrants, etc., are a near-mortal threat to conservative parochialism. That’s why so many conservatives resent them.
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