Rylan Hoots “fears God” and “keeps his commands” — but mostly he just loves his neighbours. Kitted out in boots, jeans and camo fleece, “How Great Thou Art” blaring from his boombox, the pastor waves at passing cars, pointing out the signs he’s hung nearby. “Jesus Christ,” says one. “This is the true God, and eternal life.” Together with a helper, flanked by a McDonald’s and a four-lane road, Hoots says he hopes to inspire what the ancient Greeks called agape: sacrificial love for your fellow man.
I meet Hoots by an intersection in Greenfield, an impoverished town in Weakley County, Tennessee. The motorists this chilly weekend morning don’t seem particularly interested — beyond the rough weather, the evangelists also face a few obscene gestures — but there’s plenty of agape to go round. That’s partly of the Christian variety: open-air ministries like this thrive all over the state’s western fringe, where Tennessee hits Kentucky. Yet time and again, over my time in Weakley, I saw agape of a different kind, with many here willing to make vast sacrifices for their blond-haired messiah.
In 2016, Donald Trump secured around three quarters of Weakley votes. Yet the President’s 2018 tariffs cost farmers billions, with bankruptcies spiralling by a fifth and Tennessee’s lucrative soybean markets ceded to competition abroad. In 2024, meanwhile, Trump pledged school vouchers, inevitably shutting country schools. But despite the hurt, both promised and delivered, Trump again won four-fifths of locals. Nor is this just a Weakley phenomenon. As I learnt, what happens here speaks poignantly to the republic’s rising tribalism, as Americans increasingly use politics as a badge of identity, even if they suffer the impact themselves.
For rural Tennesseans, backing Trump has become something of a tradition. Beyond Weakley, the President won at least 75% of the vote in nearly every one of the state’s back-country counties. It’s a similar story nationwide: in both 2016 and 2024, Trump secured the backing of 62% of rural Americans. On the ground, too, this affection shines through. As I crisscrossed Weakley County, I met dozens of people who see Trump as somewhere between a protector and a prophet. “You Can’t Fix Stupid, But You Can Vote it Out” read the pro-Trump signs that line the roads. “Democrats kill babies and let the immigrants enter,” one local Republican told me. “You can’t possibly be a Democrat because you are a Christian.”
To an extent, this enthusiasm can be understood in policy terms. In a county that has the state’s second-highest rate of sexual assaults against minors, the President’s promise to “protect kids” is popular in Weakley. Tariffs doubtless hit farmers — but they could also boost auto production at Blue Oval City, an upcoming $5.6 billion Ford factory a few counties over. “Trump is addressing issues that have animated Tennessee’s rural voters for a great deal of time,” says Daryl Carter, a history professor at East Tennessee State University. “These rural areas have been hollowed out. Jobs gone. Hospitals closed. Opioid abuse. They have a lot of reasons to be pessimistic about America.”
Yet if Trump, the man, is popular, and his rhetoric is too, it’s also clear that his actions are unwelcome in spots like Weakley. One good example is education. In January, the President tweeted support for a Tennessee school voucher scheme. The bill extends 20,000 vouchers to rural and urban school districts, encompassing both private and public institutions. It’s also opposed by 77% of rural Tennesseans, who fear losing students, and public money, to private schools. Yet these reservations didn’t deter state Republicans. In a hastily convened special legislative session, the party rammed through the so-called Education Freedom Act, which Governor Bill Lee duly signed into law in February. Local Republicans are far from pleased. “It was a mean trick to railroad the bill through before folks could learn about it,” says Steven Vantrease, a conservative member of the Weakley County school board.
At root, the furore suggests the Tennessee GOP is willing to betray its rural base — if it can secure more votes statewide. In the past, conservatives traditionally aimed vouchers at low-income parents, often racial minorities in big cities, offering them added flexibility in picking quality charter schools for their children. But with rising fears around “woke” curriculums, there’s an electoral incentive to expand the scheme statewide. The problem for rural voters, typified by their broad opposition to the plan, is that added choice can wreck local education. With kids increasingly scarce in places like Weakley, added choice can close small town schools that rely on a handful of students.
