Rural and Urban Americans, Equally Convinced the Rest of the Country Dislikes Them

Stan continople makes an excellent point -- a point that is evident to David Leonhardt too. "Americans really are divided on abortion, guns, race and other cultural issues, but they’re remarkably progressive on economics." All Americans share concerns about health care, education, upward mobility and the opportunity to work at a job that provides a decent wage. These are the real issues that unite rural and urban Americans.

I live in a rural county, but fortunately it is close to a town with plenty of good restaurants and things to do. I vote blue all the time and really don't discuss politics with my conservative neighbors. I don't long for the good old days. I want to move forward. Building of homes is increasing and the hope is that the citizens moving in will help the area become more progressive and open in their views as the population increases.

The dramatic political shifts starting in 2008 is a factor of the realization that if a mixed-race person could become president then traditional America was slipping away rapidly. It likely concerned traditionalists that people were drifting out of their assigned lanes. Even in less critical areas, such as blacks playing in the National Hockey League, was jarring. People of the same gender being allowed to marry was painful to many. The ability to have a Supreme Court ready to slow, if not reverse, these lane changes is very important to those wanting America to return to an earlier period.

How much of the divide is attachment to faith and regular congregational worship- otherwise, going to church as opposed to a personal faith? The cities seem to be far less religious in observance than either the Burbs or the small towns- you will often find more people eating out on a Sunday morning than attending Church services in the city and the inverse is true in small towns. Those not going to services on Sunday in small town America are probably on a fishing boat, in a Deer Stand or in a Duck Blind.

I don't care if rural Republicans like me. I boycott products from red states complicit with Trump. Anymore I don't identify with being an American, instead I identify with being a citizen of the 5th largest economy California where we still have laws that help people. Any state that doesn't border an ocean is not worth visiting as far as I am concerned. And any state with no gun laws is not a place I want to visit either. So who cares if they like me or not, I don't like where they live and feel fulfilled living in my adopted home California. Red states inhabitants are invisible to me.

Sorry, guys, but I have NEVER heard any non-progressive mention his or her opinion concerning how progressives see them. We allot all such inter=party comments to relief that we don't live in the big cities now and will be gladder should the dollar collapse and the energy distribution systems go away. Have I heard regrets that 4 out of 5 colleges have basically no non-pregressives teaching there? Yes.

Time for 2018 Green Acres reboot.

Other things play into this. Urban development - sprawl - has eaten up millions of acres of prime farmland. Insensitive urban policy, as well as tax and regulatory codes, have caused this and created an urban-rural boundary tension. Driving farms farther from city centers has alienated rural and urban dwellers by distance and specialization of lifestyles. Reverse sensitivity arises where new suburbanites are intolerant of the tractor going 10 mph on a road with a 50 mph speed limit - until the next subdivision takes care of that farmer. Industrial agriculture has devastated rural economies, and killed viable family farms. It has also led to urbanites not knowing where their food actually comes from. (Hint: It ain't Whole Foods. "Farm to Table" is a foodie conceit, not a basis for policy change.) Far fewer kids grow up now having had any direct experience with farming or a rural lifestyle as they once did. There are certainly rural attitudes that play into this, such as racism as the article says. Rural land owners were more than willing to cash out to make room for more houses and malls. But overall it's the rural areas that have been the big losers. (I am and have always been a city kid, but I've done lots of work on this subject.) Over a period of decades of all this it's inevitable that attitudes change. Good data, but no surprises.

As a lifelong New Yorker, but one who has traveled the length and breath of this country for five decades, I can see why this division exists. I've always passed it off as different strokes for different folks. But what has been occurring of late is way beyond people's preferences for living in a particular region. The gap has been widening since the invention of the Internet. What was heralded as a marvel, something that would bring US closer together had had the opposite effect. Most of US are still stuck in our isolated corners of the World, each of us operating within a small bubble. We know of the World from see on TV. This presents a wide margin for distortion. The difference between witnessing an event second-hand experiences first-hand, actually being there, is the difference between fake news versus fact. As I stated earlier, my wife and I, long retired, travel extensively. If we were to judge people strictly by the media has to say about a particular people and region we'd be vastly mistaken. America is a vast country and Americans a diverse lot. People do have a wide range of political opinions, and you can find the stereotype. But to then equate that stereotype with all who live in that area as being dumber than you because they see things differently is doing yourself and them a disservice. Once we end this stinking thinking and realizing we have much more in common than not, might make us all a tad more tolerant. DD Manhattan

