
I’m a Coastal Elite from the Midwest: The Real Bubble Is Rural America - lingben
http://www.rollcall.com/news/opinion/im-a-coastal-elite-from-the-midwest-the-real-bubble-is-rural-america
======
nunez
I think it's fair to call the rural parts of America "real America;" they make
up most of our country and probably will for a really long time!

------
n4r9
From an outsider's perspective, "bubble" isn't an accurate descriptor for
either group. I find more sense in articles that describe two (or more)
significant-minority factions speaking entirely different languages.

[http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/07/why-
demo...](http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/07/why-democrats-
and-republicans-literally-speak-different-languages/492539/)

[http://www.vox.com/2014/9/15/6131919/democrats-and-
republica...](http://www.vox.com/2014/9/15/6131919/democrats-and-republicans-
really-are-different)

[http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2016/0407/Why-
Democrat...](http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2016/0407/Why-Democrats-
and-Republicans-are-so-wrong-about-each-other)

------
acconrad
It's everyone's responsibility - I'm not giving a pass to the Heartland or the
Coasts. I come from the kinds of demographics that connect with both - born
and raised in a small, rural town just minutes north of Boston with a
population of 6,000 that is nearly 98% white. I had never met a black person
until elementary school when he came to town as part of the inner city
outreach program to give promising kids a better school system. But when I
did, his skin color didn't mean a thing to me, and I had always felt that way.
I asked my mom why they shot Martin Luther King Jr because I didn't understand
why it was because he was "brown" (as I referred to it at the tender age of
4). Just because you live in an insular, white community doesn't automatically
make you an anachronistic bigot. It's an anecdotal reference point but so is
this blog post.

Either way you side, this whole charade of "well rural America needs to read a
few books and travel to the National Museum of African American History and
Culture" is tiresome and making us progressives look bitter and callous to the
fact that we lost, straight up, and we _did_ ignore rural America: in the
polling, on the issues, and their struggle to retain jobs. Not to mention that
many poor people in the middle of America can't actually afford to travel to
Washington DC to wise up and learn about other cultures. A really easy thing
to ask for and a hard thing for a lot of people to do.

Someone said it on HN earlier, there's a strong link between economic
hardship, bigotry, and low education: when you've been deprived of jobs and a
stable wage, and you don't understand how the world works but you do know that
the news has said we've been shipping jobs off to China and India, you're
going to blame other people that are different than you. It's not right, but
the feelings of not being able to take care of yourself and your family are
valid and heartfelt feelings. And we as the technologically-gifted are
partially to blame: we are automating jobs away. I wouldn't say that
technological progress is a bad thing, but we set high standards for who we
employ, and we, as a nation, haven't done enough to educate that workforce to
meet the demands of the changing workforce from manufacturing to
services/technology.