It’s an issue that transcends brick-and-mortar buildings. “School consolidation is a small-town killer,” says Dale Hutcherson, a handsome 31 year old, and Weakley County’s Republican mayor. “If a school dies, then the heart and soul of a community dies.” As Hutcherson explains, hometown teachers go to all the football games, supervise clubs, and keep tabs on their kids beyond class. In rural Tennessee, it really does take a village. No wonder defending public schools is an issue that crosses political boundaries. A case in point is Nicolle Gallagher, former chair of the Weakley County Democrats, who calls them “the pride and joy” of a local community. Fair enough: ranked sixth in the state, students here score in the top 25 counties nationwide in maths, science and social studies.
That begs the question: with bipartisan opposition, why aren’t Tennessee Republicans reaping an electoral whirlwind for their cynicism? For Gallagher, the answer begins not in policy but in place. “Politics,” she says, “is about tribal belonging” — and I certainly got that sense during my time in Weakley. I’m told that Martin, home to the University of Tennessee branch campus, is “where all the liberals live.” But even here, Trump wins in a landslide and locals flew upside-down American flags during the Biden era. As one Martin Republican says: “It is us versus them.”
Being outside the tent can be painful. In these small, tight-knit communities, voting blue can bring a form of social death. Friends from high school no longer acknowledge you. Meanwhile, no one new moves to town — so who will you befriend? “People will know you are a Democrat,” Gallagher says. “It can hurt you personally and professionally.” As she continues, that can bring more than loneliness, noting that Weakley County no longer has any actively Democratic teachers. Amazed, I ask Jess Piper, a former educator and a rural Democratic organiser for the Blue Missouri campaign group. She guffaws at my question, before telling me that her politics meant she lost her career. “I got my husband fired,” she adds. “He was a teacher too.” Though certainly illegal, such discrimination is nearly impossible to prove without costly lawyers who anyway live miles away.
Tribalism can be nasty even if you’re apolitical. Shannon Taylor, who lives in Dresden, the Weakley County seat, tells me that face-to-face encounters are pleasant enough. Locals embrace the lesbian bartender at the American Legion. Momz Honky Tonk, in nearby Cumberland, hosts a monthly drag show, and no one blinks an eye. Online, though, some locals express their ire at those who trespass what Taylor calls their group mentality. “They care about their community and care so much that they spew hateful rhetoric,” she says. “They think they are protecting their communities.”
It didn’t used to be like this. As recently as 2008, Weakley County, like much of western Tennessee, was a Democratic stronghold. Democrats occupied every local office. But when it moved blue to red, the transformation was devastating. In 2006, Tennessee Democrats controlled the governorship, congressional delegation, and both general assembly chambers. But by 2013, everything had changed. Once in the minority, the GOP now dominated both houses of the Volunteer State’s legislature. Democratic state senate leader Reginal Tate put it best: “Man, we could have caucus meetings in my car.” Today, no Weakley Democrat inhabits a local office. What happened here was a national phenomenon too. From 2008 to 2016, Democrats lost 13 seats in the Senate and 69 in the House, as well as 11 governorships, 913 state legislative seats and 30 state legislative chambers. Weakley, then, was merely a microcosm of a national political earthquake. “I knew that was the end of the Democratic Party around here,” Gallagher admits. “It was like the lights went out.”
As the timeline implies, this shift can partly be understood by the Obama effect. Yet if there’s surely a racial element here, Carter stresses that isn’t the whole story. In 2008, after all, Obama invested heavily in rural America. On election day, he made small yet significant inroads with rural voters from Montana to Virginia. Even in those states he lost, his efforts helped Democrats win seats nationwide. Yet eight years on, the bottom collapsed, giving Trump the White House and both houses of Congress. Why? Because, insiders say, the party got drunk on “yes, we can” and rested on its laurels. Carter witnessed this duality in rural Tennessee. Obama, he says, “scared the bejesus out of people” — but was also a “piss-poor party leader.” Without inspiring candidates or local organisation, Tennessee Republicans had a free hand, branding Democrats the “them” and conservatives the “us.”