I think the article does not really delve into the real question: do urban people really look down on the rural ones, and do rural people actually look down on the urban ones? I think many people are not only aware that there are many democrats in rural areas and many republicans in cities, but actually understand that not because you’re on the other side politically (or disagree about gun rights, immigration, race issues, abortion…) means you are an idiot. That you can think that good and clever people can make the wrong choice (from your own point of view) about who to vote for and who to support, and yet still have the same fundamental values and belong to the same country for which they also wish the best. And, rather than looking down on them, could actually have a very pleasant time with them meeting at the bar, around a barbecue or doing whatever else you want to do if you just don’t talk about polemic topics you can’t do much about anyway…

The American rural-urban split is very old. You can go back to city hater Thomas Jefferson and urban flaneur Benjamin Franklin. But in the 1945-70 period the split was narrowing, as a sort of social democratic state reduced inequity. But in recent decades, this divide too has widened. As an urbanite, I have no trouble acknowledging that many rural people have real troubles. Many towns' populations are declining, rarely good news for a town. An increasingly centralized and corporate controlled health care system has closed many rural hospitals and clinics. Both cities and small towns have been hit with plant closures, but people in small towns have fewer alternatives (and often little or no retraining). The problem is that rural people have been told to go after false targets--liberals, immigrants, gays, environmentalists, federales coming to seize their guns. They're told that coal is coming back, which is simply false, regardless of the attitude of the federal government. Meanwhile, the coal companies get to dump waste in Appalachian rivers. Union busting companies have decimated people's pay and benefits. Fox News, Breitbart, and the whole right wing disinformation machine tell rural people that, contrary to virtually everysocial indicator, black people are being given goodies at the expense of whites. As one commentor noted, sometimes progressives can reach disaffected rural voters. For example, Bernie Sanders represents Vermont, the most rural state in the union.

The demise of our public education system has played a huge role here. As someone who has lived in the city, in suburbia and in rural America, I see in rural America the inability to think, reason, make valid judgments and in many cases the inability to read and do basic math. If you can't think how can ever make rational decisions? You can't.

The points of similarity are hardly comforting. Two sides who both believe the other side hates them will exacerbate divisions, not close them. Similarly, if both sides feel financially insecure, that will also encourage scapegoating and blame. It seems the biggest disagreements are racial. In the future we may see a nonwhite urban majority (plus white “sympathizers”) versus a white rural majority who distrusts them. The combination of these attitudes suggests the United States will break up some time in the future over irreconcilable differences.

We like to believe in this divide, because it hides the fact that the real divide isn't political, it's economic. There are the rich and the rest of us, no matter who you are or where you live. Both parties have sold us down the river and only serve the interests of the rich. Americans are afraid to admit that we live in a rigid class system, nowadays more rigid than Europe's. But we prefer to believe in The Myth of the American Dream than to face the distasteful reality.

Instead of surveying sample popiulations in the counties, count how they actually voted.Which counties changed a lot, which didn't. The patterns are unmistakable. Now cross-reference that with what happened to home prices between 2008 and 2016 -- where and how fast they recovered, where they didn't. When your life savings are in your family home, and its market value falls by (34%) -- an average for 2006 to '09 -- and its recovery is very, very slow, you are a lot more likely to vote for change than for the status quo. Forget race and education for a minute, and focus on what real suffering losing a a huge chunk of your life savings imposes on a person's state of mind. That suffering is equal-opportunity and slow to heal.

Political parties have always changed over time in America re constituents or even being replaced. The Republicans were born out of the Whig party. The Republicans were then the party of Lincoln, emancipation, freedom, equality and it morphed into what it is today, much more conservative. The Democrats were solid in the South, now they are an endangered species and more liberal all over. After app. 1920, the republicans became the party of the more rural farmer after they had been democrats. Around Teddy Roosevelt's time, both major parties were progressive. The point being there will always be differences. The key for an astute Presidential politician it to tap into the other side, even if slightly. Obama successfully did that and served two terms. He ran as an American and not as a black. Hillary stuck to her identity obsessed, liberal establishment views and served none. Trump, albeit in a demagogic way, tapped into the blue collar democratic voters in Pa., Wisc. and Mich. and won. If the democrats had nominated a more progressive, populist candidate and switched app. 80k votes in three states, Trump would have be relegated to the trash heap of history. Learn from history or be prepared to repeat its' worst mistakes.

