What Is an American?

In the previous post, I suggested that there are two cultures in America with very different views --- one “urban” and the other “rural”. This was painting with a very broad brush indeed and I admit it. Clearly, not everyone who voted for Trump lives in a rural area nor did everyone in the rural areas vote for him. But when you look at the voting map of the US by counties, it is clear where the majority of votes lie in both camps. For my own state of California, the state map shows blue for Clinton, but the county map shows that Clinton supporters fill a narrow swath along the coast with just a few inland bastions. Look at the country as a whole by counties and it is clear that rural America was Trump country and urban America voted for Clinton. Why is that?

There were many times during the last rugged year of electioneering when either Obama or Clinton faced the antagonism toward immigrants, women, or just plain racism and said, “That is not who we are.” And we urban liberals agreed with them; that is not who we are. But now that we have lost and Trump has won, we have to ask precisely what Americans really are. What should America mean to us and to the rest of the world?

The sad truth, I think, is that there are strong differences between urban and rural concepts of being American. Indeed, one of the peculiar consequences of that is the rural preference for state government against the urban preference for a national government. (Hence the Tea Party and other aspects of hating “big government”) Oddly enough, though, to the degree that we weaken the national government, we discard any uniform concept of being American in favor of just belonging to a local cult. The South, which has largely never given up on the Civil War and calls it the “war of northern aggression”, would really prefer to just be “Southerners” and let the Yankees be whatever so long as they don’t try to disrupt Southern life. Northwestern timber families would like to continue their lifestyle of cutting timber and forget the poor spotted owl or any other nationally promoted problem like saving the redwoods. In Appalachia, coal mining families would be happy to see Americans continue to burn coal indefinitely even if that means thousands of people on Pacific Islands not only losing their homes but even their nations. So one thing is clear, rural cultures and desires differ widely from one rural area to another but all agree that they should be able to do their things without intervention from outside. It is the urban dweller who worries about the environment being destroyed, world temperatures increasing out of bounds, and rising ocean waters. In a way, there is no consistent idea of what an American is in rural culture. Rural and urban Americans both largely vote for their self interests, but urban Americans share a more uniform view of self interests than rural people. Where rural people come together is in their Christian practice, their need for social and religious conformity, and their exclusion of people from the outside (the “other”).

The odd thing about this election is that I do not believe Trump represents the rural culture so, while rural people massively voted for him, I think they will be very disappointed in his performance. Trump, actually, represents the worst aspects of the urban culture. He is a bully, a cheater, a con man, and an abuser of women and other vulnerable people. And he is even proud of it. What, then, did rural people think they were getting by voting for Trump. In my opinion, they thought they were getting what they have thought Republicans would give them over every election in the past thirty years --- a take down of Washington and destruction of our national government.

Actually, I can understand why rural people want this to happen. I grew up in Cook County, Illinois (home of Chicago). State politics was always dominated by the rural communities in Illinois and liberal urban dwellers were oppressed. No wonder then that Democrats turned to national government to address and solve urban issues. Those we called “down-state Republicans” had no sympathy for urban issues. As a result, urban dwellers have been relatively happy with the direction of national government, while rural dwellers are rather steamed about it. Also, consider the era of civil rights in the South. It was our national government that intervened and walked little black children to the front doors of Southern schools. Urban dwellers looked to the rights voiced in our Constitutional Amendments and forced rural dwellers to conform to a national identity. But that was a political victory and not a cultural victory. Rural culture remained simply where it was and rural people became oppressed.