Carolyn Ideus, a Democratic official in Weakley County, says the Republican wave created “huge social pressure” to join the “us” party. And quite aside from all that small-town browbeating, some experts suggest rural Americans are especially prone to partisanship. “Rurality is an identity and worldview that transcends income and education,” argues Nick Jacobs, a political scientist and co-author of The Rural Voter. “A rural worldview is classed by geography not occupation.” Once more, it’s something I witnessed firsthand. On Martin’s main drag, a giant Donald Trump cardboard cut-out stands in the window of the GOP headquarters. A local Republican, who asks to stay anonymous, laments that even school board elections are now increasingly partisan.
Little wonder, then, that Carter says the Trump movement is much bigger than bickering over charter schools, especially when bias in big cities only fuels the reaction in places like Weakley. “There are perverse incentives to malign Trump voters,” is how Lisa Peruitt, a professor at UC-Davis puts it. “It helps accrue social capital.” That’s especially when the man himself cheerfully bashes powerful corporations, media elites and East Coast political dynasties like the Clintons. These, Peruitt says, are the exact people Trump says “rigged the system for their benefit [and] will do anything and say anything to keep things exactly the way they are.”
Either way, there’s obviously far more to Weakley County Republicans than simply being deluded by “false consciousness” to vote against their own interests. With a fight for America’s soul on their hands, it’s little wonder that Jake Bynum, a former county mayor, should argue that “love of country and perceived way of life” naturally outweigh “pocketbook issues” — charter schools or soybean exports be damned. Nor should progressives really be surprised here either: there’s little Upper West Side liberals love more than sacrificing their paychecks for the poor. Agape, it seems, remains a bipartisan affair.
Jeff Bloodworth is a writer and professor of American political history at Gannon University
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SubscribeI am an American. I live in a blue state, but in a red county. I am a teacher. I have wealthy students, middle class students, and some very poor students who live in sprawling trailer parks on the outskirts of the school districts – the “projects/ghetto” of suburbia.
Our school was pushing a kind of DEI teaching as empathy for a while, and I supported the idea of teaching kids to understand that not everyone starts life with the same advantages, not to feel guilty, but to be grateful and humble, judge less and help more. You know – the real Christianity.
One day, a student mentioned the idea of “white privilege” and my eyes fell on one student I had for two years in a row. That was a rarity in my school of 2,500 students. He was dirt poor, lived in a trailer. He was white. His mother was gone. His father was rough. He had written about his childhood, rife with trauma and abuse. He was polite, had good manners. He was at times suddenly angry, but usually affable. He wanted to join the Air Force.
When he heard the words “white privilege,” he laughed bitterly, I supposed at the absurdity of anyone thinking he had privilege of any kind.
My point is the Democrats don’t get these people. They only like poor people in theory, not in person. They don’t want poor people around them. They don’t want to listen to them. They disparage their Christian faith – one of the main things that gets them through this life.
In the past 10 years, the world has become cruder, more pornographic, Christian faith is the punchline of every liberal joke, sexual depravities are forced on people, and taught at school.
And still, there is no real hope or solution for white, rural poverty. No one cares about them. They are somehow responsible for whatever white people did centuries ago, even though their ancestors were as poor as they are. The reality is the real benefactors of slavery are the rich liberals who now assuage their guilt with donations to left wing social programs. These white rural poor people never had anything but the dirt under their feet.
They want respect for their families, their faith, their way of life, their opportunities, their voice, and a chance to work.
Best comment
excellent comment- very moving
It’s always the same: Any American who is not an urbanite/leftie/hyper-educated snob is a tribalist knuckle-dragger who shags his sister. I happen to live in a rural area of America – a mostly MAGA-supporting region – and am glad to enlighten you: there’s no tribalism here, simply an understanding of what constitutes good policy and what constitutes lunacy.
Fortunately we have our brethren and their governments in Europe and especially the U.K. to serve as examples of lunacy taken to the extreme. But of course we have the U.S. Constitution and its Bill of Rights here and you don’t; that allows us to speak our minds (mostly) without the constabulary showing up at our doors. Perhaps that’s why we are called “citizens” and you “subjects.”
