In the aftermath of the election between Republican President-Elect Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton, it’s become clear that there are deep divisions between those who chose Trump and those who voted for Clinton.
A big generalization would be to say that Trump voters predominantly reside in rural states such as Nebraska or Iowa whereas Clinton voters are clustered in urban centers such as New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. This is not entirely true, however, it’s true enough so that it bears further investigation.
One of the major problems in today’s America is that priorities of voters in urban parts of the country and those of voters in its more rural parts are so divergent. Americans in rural areas tend to think in terms of a strong national defense, closed borders, protection of religion, Second Amendment rights and fiscally conservative economic policies.
Urban Americans tend to desire multiculturalism, social justice, gay rights, women’s rights, rights for immigrants and fiscal policies that extend help to those in need. Perennial “hot button” issues such as gun control, affirmative action, amnesty for illegal immigrants, defense spending and abortion unfortunately tend to divide Americans by geography.
A lot of it is common sense; rural Americans tend to be more isolated and think more about protection, self-defense and religion. Urban Americans tend to think more about getting along with their neighbors in dense spaces and are more cosmopolitan in nature. Much of the divisions between these groups stem from one group not being able to relate to how the other one thinks.
When was the last time someone in the middle of a cornfield in Iowa was pondering the need for transgender bathrooms? When was the last time someone in downtown Los Angeles was considering the need for farm subsidies?
Rural living tends to encourage independence, whereas urban living tends to encourage dependence and interdependence. Rural citizens want to be able to take care of themselves and be left alone by the government, whereas people in urban areas tend to cling to government and want it to provide more services, not less.
Not only is the disconnect ideological, but it’s cognitive as well. Urban citizens tend not to know where their food was grown, how their waste is processed, where their natural resources come from or how land is managed. They merely have vague concepts that “free-range” animals are good, fracking is bad, guns kill people and “global warming” is going to make palm trees sprout in Minnesota one day.
For those in rural America, working with animals may be an everyday experience, and so, knowing about their welfare and what’s best for them is firsthand knowledge. For rural dwellers, guns are often an important component of protection for themselves and their families.
And people in rural communities believe that natural resources are best managed by those who come in everyday contact with them; for many such residents, “global warming” sounds like a concept dreamed up by scientists who want extra funding for their labs.
For rural voters, having decisions made by bureaucrats in Washington who have little to no direct understanding of the issues involved can be maddening; it’s already frustrating that these pencil-pushers have so much influence over things they know little about, but making matters worse is that the pool of taxpayers’ money is wasted by the impact of their ignorance.
A number of the country’s Founding Fathers, like Thomas Jefferson, believed that it was necessary to retain a balance between rural America and urban population centers. Jefferson wrote, “I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries; as long as they are chiefly agricultural; and this will be as long as there shall be vacant lands in any part of America. When they get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, they will become corrupt as in Europe.”
There are strong themes in classical literature equating rural living with honesty and positive moral values. Farming and living off the land were seen in marked contrast to urban existence where decadence all too often takes intractable root via crime, narcotics and immoral values.
In urban centers, the accumulation of material goods often replaces the spiritual growth gained through devotion to religion. Esotericism replaces practicality, and the lure of the exotic supplants the simple pleasures of everyday living.
When the presidential race was in full swing, both candidates were pandering to their respective geographic audiences in a big way, portraying their opponents’ base of supporters as bogeymen. The deep divisions, which have roots going back centuries, were emphasized, rather than being minimized.
Trump’s victory in the Electoral College was reminiscent of George W. Bush’s victory in the election of 2000. Both Trump and Bush were able to take advantage of geography to cater to audiences who weren’t coastal cultural elites.
For political observers in 2000, it was an absolute shock that a candidate could lose both the states of California and New York and still win the election; no candidate in recent political history had achieved that before.
For now, these divisions are strong, and the political bases of both parties are invested in keeping the differences sharply in focus. But in the end, progress and healing for the country will only come about by each group being able to see through the eyes of the other.
The geography of America isn’t going to change soon, but there is a need for urban voters to understand those in the country who live outside of metropolitan centers.
The “shock” of this election for the Democrats mostly springs from the ignorance of their ranks to the plight of people who have not benefitted economically from the largess doled out by the one percent who vacation on Martha’s Vineyard and in other high-brow enclaves.
Liberals and progressives need to realize that not all of the country works in an Internet startup with 10 employees in the heart of Silicon Valley and spends half their days looking at Instagram.
Likewise, voters in the middle of the country should know that coastal elites probably do not understand the nuances of land management, farm labor or the extreme scarcity of jobs in regions of the country that are not highly populated. In today’s age of social media and Twitter, headlines for stories get reduced to 140-character soundbites that too often take the form of “bad” or “good” platitudes based on their alignment with a particular political party.
For Democrats and Republicans alike, social justice topics — the admission of immigrants into the country, vetting or non-vetting of Muslims, the discontent of groups such as Black Lives Matter — too easily substitute for dialogue on what’s really plaguing rural and urban voters alike (although rural voters may feel it more intensely) — the economy.
In fact, for the nation’s voters to unite and have common purpose, talk of racial issues, accusations of sexism and/or homophobia should be secondary to what’s really at the root of most of the nation’s dilemmas: wages, productivity, output and incomes.
If median household incomes were higher, it’s likely that immigration would not be the provocative subject it is today. It’s likely that the recent increase in crime and civil unrest in the country would not be the issues they’ve become.
And it’s likely that so many other matters — health care, student loan debt, “sanctuary cities” and foreign-born worker visas — would not be getting the exposure in the media that they’re currently experiencing.
Focusing on Donald Trump’s economic plans and his initiatives in that arena particularly should be important for voters from all walks of life. Only if the trend of wage stagnation and erosion is reversed can a structural renaissance truly take place in our nation.