------
generic_user
Anyone who presents themselves as the 'educated coastal elite' and espouse
this sort of socially/economically contemptuous rhetoric for eighty to ninety
percent of the country is throwing gasoline on the fire. This is precisely the
pontificating that shuts down any chance to find common ground over the issues
that people care about. Thats not smart strategy when your a small minority in
a democratic political process. But maybe virtue signaling to the inner clique
is more important then winning elections to these people.

~~~
mcphage
Contempt for others, virtue signaling to an inner clique, and not looking for
common ground, was a pretty good strategy in this election for Trump, so I'm
not sure why you think it won't win elections—clearly, it just did.

------
jlgaddis
I'm also from the rural Midwest. My home county [0] is 97.3% white. It also
went heavily for Trump (72.95% vs. 21.88% for Clinton) and claims three
astronauts. Enrollment in my high school for 2013-2014 was 552 [2]. The
population of my home town has dropped by about 10% in the last 25 years (est.
4,252 for 2015). Basically, I have a lot in common with the author and can
relate to where he's coming from.

Let me add a bit of context, however.

I don't live there now, although I'm not too far away. Most of my family still
lives there but, roughly 15 years ago, I moved one county to the north, and
now live in Bloomington, Indiana, which is much, much more diverse.

My hometown, as I mentioned, is overwhelmingly Republican. Regardless of who
the Democrat was in the presidential race this election, they almost certainly
would have lost my county. Suprisingly, there were a lot of folks in my
hometown who did not care for Trump. At all. To them (and me), it truly came
down to "the lesser of two evils". For many of them, that was Trump.

I'm lucky enough to have traveled a fair bit. I've been exposed to much more
"culture" and "diversity" than many others I grew up with (who still live in
my hometown, of course). My thoughts and beliefs have changed tremendously. I
consider myself fortunate to have "gotten out".

A lot of my friends and family "back home", however, are the same as they've
always been. I agree with the author when he says that us rural folks need to
"get out more" (paraphrasing, of course).

I'm trying to avoid going on a way-too-long "defense" of "rural America" but I
do want to mention one thing in particular. Immigration and globalization are
huge issues to many folks here. They don't care much for foreigners and the
"Mexico issue" is a big deal. You know why?

Even though the population of my home county is only ~45,000, I personally
know several hundreds (possibly into the thousands) of people who have seen
their (manufacturing) jobs disappear. My mother's last day of work -- after 30
years -- was just about two months ago. Her employer, after moving ~3,000 jobs
to Mexico over the last 15 years, finally shut down for good... and that's
just one company. Her fiancee will also be out of a job in a year or so. His
employer is also moving operations to Mexico (his previous employer did the
same). We've had several other companies around here do exactly the same
thing.

The primary reason for the 10% population drop in my hometown is because a
manufacturing company shut down and moved out. This area has probably lost
10-15k jobs in the last 20 years. No, they aren't high tech programming jobs
making six figures, but they made a decent enough wage to support a family.
People get bitter when they lose their job to someone who will do it for 5-10%
of their wage.

This causes them to not care for "corporate greed" or the party that allowed
it to happen (Secretary Clinton's husband is the one who signed NAFTA into
law, remember). So no, they don't care for corporations or large government or
the typical politician. They also don't want Hillary coming for their guns
(yes, I've had that several times in the last month or so).

I'm not trying to "pin the problem" on any one group in particular and while I
do agree that rural America could benefit by "getting out more", perhaps
coastal America could try, just a little bit, to understand _WHY_ rural
America feels and believes the way it does.

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_County,_Indiana](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_County,_Indiana)

[1]: [http://www.wbiw.com/local/archive/2016/11/lawrence-co-
genera...](http://www.wbiw.com/local/archive/2016/11/lawrence-co-general-
election-results.php)

[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_High_School_(Indiana)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_High_School_\(Indiana\))

~~~
wahern
The Democratic Party is still the party of labor unions, including
manufacturing unions. The Republican party is still the party of corporate
interests. Yes, Clinton signed NAFTA. But it was the Republican Congress who
fast-tracked it; indeed, it was for NAFTA that Republicans devised the the
fast-track treaty implementation mechanism. This was the time of the
Republican Revolution ushered in by Newt Gingrich, who notably now counsels
President-elect Trump on policy.

If you dislike Bill Clinton, it makes no sense to vote Republican. Bill
Clinton, like Tony Blair, veered right in terms of economic policy. That's
because the Thatcher and Reagan revolutions convinced people that the
Tories/Republicans (representatives for the "job creators") were the only ones
who understood economics and industry, and if you wanted to win an election
you had to co-opt those ideologies.

The fact of the matter is that we've lost industry in this country because of
_failed_ Anglo-American conservative economic theory (admittedly sometimes
adopted in part by Democrats), and an anti-education ethos.

Germany and Austria have thriving heavy industry. And guess what, they also
have thriving labor unions, ruling parties that are economically left of
American politics, and sophisticated, often free post-secondary education
programs--liberal, professional, and especially vocational. Which isn't to say
they don't have problems, but manifestly they've done much better at retaining
heavy industry, and they've done so using the exact opposite strategy of
Anglo-American conservatives.