I sincerely appreciate the author letting us know in the second paragraph with the quote “many here willing to make vast sacrifices for their blond-haired messiah” that he has no intention of giving an even-handed or even truthful account of this situation.
And by the way, teachers in most if not all states (including Tennessee) have tenure and cannot – contra the Dem activist quoted in the piece – be fired for political leanings.
Also, speaking as a resident of a number of small towns, including growing up in one, nobody in these places is socially ostracized for being liberal. They’re more likely to face catcalls for rooting against the nearest large college sports teams. Flat out BS.
Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.
The actress, Helen Mirren once said: Before you argue with someone, ask yourself, is that person even mentally mature enough to grasp the concept of a different perspective. Because if not, there’s absolutely no point.
Not every argument is worth your energy. Sometimes, no matter how clearly you express yourself, the other person isn’t listening to understand—they’re listening to react. They’re stuck in their own perspective, unwilling to consider another viewpoint, and engaging with them only drains you.
There’s a difference between a healthy discussion and a pointless debate. A conversation with someone who is open-minded, who values growth and understanding, can be enlightening—even if you don’t agree. But trying to reason with someone who refuses to see beyond their own beliefs? That’s like talking to a wall. No matter how much logic or truth you present, they will twist, deflect, or dismiss your words, not because you’re wrong, but because they’re unwilling to see another side.
Maturity isn’t about who wins an argument—it’s about knowing when an argument isn’t worth having. It’s realizing that your peace is more valuable than proving a point to someone who has already decided they won’t change their mind. Not every battle needs to be fought. Not every person deserves your explanation.
Sometimes, the strongest thing you can do is walk away—not because you have nothing to say, but because you recognize that some people aren’t ready to listen. And that’s not your burden to carry.
OMG!!! This just sums up EXACTLY what I experienced. I just got back from NZ where I was on a tour with a group mostly from Australia. I had several political discussions with a few of them. Every last one was totally anti Trump. One man who described himself as a Physician (not a doctor) was very anti Trump. When I asked if he preferred the only option, his response was, well she didn’t get in did she!!!! It was futile to discuss any of Trump’s positive actions since taking over. All I heard was how he is creating WW3 with the trade wars etc…
The fact that the border was now more under control and our children were not going to be mutilated before adulthood and so on, made no impression on this man. It was sad! I tried my best.
Yes, and we aren’t here on earth to explain or justify ourselves to others. I was today listening to a radio programme about the ‘ideological mind’ – a psychiatrist had done some research about how those with low levels of mental openness just find it very hard to genuinely consider other or new points of view. We don’t really need research to know this but for those of us whose main priority is, say, truth, it’s hard to understand those who prioritise, say, kindness or loyalty to their ideas.
How utterly pathetic to ostracise and disown friends simply because they voted for the opposition. I include both sides in that criticism too, as I’m aware it happens both ways.
Anybody that obsessed with politics really needs to get a life. Just vote for your least worst option every few years and hope it improves slightly, thats about all you can do anyway
Absolutely.
It’s how we’ve ended up with the Uni-party, in power for decades.
Er, bit like WW2 – somebody started it – in this case the Demrats who went round telling white folks they were deplorable and any black or latino ppl voting GOP were worse – deplorable traitors. This will only end when the ‘rats come back to the mainstream soft left and Trump (former dem) runs out of steam. Like Thatcher in UK Trump is very interventionist and into big government on the issues that bother him – so not really the libertarian he imagines himself to be. Still he’s the best of a very bad bunch so lets hope he keeps going for the rest of his term
There is one thing you could say about Thatcher, and that is that she hated the Russians. There is not enough of that about nowadays. She did warm to Gorbachev, admittedly, but he was the only halfway reasonable leader Russia ever had (apart from Catherine the Great, but she was German).
Another Brit who is either a sloppy writer or simply can’t spell.
“I met dozens of people who see Trump as somewhere between a protector and a profit.”
While President Trump certainly knows a “profit,” financial or otherwise, when he sees one, I believe the writer meant “prophet.”
He also might have meant “altar” when talking about what one sacrifices children on too.
