threat to democracy – Sheila Kennedy

Two Different Worlds

What is prejudice?

Liberal folks wring their hands over the all-too-prevalent habit of dismissing “those people” as a monolithic whole. Prejudice, after all, means “pre-judging,” attributing essential, negative characteristics to a population that is actually very diverse. We see these stereotypes everywhere, despite the fact that visible exceptions to them are also everywhere.

It’s true that different cultures tend to accentuate different behaviors, and equally true that many people have a very limited tolerance for difference. One of the aims of the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) movement so scorned by “conservatives” is to calm the fears of folks who react fearfully and antagonistically to cultural differences.

I consider myself one of those people whose mantra is “let’s build bridges, not walls.” I support DEI efforts, I routinely decry the generalizations used to justify marginalization.

But what if a large body of evidence actually supports a negative view of a particular population?

The Daily Beast recently reviewed a book that documents the threat posed to democracy by rural America.

In the popular imagination of many Americans, particularly those on the left side of the political spectrum, the typical MAGA supporter is a rural resident who hates Black and Brown people, loathes liberals, loves gods and guns, believes in myriad conspiracy theories, has little faith in democracy, and is willing to use violence to achieve their goals, as thousands did on Jan. 6.

According to a new book, White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy, these aren’t hurtful, elitist stereotypes by Acela Corridor denizens and bubble-dwelling liberals… they’re facts.

The authors, Tom Schaller, a professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and Paul Waldman, a former columnist at The Washington Post, persuasively argue that most of the negative stereotypes liberals hold about rural Americans are actually true.

Among the reams of data they include to support their arguments, Schaller and Waldman provide evidence to show that rural whites “are the demographic group least likely to accept notions of pluralism and inclusion” and are far less likely to believe that diversity makes America stronger.

In rural America, support for Donald Trump’s Muslim travel ban ran 15 points higher than in urban areas. Rural whites are 13 points more likely to view LGBTQ+ Americans in a negative light, and express fear and anger toward immigrants—both legal and undocumented—at much higher rates than other Americans. Less than half, 46 percent, say diversity in their communities is something they value.

They are the largest segment of the population that incorrectly believes Trump won the 2020 election, at 47 percent. By contrast, only 30 percent of suburban residents and 22 percent of urban dwellers feel the same.

Rural whites were far more likely to refuse COVID vaccines. They were (and are) more likely to think President Obama wasn’t born in the United States. The authors report on a 2009 survey from North Carolina and Virginia in which rural Republicans were 20 percentage points more likely to believe in birtherism than non-rural GOP members. Rural Americans are 1.5 times more inclined to embrace the QAnon conspiracy theory than those who live in urban areas.

But the problems in rural America run deeper than hostility toward minorities and facts. Rural residents disproportionately express hostility toward basic democratic principles. They are more likely to favor restrictions on the press, oppose checks on presidential power, endorse white Christian nationalist views, and support efforts to restrict voting access.

Chillingly, more than one out of four rural residents say that Trump should be returned to office by force if necessary.

The authors are careful to note that not all citizens with anti-government views live in rural America, but they provide extensive evidence that “rural Americans are overrepresented among those with insurrectionist tendencies.” (They are also misrepresented in recent polls: Robert Hubbell notes that sampling in the NYT recent poll over-represented rural voters by nearly double their actual share of the 2020 vote.)

In a functioning democracy, White rural Americans–who are only 15 percent of the U.S. population—wouldn’t control the political process. But thanks to systemic issues, rural Whites exert wildly disproportionate power. Think gerrymandering and the excessive influence of our most sparsely populated states.

California and Wyoming each have two Senators even though Los Angeles County—with its 10 million residents—has a population 17 times larger than all Wyoming. Senate Democrats, with 51 seats, represent some 193 million people; Senate Republicans, with 49 seats, represent 140 million people.

And don’t get me started on the Electoral College.

These systemic issues are why the resentments and anti-democratic world-views of White rural America matter. We shouldn’t paint rural America with too broad a brush–but we also shouldn’t ignore the very real threat posed by this faction of rural America.

It’s a delicate balance.

Comments

Diagnosis And Treatment

Pointing out that a doctor cannot treat an illness successfully if that illness isn’t correctly identified/diagnosed is to state the glaringly obvious. I would suggest that the same caution should be applied when we attempt to address the ills of society.

Charles Blow–in my estimation–has offered precisely that insight in a recent opinion piece the New York Times.

Blow begins with what is now a depressingly familiar litany of the sins of the party that calls itself Republican–a cult that bears less and less resemblance to what used to be the mainstream of that party. As he asks, what do you call members of a party who are invested in an obvious lie–not to mention a liar “determined to undermine, corrupt and even destroy our democracy?” What about that party’s leaders, who feel entitled to use that lie “as a pretext to suppress the votes and voices of Americans with whom they disagree?”

What do you call a party where many of its members have worked against a lifesaving, society-freeing vaccine in the middle of a pandemic, exposing many of their own followers to the deadly virus, all for the sake of being contrarian, anti-establishment and anti-science?

Those accusations–that litany–is, or should be, stupefyingly familiar by now. The contribution Blow makes in this column is his insistence that this is anything but “politics as usual,” and that we need to recognize that fact if we are to summon the will and wit to overcome the threat these people pose to democracy and the rule of law.