We may not be different people but urbanites are less likely to believe in any exceptionalism. Since Sarah Palin came on the scene with her definition of “real Americans” rural voters, even those who did not support her, have wrapped themselves in the Flag and decided they were entitled to have their values govern because those values and represent America

After the 2008 economic collapse, the small rural town where I live lost 20% of its population. The story was similar in other rural communities in Upstate NY. We are in economic crisis and the downward spiral continues. There is truth in the idea that the people who live here think that those city folks look down on us. They also think they are being exploited by the cities who take "our" money and give it to the undeserving. When city people buy property here, the locals think they're stupid for paying so much. I'm not an urban dweller, but I read a lot of opinions and I think there are people living in cities who believe that the problems of people in the boonies is of their own making. That's not just Republican thought focused on individual responsibility. It's something more. I also see that people think that rural people get more from taxes than they pay in. My urban daughter often tells me that Republican rural areas are leeches who take more than their share of taxes. Since her family is part of the top 10%, that's probably true, but primarily because people in rural areas are poor. A family with similar income to my daughter's family living here pays taxes that are very similar to hers. The exception might be in local property taxes for school and county government because they are not as progressive as income taxes. Why has this happened? It's not necessarily Russians, but manipulation of public opinion has increased with the goal of dividing.

I live in the country, but have mostly lived in downtown urban environments previously and due to freedom to work wherever I am, I still choose to live about 2 months of the year out of an urban hotel somewhere (will be in NYC and Paris most of June, for example). My rural neighbors are so judgy about cities, and too many people I get to meat in cities are too judgy about my 80% rural residence (and the state I live in). To the people in the country -- the City isn't a slum full of crime and terribleness. It is full of amenities and choices and the freedom that comes from being able to live anonymously. It is also full of judgy people though. To the people in the city - the Country isn't full of ignorant rednecks and terribleness. It has great open spaces, privacy, and a quietness. It is also full of judgy people though. All together, I get tired of people being judgey about where people live.

It would never have occurred to me to look down on someone for being rural. For being a racist?...Yes. But rural racists are no worse or better than other racists, and deserve the same lack of respect.

Whatever you focus on expands. If you want to look for difference you can find it in your imagination. If you want to look for similarities, we apparently share 60% of our DNA with bananas and chickens, 96% with chimpanzees - https://www.getscience.com/biology-explained/how-genetically-related-are... and 99.9% with any random strange human sitting beside us - https://goo.gl/J5A7Mg

I was born in Placerville, California, a quite rural place outside of Sacramento. I was raised in Grants Pass, Oregon, a very rural place in Southern Oregon. At the age of 18, I left for Portland (OR) and saw a totally different culture. In fact, just leaving Grants Pass, getting "over the mountains" into the Willamette Valley and into Eugene feels like one needs a passport. Later, working as a union organizer, I lived in Los Angeles (by far my favorite city) and also in New York City (Harlem). Culturally, I am - now 31 and self-exiled in Europe - very distant from the people of Grants Pass. The hard right is strong there, and I can't see any big progressive changes happening. The provincial rural white mindscape is one that is deeply entrenched in the past; with that said, there are terrible bigots in the major urban areas: Trump himself is from New York City. And there are progressives, liberals and leftists in rural areas (especially in Black rural areas); therefore, creating a cross-pollination of resistance to hard right will require a more global connectivity. The Internet is helpful here; from my mid-teens I was able to expose myself to anti-war, progressive ideas, and build on these through connections with people from all over the world (I was an avid Guardian reader - online - at 15). Change is still possible, if we want it.

I've spent most of my life in rural areas - if not actually out in the country, then in what would probably best be called small metropolitan areas - the 100,000 to 200,000 'cities' that most resemble suburbia in living conditions and amenities. I did spend 15 years in Minneapolis/St. Paul, genuinely in the cities themselves, since suburbs seem to have most of the disadvantages of both urban and rural society. During the recession before last I moved back to rural North Dakota, figuring I might as well be un/under employed here as well as there. This is background for my current frustration at the continued 'rural bashing' I see here, not just in today's comment section, but in the NYT Opinion columns and even in the news. First, enough of the 'flyover country' comments. We get that you have no real experience with the diverse cultures being bashed by that term. Second, about that electoral college advantage. It's not that outdated a system when the folks from densely populated areas have no knowledge of our voices and needs. Like it or not, most of your food and energy supplies aren't produced in the cities. Third, I think you'd find that the quality and level of our education matches or exceeds urban levels overall. There's a lot more to say, but I'm out of characters here. I'm glad to have come back to live here.