I was under the impression this was an intentional play on words. It may have passed the American readership by though, subtlety never was a strong point
“…there’s little Upper West Side liberals love more than sacrificing other people’s paychecks for the poor.”
Fixed it.
“Americans increasingly use politics as a badge of identity, even if they suffer the impact themselves.”
Remember, that includes the progressive elites who tightly close ranks around their set of tribal totems. In my experience there is more openmindedness in places like Greenfield, Tennessee, than in places like Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Living in an ultra liberal area of Vermont, even though our family would not be considered “Trumpers”, we did think he was a better choice over Harris because of Bobby Kennedy, Tulsi, foreign policy and censorship issues. In the process we have been harassed repeatedly and lost a job working with a neighbor.
Ok, so let’s see if I have this straight: You wouldn’t be considered a “Trumper”, but you thought Trump was a better choice for President because he was going to appoint a crackpot crank conspiracy theorist and a Putin stooge to the cabinet? Ok, your vote is a matter for you, but I am just interested in what you base your assertion that you are not a “Trumper” on.
In this country, we typically have a choice between two leading candidates for President. One was an utterly vacuous fool who could not coherently string a sentence together to save her soul. She was chosen for her skin color by four top politicos and did not garner one (seriously, not one) primary vote in the process more normally used to choose our candidates. The other was Trump, who left office with increased wage rates across the board, a strong economy, a controlled border and a world in peace (notwithstanding COVID). With the chaos of the Administration the other candidate was a part of, it wasn’t much of a choice. And now that we know how Democrats have funded their candidates with a now imploded donation platform (ActBlue) that is nothing more than a giant money laundering machine for illegal campaign flows, one has to figure that it may be a long time before they ever get their chance again for a long time.
Let’s flip some of these arguments toward blue areas: how has opposition to school choice worked, especially for minority kids? How has open borders worked? The refusal to prosecute criminals?
People like this writer still don’t get it. It’s not about Trump, per se, it’s about the conditions that made him possible. Real or perceived failure by the professional political class made a candidate like him possible. That is it. Period. It is that simple, no matter how much reporters cherry-pick interview subjects in order to frame a different narrative.
Also, what upper west side leftists think of the poor becomes evident whenever something like school choice comes up. They will make all sorts of noise to keep those minority kids out.
School vouchers wouldn’t be an issue if public schools did a better job, a much better job, in educating their students. They have no one to blame but themselves. Unfortunately, many of these towns are their own worst enemies. In my small New England town, some of the stupidest and least educated people get elected to the school board because in their tribal fashion they get their friends to vote the dummies in. The smartest people often offend by merely being ‘smart’. So before ire is tossed at Trump, many communities need to look inward for reasons as to why their school systems are not flourishing.
If we would only vote as the writer thinks we should, everything would be perfect. Quite an ignorant piece of writing, betraying the preconceived take of an outsider (in every sense). It was Obama who really loved the deplorables. Good grief. Find a few Democrats to represent the region. Little wonder they’re not happy. No one is more an enemy of average Americans (in flyover country) than the leadership and activists of the Democratic party.
“Tennessee’s lucrative soybean markets” probably shouldn’t exist.
Soy is suboptimal food for humans and livestock.
If it weren’t for distorting subsidies, would people be growing soy in the US?
To the extent that subsidies exist, they should be for production of nutritious food in an ecologically friendly manner.
Cut out the corn. Cut out the soy. Cut out the rapeseed.
What the hell? May I ask where you get your expertise? Soy makes excellent livestock feed and is a staple of Japanese, Korean and Chinese cusine. Corn is also good livestock feed and a major ingredient in many American dishes. Dump on rapeseed and you’ll get a lot of kickback from farmers in the Canadian prairie provinces (canola.) Food is where you find it, and scorning the diet choices of others doesn’t make your diet any more nutritious.
Now write an article on how the Democrats have totally screwed the people voting for them in big, liberal cities.
Could it be that Trump’s voters understand that sacrifices will have to be made to pull the US out of the ditch it’s been left in? And that they, un-liked and un-rich, will inevitably wind up making the greatest sacrifices?
Maybe they’re not making sacrifices for Mr. Trump but for their families, their States and their Nation.
