A Touch of Class Warfare
The Republican convention will begin on June 15, and one of the party’s overriding themes is the need to get the heavy boot of government off the necks of ordinary, hard-working, law-abiding, God-fearing, (usually) white Americans. While they are certain to attempt to dodge some Project 2025 proposals that would eliminate, say, Social Security, party leaders and especially Donald Trump, will applaud the Supreme Court’s dismantling of the “administrative state” and promise to do more to eviscerate government agencies in his second term.
The delegates will cheer raucously, holding the same banners and chanting the same slogans as did the January 6 insurrectionists. Might even hear a “Hang Mike Pence” or two. Huge American flags will be everywhere. Get rid of government and Make America Great Again. The convention will be four days of throwing red meat to the red base.
There is only one problem.
It is often this very red base who are the greatest beneficiaries and are most reliant on the very government programs they wish to dismantle.
Excepting members of the monied class who will pocket millions, sometimes billions, with the absence of government regulations and oversight, Republican strength, as with most conservative movements worldwide, emanates largely from rural areas, usually at the expense of the cities. In the United States, a good chunk of these voters are Evangelical Christians, who perfectly articulate the fury underpinning rural attachment to Trumpism.
As a “lifelong Southern Baptist” and former pastor from northern Mississippi wrote, “Evangelical culture has developed over the years into this angry, cynical group. There is a feeling of victimhood. Evangelicals used to rule everything and be the group every politician and entertainer pandered to. A fast shift happened in the 70’s when we became the minority (though not oppressed by any means). That generation is Trump’s base, the ones who watched the shift happen and were so disgusted by it.” He added, “Issues like climate change, CRT, progressive economics, psychology, vaccines, and others are all looked at as a power grab by dirty Democrat politicians. Trump rallied against them all and gained the love of the ignorant.”
And so, these voters, both evangelical and not, see themselves as the backbone of American prosperity, while the evil, lazy, godless city dwellers, conniving Democrats all, suck both money and morality out of the system, a message Trump, a godless city dweller who changed from conniving Democrat to conniving Republican, cannot reinforce enough.
The truth, however, as it generally is with Trump, is quite different. Rather than net-contributors to the federal treasury, rural areas are, by and large, net recipients. Of the ten states in which government grants represent the highest percentage of state revenues, with the exception of Arizona and New Mexico, all are deep red and predominantly rural. These include Alabama, Mississippi, West Virginia, Kentucky, Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming, and Louisiana. Take federal money away and these states, especially in the most conservative areas, will lose access to medical care, aid to their schools, subsidies for the elderly, and food and housing programs for their poor—of which there are many—to say nothing of disaster relief when it is most needed. They will breathe dirty air, drink dirty water, eat uninspected food, and can expect their raging opioid plagues to get worse.
Their recourse?
None. Congress won’t help them, a conservative judiciary won’t help them, and sure as God made little green apples, Trump won’t help them.
The anti-government movement is already fully in motion, and its impact was pointed out perfectly in a Washington Post article that detailed one family’s plight in Oklahoma, which is just out of the top ten. It tells the story of Tabitha Shinn, a single mother in a rural Elk City, who “calculates down to the penny for groceries for her three teens but still must rely on giveaways from a food pantry” because the governor refused federal aid.
“A new food program would have kicked in this summer, had Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt not turned down $48 million from a $2.5 billion initiative that the Biden administration calls ‘a giant step forward’ in ending childhood hunger in the country. Though Oklahoma is one of the most food-insecure states, with surveys finding that more than 200,000 children are hungry at some point during a year, Stitt suggested the administration was ‘trying to push certain agenda items on kids.’”
Stories such as this proliferate across America, but voters outside the cities and the suburbs cannot be budged off the conviction that, as Ronald Reagan preached at them, “Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.”
Tell that to Tabitha Shinn.
The irony in the current class war is that conservatives on the front lines are not conscripts, but rather eager volunteers who have chosen to fight for the wrong army. They will be worse off if their side wins than if their side loses.
For too long, Democrats were either unaware of the depth and import of the rural/urban divide or dismissive of it. Recently, they began a serious outreach effort to try to convince Republicans in the countryside that allegiance to the conservative movement was, to say the least, not in their best interests.
If they do not succeed, Americans will pay a steep price, none more than the willfully blind followers of the nation’s most perverse Pied Piper.