If you strip away the pretense, this election was absolutely about the racism,
prejudice, and xenophobia of poor, conservative, and largely rural Americans.
Are they sincerely and legitimately concerned about a loss of jobs? Yes,
without a doubt.

But the politicians they elect and the cultural ethos they espouse are clearly
a product of modern American identity politics, and modern American identity
politics is a product of deep-seated bigotry and prejudice. There's no hiding
that fact, or that it's at the heart of the matter.

And it's laughable to imply that because Bill Clinton voted for NAFTA, or
because over the past two decades Democrats have shifted right, sometimes
adopting Republican policies, that it makes sense to vote Republican. While
Trump is a populist, his economic policies are generally quite conservative,
the nativist angle notwithstanding. And in any event voters preserved
Republican majorities in both the House and Senate. For the most part it's
Congress that dictates national policy, not the President.

FWIW, I grew up in the rural South. In the 1990s a nearby small[er] town still
regularly hung a noose outside the city limits with a sign telling blacks to
keep out. My public high school history teacher literally spent a week
instructing us on how the Civil War was about states' rights. (How the black
students, nearly 1/3rd of the class, managed to sit quietly through it all
I'll never understand, though I suppose keeping quiet is how you avoid
conflict in such a thoroughly oppressive social context.) To this day, the
racism and bigotry is barely hidden beneath the surface. While plenty of white
Democrats in the North hold racist attitudes, they don't tend to adhere to the
identity politics of whites elsewhere, even though they have the very same
economic concerns. But the South is rising, and slowly creeping North.

And that's why the election turned out the way it did. The decline of industry
has been happening for more than a generation. If anything industry is doing
better than it was 10 years ago. Certainly the economy is doing better. Wages
were finally rising for the working-class; many finally got healthcare. What
explains this election isn't a concern about jobs; it's the increasing
adoption of a bigoted, prejudiced narrative for a phenomenon that began
decades ago, precipitated by the very same political class and ideology they
continue to support with increasing vigor.

~~~
wahern
I should add, we've lost industry also because of the rise of China. Some loss
was inevitable as the U.S. was too big and diverse to be able to sustain
employment and profits across the board under pressure from lower-cost rivals.
You'd have to seriously cripple the free market system and diminish overall
wealth. Even at the heights of union power (1920s - 1950s), America was never
remotely that socialist. Anyhow, economic equality is a means to an end
(wealth, stability), not an end in itself.

Mexico is something of a red-herring. Vastly more industry has moved to China
than Mexico. In fact, since NAFTA almost all of it went to China. It was only
within the past 5 years that Mexico really saw significant NAFTA dividends, as
China had been eating their lunch for years. Just ask Wal-Mart.

This is further proof for how racism, prejudice, and xenophobia is at the
heart of the current political movement. The narrative is that Mexicans have
taken all the blue collar jobs and depressed wages. In reality it's mostly due
to China. But the Mexican narrative prevails because it resonates with
people's prejudiced preconceptions.

There are similar parallels with immigration.

There's just no denying the inherent racist attitudes. It can't be denied and
it shouldn't be denied. And admitting that doesn't discount what real,
legitimate issues people face. In fact, admitting that is one of the first
real steps necessary to addressing those issues. The inherently racist
narratives make it impossible to reach effective compromise, socially and
politically.

------
gamechangr
This is an embarrassing article.

Let's not blame this on the coastal elites, let's blame it on mid america that
is uneducated/doesn't travel/ doesn't have any exposure.

Ironically - that's exactly what defines coastal elitism (thinking that we are
more educated and more cross cultural).

Some things will never change and then we wonder why "no one predicted the
elections "

~~~
kiba
They do live in a bubble and they are more homogenerous. Why would we try to
deny that fact?

~~~
gamechangr
Based on the outcome of the elections - you/we may in fact live in the bubble