It’s almost like patriotism
I find Mr. Bloodworth to be truly ignorant as to the motivations and the values of rural America, especially those who’s values are deeply informed by Biblical morality. He, like many, equates politics with forming coaltions on people “voting their pocketbook”. He does not realize, the ethos of people trying to follow Christ and doesn’t understand, that “prosperity now” equates to subservience to Molach, the old God who gave riches in return for the sacrifice of ones children on the alter of greed.
For Him, people ignoring their material aspirations can only be explained by a resort to “tribalism”, not understanding the thinking of those who see life and eternity as a battle between the “short term” gains to be had in this life to the truly valuable riches to be gained in eternity.
It is sad that our culture has fallen so far from the understanding of bedrock that inspired the greatest civilization the world has yet seen, that such an ignorant article can be written with a straight face.
The fact he mentions the place has very high levels of child abuse, I wonder how many of these God fearing, salt of the earth types actually practice what they preach
Certainly, there are hypocrites in large numbers. But as far as child abuse, (et al). These things are ubiquitous, and always have been. The difference is a culture that knows that they are wrong verses one that does not care.
Maybe he finds it difficult to see Christ’s teaching reflected in Trumps behavior. What does Trump do to make you think that he is eschewing short-term gains and looking for rewards in the long term, let alone eternity?
The attachment of the American Christian Right to the utterly godless Trump is one of the great unknowable mysteries of the era. You could even call it ineffable… Was getting Roe reversed worth all the hypocrisy? I guess they would say so.
Can you tell me, who is not utterly Godless? Pelosi delares herself Catholic yet champions “women’s rights” (aka support for the murder of those not yet born).
I myself defend Trump, much less because I believe in him, than he has all the right enemies. I am much less defending him, than declaring the hypocrosy and worse of those that oppose him!!!
Maybe Trump read about what Jesus did, rather than what he taught:
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2021%3A12-13&version=NKJV
For me, Trump is an unknown quantity. Now those on the other side, I know from watching them, that they are pretty much unadulterated evil.
And while to all appearences Trump is vainglorious and acquisitive, he is at least promoting, an agenda that astronomically better than the candy coated Nihilism foisted on us by his opposition.
There’s an “old God who gives riches in return for the sacrifice on one’s children on the alter (sic) of greed”? I’d ask where I can find him, except that I haven’t got any children to sacrifice….
That is your sacrifice.
Yeah, because sleeping in on the weekend, and taking four overseas holidays a year are bad things, right?
I miss those days!
Repeating a narrative over and over that rural people are “voting against their interest” doesn’t make it true. Rural culture is one of self-reliance. If they wanted all the amenities of city life they’d pack up and move into a tiny apartment. It doesn’t matter how many PHD Academics try to “talk sense into them” about the benefits of high taxes and government welfare. They don’t want to be dependent on a paternalistic State.
These people are more than aware of how city liberals view them. They’re also aware of how those same liberals treat their less wealthy constituents, putting them into a cycle of cradle to grave welfare that strips their autonomy.
As far as vouchers having a “devastating effect” on rural public schools, I don’t see it. You’re telling me that people who live in the middle of nowhere are going to take the 8k or whatever it is and drive their kid 30 miles to a charter school every day?
“Rural America” is about as self-reliant as the urban/Black community. They talk a big game about how “A Country Boy Can Survive” a la Hank Jr., but they’re no more self-reliant than any run-of-the-mill “We gots to grow our OWN food, We gots to run our OWN schools and start our OWN businesses” barstool Hotep.
“Rural America” has had a 90-year love affair with The Gubmint, and it is disingenuous for them to claim victim status, or for anyone to say they have been “abandoned” or “betrayed”. Generations of rural Americans have learned to love “The Check” (and whatever else they can get their hands on). The issues go far deeper than anything mentioned here. As in the cities, it’s a poverty of the soul and mind that is at the root of their issues.
In some ways you’re correct. There’s tremendous overlap between the attitude/mentality of the Urban Poor and the Rural Poor.
