Dairyland in Denial
Red States & the Myth of the Real American
“I definitely do not want to see rural Wisconsin become as empty as rural Iowa.”
Travis Tranel, Wisconsin Dairy Farmer
Prologue
This piece was written prior to the January 6 insurrection and assault on the Nation’s Capitol in Washington, D.C. Joe Biden, our 46th president, has stressed unity and diversity. Nice words, but these goals are in conflict so long as the Republican Party remains in thrall to a remorseless former president who continues to make the seditious claim that he won the 2020 election. What the country needs now is a show of resolve from this White House and the Democrats who have the upper hand in Congress. Is it any surprise if Congress that does not hold itself—its own members—accountable, will not hold Donald Trump accountable? If Donald Trump is not held accountable, if those who continue to enable and protect him face no consequences, unity is a chimera.
Frank Rich in The New York Times pronounced it “The year’s most prescient political book.” It was high praise for Thomas Frank’s bestseller What’s the Matter with Kansas? The subtitle, “How Conservatives Won the Heart of America,” made it clear at the outset that the author was casting a wider net than his home state of Kansas. The year was 2004.
Fast-forward to 2016 when a reality TV personality with no previous experience running for political office captures the Republican nomination, campaigns as a rightwing populist and super-patriot (“Make America Great Again”), and, against all odds, lands in the White House. Four years later, he becomes one of four incumbent presidents in U.S. history to lose a bid for re-election but carries 25 states despite losing the popular vote nationally by over seven million votes. What gives?
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The problems red states face are real, every bit as real as problems in cities. But they are not the exactly same.
Rural poverty is not the same as urban poverty. In cities it is often associated with race and crime and homelessness. In rural America poverty is more often manifested in various forms of relative deprivation—poor nutrition, substandard housing, unpaid bills.
The crime rate is not perceived as much of a problem in many part of rural America. Neither are race relations and police brutality. Or guns. Guns are used for hunting, not committing crimes. And abortion is a moral and religious question, not a social problem. Even the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) looks different tosoybean farmers in Kansas and dairy farmers in Wisconsin. The problem in rural areas is not only the cost of medical care, but alsothe even more pressing problem of proximity to doctors and dentists, hospitals and clinics.
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A cursory look at any political map of America in 2020 is all it takes to see that the so-called heart of America is solid red. The Heartland refers to geography, but the problem for Democrats is not so simple. It’s demographic, not geographic. Virtually all the sparsely populated parts of the country that fall under the rubric of “rural America” to include the Deep South and the Rust Belt, as well as the Midwest are blood-red. Why?
Thomas Frank provides more than a few clues in What’s the Matter with Kansas? In the second chapter, entitled “The Two Nations”, Frank explores what it is that fundamentally divides people who live in farm country from the vast majority of Americans who do not. He cites conservative columnist David Brooks: “We in coastal metro Blue areas who read more books and attend more plays than people who live in the Red heartland. We’re more sophisticated and cosmopolitan…. But don’t ask us, please, what life in Red America is like. We don’t know.”
Frank claims to know. He is, after all, a native of Kansas. On the other hand, he grew up in Mission Hills, a posh suburb of Kansas City, on the Kansas side of a street called Stateline. I live in nearby Westwood Hills, Kansas, near Stateline and regularly walk my dog in Missouri, which is only a block away. Unlike Thomas Frank, I grew up in a small town in South Dakota. My grandparents on both sides were farmers. Which is to say that I’m in a good position to judge whether he knows what he’s talking about. He does.
It all comes down to authenticity, he says. If you live in Kansas or South Dakota you are a “real American”. If you live in a city, not so much—at least, it’s not a foregone conclusion. It’s not an accident that many people who live in cities are Black or Latino or Asian or recent immigrants from wherever.
People in red states are not all homophobic racists, but they tend to share a suspicion of outsiders. Of people who don’t look or talk or think like they do. Who aren’t part of, you know, the local tribe.The tribe consists of Evangelical Protestants and (or) Roman Catholics in a lower middle-class income bracket. Everybody knows each other, went to school together, didn’t go to college or dropped out. Everybody who is anybody is white.
The myth of the real American grows out of this homogeneity. It’s an idea that comes easily and naturally to people who are being marginalized, who want to believe they are better than people who are moving up. People whose ways they don’t like and can’t understand.
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If you’ve ever wondered how supposedly God-fearing, flag-waving Americans can vote for an authoritarian president who excuses and incites extremist behavior on the right while railing against peaceful protestors on the left, go spend a little time most any dying small town in Middle America. That it’s condition is perilous will be obvious the moment you arrive on Main Street where the most of the buildings still standing are shuttered and the word “desolate” best describes the scene.
If you live in a red state, you probably think blue-state voters don’t care about you. But you need to ask yourself: who and what do red-state farmers and ranchers care about? Please try to understand that your grievances, however real, are not the fault of one political party, of liberals or socialists or gays. And that they are not the fault of Blacks or immigrants.
Understand, too, that Donald Trump does not care about you. Here, for example, is Sonny Perdue, the man Trump made Secretary of Agriculture at a town hall in Wisconsin:
“In America, the big get bigger, and the small will go out,” Perdue said. “I don’t think in America for any small business we have a guaranteed income or guaranteed profitability.”
Dairy farmer named Jerry Volenec wasn’t surprised at Perdue remark: “I walked in there knowing that’s how they felt [he said] referring to the Trump Administration. The part that was unnerving to me was that he said it to our faces. They’re not trying to hide it anymore. They’re telling us flat out: You’re not important.”
Get real! Republicans like Perdue do not care about you.
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Bottom line: If you live in a red state, please do not think your problems are more real than the problems of other struggling Americans. You are not better than the rest of us. You do not work harder. You do not love America more. There is no such thing as “alternative reality” or “alternative facts”. We are all real. We are all Americans.
Until or unless we can get a point where we all recognize that we care about many of the same things, America will remain a deeply divided country with a gridlocked government. One day we may wake up and realize it’s too late to save this embattled republic. And we will all be the losers.