I agree with "JS, Seattle. I grew up in the rural New York in an extended family that lived here for generations, with a dairy farmer uncle working 7 days a week mostly outdoors from 5 am until dark. TV was available, but we seldom had time or interest in watching it. Walter Cronkite, the epitome of truth, honesty with no spin, was our source of national and world news. I was shocked to visit my college educated father and mother in their 70's until they died, constantly watching FOX News, Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck and TV Evangelicals, repeating what they heard. They had been salts of the earth. If our conversations did not touch any issue covered by these media outlets, they seemed to be the same. They had been regular Walter Cronkite people, until right wing media filled them with ideas, language and commentary about other people that were criticized by right wing media. I had never heard this before from them. They had always been open, worldly, understanding and charitable. But not after indoctrination. I saw this in other family members with limited education, watching the same programs, saying and thinking the same things. It has seemed that politics, media, merchandising, institutions, human services, corporate policies, everything has moved toward the right trying to be accepted or take advantage of the ever increasingly extreme movement to the right, until we have what we have now. Shoot, kill and blame others. Scary.

I have long believed that politicians have a great deal to gain by fostering polorizatio in this country - the old divide and conquer strategy. They have gotten very good at it, and we have swallowed it hook, line and sinker. We no longer view each other as fellow Americans - we are now members of carefully crafted tribes and the politicians reap the benefits at the voting booth. They no longer have to run on their records or policy ideas, if they even have any. They don’t have to be productive, or even honest. All they have to do is align themselves with the tribe and bellow loudly about how awful the other tribe is. We allow it, and we’re paying a heavy price for it.

My comment is based on my experiences, living in urban Brooklyn, a multi-year sojourn into central Kansas, and a more recent experience in suburban Connecticut. From my recollection of urban living. Urbanites enjoy the conveniences of transportation shopping, and access to health care. They have often lived their entire lives in urban areas. Understanding the feelings and concerns of rural residents and, to a lesser degree, suburbanites requires rubbing shoulders and shared communication. . I found a great deal of comfort in a more rural setting. I did not object to the hour long drive to shopping centers. The automobile has long proven to be a favored means of transportation in my comfort zone. Being in a rural environment was a trip into the unknown. Investment of time and money into the support of a living standard is central to the lives of rural populations. If you don't invest in your property through your efforts your living conditions are lessened. My experience in suburbia, suggests a greater degree of shared life experience between suburban and urban people. Most suburbanites do invest i their properties, There is greater convenience in this setting than in rural communities. Most importantly, many suburbanites have had a degree of urban experience. This allows for greater understanding across the social-economic divide.

I grew up in a rural area of NH and have lived an urban life for the past 25 years. But what has happened in rural areas regarding political beliefs over the past decade or so is kind of shocking, it's not the same conservatism that I recall, it's a much meaner, more paranoid, more angry, more fearful, and less well informed kind of conservatism. I know a whole host of dynamics are involved, but I have to believe that the prevalence of Fox News and right wing talk radio has played a major role in the dumbing down of rural areas, because those "news" sources wield such outsized influence in those places.

How many hospitals have closed in rural states? How many schools are underfunded in rural counties by Republicans, which is less money in rural counties? How many rural roads and bridges need fixing? We're a very, very rich nation and we're near full employment right now. So it's not going to get any better in the 38th year of Reaganomics for rural areas. This is as good as it gets for Republican voters, before the historic debt for tax cuts comes due.

And the losers in this this divide will be? The Rurals. Cities are growing. Cities are thriving. Many more people are moving to cities than are moving to rural areas. The jobs are in the cities. The innovation is in the cities. The venture capital is in the cities. The ability to adapt to rapid changes is built into city dynamics. The Rurals can look down on cities all they want. They can bemoan the hotbeds of homosexuality and “urban” crime....whatever offends their tender religious sensibilities on any given day... But the action is in the cities. So the Rurals should consider what they are accomplishing other than throwing the baby out with the bath water.