The difference is the Solidarity of population density. In poor urban areas where people are packed tightly together they tend to view themselves as a cohesive unit. Where things are spread out and people have yards to maintain, they see themselves as possessing at least some degree of autonomy.
I am not arguing that the rural poor are better than the urban poor as a group. I am arguing against the expansion of government welfare intervention into rural communities.
Most of your argument is just a criticism of my perspective and that’s fine. But do you think rural communities would be better served by getting more Democrat Activists into their communities to explain that the community as a whole is not fully accessing the liberating benefits of government welfare?
I suspect rural America’s devotion to Trump isn’t too hard to understand.
Rural America has suffered greatly under globalization. Simultaneously, the Democratic Party adopted a “progressive” ideology that doesn’t conceal its contempt for rural Americans (poor whites in particular).
When people are under great threat they retreat to family, tribe and community, which is precisely what rural America did in the face of globalism and abandonment by the Democratic Party.
Then along came Trump. At least he doesn’t despise the rural poor and makes a limited effort to help them. If Trump is a devil, he’s the lesser of two devils for many people.
I don’t think Trump cares about the rural poor any more that he cares about anyone else, but at least he tells them he cares about them.
The actions of the former Administration, compared with this Administration as it relates to disaster relief in Western North Carolina completely refutes your premise. 100%.
I doubt Trump even cares about his kids, to be honest. He is a textbook narcissist.
Without argument, the author assumes the superiority of public education as the default in 2025.
It’s a baseless assumption.
Rural Americans do not want the strings of cultural imperialism that accompany public education.
I got maybe four paragraphs into this sneering article and bailed. I checked out the author and, yup, a college professor (or “perfessor” as he would have the yokels say). I stopped wasting my time on these credentialed midwits a long ago.
This one even has a Bill Clinton doll.
Jeff Bloodworth Faculty Bio
And wears a bow tie!
I really enjoyed this essay. I appreciate writers who get out into the community and actually interview real life people.
I’m skeptical about some of the claims though. Weakley County has a population of 32,000. The biggest town has a population of 10,000. When it comes to school choice, it really doesn’t work. There simply aren’t enough students to create a bunch of schools to compete against the public system. You can offer parents vouchers, but unless they use them for home schooling, they don’t really have an option other than the public system. Residents there may oppose vouchers, but I’m not convinced about the stated reasons.
I’m also skeptical that Democrats are ostracized. I live in a rural community in Alberta. It’s about as conservative as it gets in Canada. People here simply don’t care about your political party affiliation. Maybe it’s different in Tennessee, but I’m skeptical of that as well, considering it was Democrat about 10 years ago.
Anyway, I enjoyed the essay. I’m skeptical about some elements of the narrative, but I appreciate the effort.
I think America is much more divided than most other places. Whilst I’m not too clued up on Canada, as a general rip of the thumb if you ask anybody in England, Aus or NZ about politics the most common answer would be that they’re all the same and all f***ing useless
It’s the same here really. The vast majority of people don’t pay attention.
I’m generally of the opinion that if every election UK election since the war had gone the other way, the country would be in the exact same situation it is now.
Except for Thatcher getting elected. That really shift some gears (for good or bad, depending on your perspective).
After the Winter of Discontent, it could hardly get worse, unless you were in an outdated job, and wouldn’t change. Then things really were bad.
Labour wouldn’t have smashed the unions like Thatcher did.
Don’t agree but even if I did I would say that that was OK when Govts were just equally bad at facing up to Britain’s issues. Now they are equally successful in their attempts to destroy Britain and British culture, and it’s NOT OK.
‘profit’ or ‘prophet’?
“Over almost”? Is that the same as almoster? I know pods are low on editors, but surely the writer rereads before posting….
And don’t call me Shirley.
Wow, the second out-of-touch/ignorance of the flyover states hit piece in the same letter. No need to comment, the other folks have done a wonderfull job letting Mr. Blood worth know he doesn’t know what the hell he is talking about. Especially the comment that referenced the poor white kid who took real umbrage with “white privilege”. The author should spend a few days and nights in the tougher parts of Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Seatte, San Francisco, or Portland if he really wants to experience people sacrificed for an agenda. Pathetic.