I have heard all the things that the moderates and neutralists have to say: Overheated language helps nothing and alienates people who could otherwise be converted. Don’t cast as evil someone with whom you simply have a disagreement. Build bridges, don’t burn them.

I could understand and appreciate all of that in another time. I can recall being impressed by how well a conservative argument was asserted, even if I disagreed with it. I can remember when conservatism was just as intellectual as liberalism, and compromises could be made to feel like the combining of the best of both…

But we should also not underplay or sugarcoat the darkness of the current season.

I don’t see how we continue to pretend that this is politics as usual, that it’s normal squabbling between ideological opposites. No, something is deeply, dangerously wrong here. This is not the same as it has always been.

Blow doesn’t offer a strategy for dealing with the situation that he has accurately described, and I certainly don’t have a solution, or even a proposed intervention. But I do know that you cannot solve a problem you are unwilling to recognize. A doctor cannot cure someone’s cancer if she continues to insist that what ails the patient is just a common cold.

Let’s be honest: A significant minority of the American public is dangerously mentally ill. (Mental illness, as Mitch recently reminded us in a comment to a previous post, is ” a state of mind which prevents normal perception, behavior, or social interaction”) A troubling number of those who have been drinking this generation’s Kool Aid are acting out their fantasies–shooting up pizza parlors, staging an insurrection, denying the reality of a pandemic…Failure to recognize the extent to which the moment we occupy differs from the ideological or political disagreements most of us formerly experienced will make it impossible to fashion an effective response.

I wish I knew what that “effective response” might look like. Other than a massive GOTV effort, I don’t. But I do know–and yesterday’s blog highlighted– that we aren’t dealing with the common cold.

Comments

Twenty Percent Scary

I recently came across an article reporting that twenty percent of Americans are Christian Nationalists. I have no way of evaluating the accuracy of the survey research that led to that number, but even ten percent would be an absolutely chilling number.

Attention to the phenomenon and the threat it poses has spiked recently, thanks to the central role played by Christian Nationalists in the January 6th attack on the Capitol. A Google search for the term returns a large number of articles, academic analyses, and opinion pieces, most of them highly critical. Thomas Edsall rounded up a subset of the academic articles in a recent column for the New York Times opining that it would be impossible to understand January 6th without investigating the movement’s role in the uprising.

Edsall quoted from a book by Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry,“Taking America Back for God,” which described Christian Nationalism as a stew of “nativism, white supremacy, patriarchy and heteronormativity, along with divine sanction for authoritarian control and militarism.” Christian Nationalism, as they analyzed it, is ethnic and political as much–or more–than religious.

Understood in this light, Christian nationalism contends that America has been and should always be distinctively ‘Christian’ from top to bottom — in its self-identity, interpretations of its own history, sacred symbols, cherished values and public policies — and it aims to keep it this way.

Edsall quotes a similar sentiment from the author of another recent book, “The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism,”

It is a political movement, and its ultimate goal is power. It does not seek to add another voice to America’s pluralistic democracy, but to replace our foundational democratic principles and institutions with a state grounded on a particular version of Christianity, answering to what some adherents call a ‘biblical worldview’ that also happens to serve the interests of its plutocratic funders and allied political leaders.

Perry addressed the role of Christian Nationalism on January 6th, noting the use of religious symbols during the insurrection such as the cross, Christian flag, Jesus saves sign, etc.

But also the language of the prayers offered by the insurrectionists both outside and within the Capitol indicates the views of white Americans who obviously thought Jesus not only wanted them to violently storm the Capitol in order to take it back from the socialists, globalists, etc., but also believed God empowered their efforts, giving them victory.

There’s much, much more. It’s important to recognize that Christian Nationalists aren’t going to be defeated by secular bloggers, critical “elitist” columnists, or worried academics. The movement can only be effectively countered by those I think of as actual Christians, and fortunately, some have risen to the challenge.Their organizational statement begins by describing their concern with “a persistent threat to both our religious communities and our democracy — Christian nationalism.”

Christian nationalism seeks to merge Christian and American identities, distorting both the Christian faith and America’s constitutional democracy. Christian nationalism demands Christianity be privileged by the State and implies that to be a good American, one must be Christian. It often overlaps with and provides cover for white supremacy and racial subjugation. We reject this damaging political ideology and invite our Christian brothers and sisters to join us in opposing this threat to our faith and to our nation.

Instead, these Christians believe that:

People of all faiths and none have the right and responsibility to engage constructively in the public square.

Patriotism does not require us to minimize our religious convictions.

One’s religious affiliation, or lack thereof, should be irrelevant to one’s standing in the civic community.

Government should not prefer one religion over another or religion over nonreligion.

Religious instruction is best left to our houses of worship, other religious institutions and families.

America’s historic commitment to religious pluralism enables faith communities to live in civic harmony with one another without sacrificing our theological convictions.

Conflating religious authority with political authority is idolatrous and often leads to oppression of minority and other marginalized groups as well as the spiritual impoverishment of religion.

We must stand up to and speak out against Christian nationalism, especially when it inspires acts of violence and intimidation—including vandalism, bomb threats, arson, hate crimes, and attacks on houses of worship—against religious communities at home and abroad.

Whether we worship at a church, mosque, synagogue, or temple, America has no second-class faiths. All are equal under the U.S. Constitution. As Christians, we must speak in one voice condemning Christian nationalism as a distortion of the gospel of Jesus and a threat to American democracy.

I can only hope (and pray!) that these Christians number more than twenty percent…

Comments