My impression is that the agony of 9/11 made the rest of the country more sympathetic to New York City. An extreme New Yorker in accent and attitude such as Donald Trump being elected President in the late 20th Century when public attitudes tended to be hostile toward NYC would have been implausible. But after 9/11, NYC was seen by voters in the rest of the country as more of an integral part of America.

In their NY primaries, both Cuomo and Clinton won NYC handily but fared dismally upstate, save for a few urban centers. In fact, the maps are almost identical. Their opponents, Teachout and Sanders, both progressives won most rural counties. Rather than assume that all rural voters are by default Republicans, maybe they're just looking for a good reason to vote Democratic, something the corporate-controlled party won't allow, as it might cost their mega-donors a pittance more in taxes and wages.

This is entirely too simplified and one dimensional. Need to combine race and geographic location with this urban-rural split to get a true read of U.S. political inclinations. It's a three dimensional matrix.

It is an undeniable fact that the overwhelming majority of Obama stimulus money was spent on high population density urban areas. We in rural areas kept seeing on the national news how "the economy had recovered," but rural unemployment was still high and rural industrial centers were still closing. There is a lot to be said about the cultural divide, but there was the very real situation that rural economic recovery was slow if it happened at all. Telling people in these areas that they had to pack up and move from a place they had lived for generations to go to the city for work was just flat out insulting let alone economically impossible. This isn't just perception. There is real economic data to back up how rural America was mistreated under the Obama administration.

I recently got in an argument with a family member who lives in the Missouri about this very issue. She was complaining that the national media was not covering the Greitens scandal or how the trade war and the erratic weather was affecting Midwest farmers. I told her that I had been following the stories in both the NY Times and CNN. She said but the stories weren't the main headlines so they didn't really count. And she further argued that the media only puts stories on the front pages that affect the journalists personally (so, therefore only stories about DC or NYC or other major metropolitan areas where the national media offices are located). I was pretty shocked at her attitude, especially as she was once a reporter for local media and had been, until that moment, a fierce defender of the media. I told her that I resented her city mouse/country mouse mentality, that we in the cities did care what was happening elsewhere in the country especially as many of us came from rural and suburban areas, and that my fellow city dwellers deal with the same issues her community deals with like income inequality, the opioid crisis, etc. She really didn't want to hear it. It just didn't fit her narrative. She wanted to be in her echo chamber. It was disappointing because what I saw was an intelligent woman getting sucked into the "them vs us" mentality that is fueled by politicians and special interests and is eroding our country.

They’re both right.

Elephant in the room is the homosexual agenda. The majority of rural voters would agree with the dictum, "live and let live," but Obama's support--after he spoke in favor of traditional marriage--was an outrage. Gay activists have cloaked their agenda in the clothing of "anti-racism" and "anti-bigotry," both of which depend the people's status never changing. That is, if you are born black, you will die black. The gay agenda is an affront to American anti-bigotry because the LGTQIA+ community "transitions" into an identity that they believe reflects their true selves. No person of color or disabled person can change to this extent: you are born black or handicapped and this is readily apparent to everyone with functioning eyeballs. Conflating the civil rights struggle with the gay agenda has been deeply offensive to many voters who had been Democratic but may have skewed to the right. Politicians--and commentators--ignore this at their peril.

"Urban Counties Have Grown More Democratic, Rural Counties More Republican" As there are more rural counties than urban and as the Electoral College is set up to favor the number of counties (districts) not the number of voters, Dems could win popular votes and lose elections for quite some time.

The city mouse/country mouse story goes back to Aesop. It isn't just in the present moment - rural residents (in most any country) feel that their closeness to nature and relatively peaceful setting offer significant advantages while urban residents savor the services, riches and richness of living with so many others. There is no pat answser. Living in a less dense environment does come with perks of being close to nature, having shelter be less expensive than in an urban setting - but with a lack of things like coffee shops, book stores, restaurants and other amenities of urban culture. Both "sides" think their way of life is better. Maybe one way to approach the current divide would be to recognize that this divide is an ancient one. That might defuse at least some of the "polarization". I've lived in both - in the city I pined for an opportunity to plant tomatoes and in the country I pined for decent shopping opportunities. For a brief moment I lived in a small village in Germany where the zoning laws allowed me to keep a few sheep and chickens AND walk to the neighborhood grocery, bakery and butcher. Unfortunately, that is very difficult to find in most places.