One of the uglier elements of last year’s election was the Republican’s appeal to “Real America”: the rural, white, working-class, religious demographic that makes up the Republican base. Efforts to pander to this crowd, combined with fearmongering over the possibility of a black president, led to embarrassing incidents that bordered on xenophobia (remember the “terrorist!” shouts at the Palin rallies?) Additionally, it created a myth about rural America as “authentic,” “idyllic,” and somehow morally superior to urban areas.
Timothy Egan has an article about the methamphetamine epidemic in small towns in America, which poked holes in the myth of small town righteousness:
In truth, neither of these images does justice to the complexities of small-town life. And neither version does anything to advance the cause of an honest rural policy, something that might help some of the worst casualties of global economic tumult. People in small towns are more likely to be poor, more likely to lack health insurance, more likely, if they are young, to move out, according to government statistics. In the invisible margins off the interstate, the story about decline takes place in slow motion, rarely attracting a headline.
The sad part is that the “small town virtue” meme really does a disservice to areas that are getting poorer, and losing jobs and population. From a national perspective, these social problems are cloaked by a nostalgic vision of football and apple pie, and crime and drug abuse are disregarded because, stereotypically, they are “urban” problems.
In the meantime, a cynical group of people exploit the ignorance and fears of rural, under-educated Americans for personal and political gain.
