Category: Labor and Working

What if the polarization of American politics and rise of right-wing populism in the Republican Party are a function of rural parts of the country becoming more like the historic South?

That is the surprising suggestion of Will Wilkinson in a fruitfully provocative Substack post. Wilkinson is something of an expert on the subject, having done important empirical work on the role of population density in driving political polarization and populist backlash. His argument, in sum: Polarization and populism are caused by urbanization and its economic, social, and political consequences, with cities growing demographically and economically, and becoming more progressive, over time, while depopulating rural areas succumb to economic decline and zero-sum, reactionary politics.

In his latest post, Wilkinson merely extends this research a few steps by observing both an increasing cultural homogenization across different rural areas, each of which used to be more distinctive, and the growing prevalence of Confederate flags far outside of the historic South, in the rural areas of northern states and states that didn’t even exist at the time of the Civil War.

So far, these are merely anecdotes, but if verified by more rigorous research they could point toward something real and important: Not just growing ideological unification across the rural areas of the country, but the drift of that ideology in the direction of the Confederacy. The point isn’t that the American countryside increasingly wants to avenge the honor of Southern slave owners for their loss in a war that ended over a century and a half ago. Rather, the people who live in these areas share with the historic South an intense distrust of the federal government, veneration of local law enforcement, resentment of city folk, suspicion of minorities and foreigners, hostility to technologically driven change, and a keen sensitivity to cultural slights.

Those are the senses in which we may be living through what Wilkinson calls the “Southernification of rural America.”

Wilkinson himself leaves unanswered both how and why this may be happening. On the question of how, I’d look at social media and its remarkable capacity to forge ideological solidarity across vast distances in the real world. Where prior to the rise of Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit, an angry resident of rural Maine would have found no political outlet for his rage beyond his own community, now he might link up online with likeminded residents of rural Mississippi and Oregon, recognizing a similar set of grievances and organizing a virtual community around them.

As for why growing numbers are gravitating toward Confederate ideas and iconography, it may be nothing more than an example of people grabbing onto what’s at hand. The South has long produced an abundant supply of populist anger and resentment. Maybe all that has changed in our time is that there is now a much larger audience and much greater demand for that poisonous political message.

Democrats and independents who support President Joe Biden, we need to talk. About talking.

Specifically, we need to talk about criticizing Biden, and whether doing so is harmful. Many of the president’s supporters are fearful that any negative comments about Biden just play into the hands of Republicans. As a reaction to this fear, they discourage criticism of the Biden administration, particularly on social media, which is prone to hysterical partisanship even on a good day.

This is a mistake, both as a political strategy and as a matter of civic virtue. Democrats who fear the weaponization of dissent are, in fact, playing into Republican hands. Nothing could serve the Republicans better than to have the Democrats become a mirror of the GOP. To do so is bad for Biden, for the last remaining sane major party in American politics and for the habits of democratic citizenship.

Right decision but getting lots wrong

I say this as a Biden voter who has written and commented at length about what I think is the bungled American pullout from Afghanistan. Yes, I think Biden made the right decision. Yes, I think the cowardice and craven opportunism of the Trump administration dealt Biden a bad hand. Yes, I think the pullout was likely to be messy no matter how well planned it was.

But that doesn’t mean I am also required to say I think Biden’s team did this well. I could name any number of moves I think were wrong, almost all of them emanating from a dysfunctional policy process. The president was dug in on a deadline; the State and Defense departments don’t seem to know what the other is doing; the National Security Council seems to have failed in its job to provide the president with the best range of options from the key departments; the intelligence community is bickering over who got which things wrong.

Even the speechwriting shop has bombed twice, sending Biden out to the podium with meandering speeches in which Biden’s writers attempted lofty rhetoric when the moment called for a resolute and sober leveling with the American people about what’s happening now and what happens next.

But these arguments, for people determined to protect Biden at all costs, are irrelevant. Their answer is that Trump was worse, that criticizing Biden undermines him at a crucial time, and that any such criticisms will be turned into ammunition in the coming electoral cycle.

Enough of this fearfulness.

First, Democrats should ignore the GOP and its carping about Biden. The Republicans have ceased to be a vessel for any kind of ideas. They are going to attack Biden because demonizing their opponents is the only card they have left to play. They have decided on minority rule, even if it means overturning elections, and if they capture the House in 2022 – which is more than possible – they will impeach Biden and figure out the reason later.

Forget about persuasion. Democrats are not going to start voting for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis or South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem because of the mess in Kabul, and Republicans were not somehow gettable voters who are going to be scared off by a foreign policy blunder. We’re too polarized for that.

The Democrats, if they wish to be a governing party, must treat the GOP the way the adults in the dining room treat the rowdy kids at the children’s table: Ignore their screaming, and limit the damage they can do to the room. Express valid concerns to the White House, ask what legislative or other remedies might help, and get on with the business of running the country.

Michael O’Hanlon: Biden’s blundered Afghanistan withdrawal requires keeping military in country

Second, governments do not improve without honest critics in their own party. A party that shouts down dissent in the name of winning elections and demands absolute fealty toward the leader is … well, that’s the modern Republican Party. The GOP has no platform, no direction, no groups within it to drive policy or do anything beyond injecting the requisite number of voters with pure rage. When internal dissent collapses, parties become little more than vehicles for extremist kooks. The Democrats are better than that.

GOP is beyond reasoned debate

Third, to avoid dissent for the sake of politics is to corrode the norms that undergird everything about the American system of government. To criticize our politicians is to ensure that they, and we, remember that they are our fellow citizens and not gods. We are accountable for our choices to elect them, and they are accountable for their decisions as stewards of the public trust. No man or woman is above this basic principle.

Finally, dissent and disagreement – conducted with honesty, candor and good faith – strengthens the habits that matter in a democracy: fairness, reason, tolerance, responsibility, understanding. Recently on this very opinion site, my friend David Rothkopf defended Biden’s handling of the Afghan operation, and I found that I agreed with him more than I disagreed, but that our differences on the subject were important and worth talking about.

This is more than just kibitzing over military operations; this is what citizenship looks like. Two people who care very much about their country are trying to find where we think we agree and where we diverge. We hope to enlighten each other and any of our fellow citizens who read our arguments.

David Rothkopf: There’s chaos and risk in Afghanistan exit, but Biden critics are getting it mostly wrong

Republicans, by contrast, are beyond hope on the issue of reasoned debate. But the rest of us can improve the public space with more argument rather than less. We do no favors to the president or to our constitutional system by living in fear of what the worst among us might do with our views; we can only control what we say, and what we think, and what we believe would be best for our nation.

If that means having discussions that make those of us in the same political boat uncomfortable, so be it. Discomfort is part of being an adult, but if we choose good faith discussions with each other instead of being paralyzed by fear of our political enemies, we can emerge from those discussions stronger, better citizens and more likely to prevail when working together for a common goal – including in an election.

Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) is a member of USA TODAY’s Board of Contributors, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College and an instructor at the Harvard Extension School. His new book, “Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from within on Modern Democracy,” was published Aug. 19. All opinions are his own.

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