Decades of political decisions and policies have created a massive and growing chasm between the economic and social disaster unfolding in small-town and rural parts of the United States, and the prosperity and safety of cities and suburbs. Many of those successful urban and suburban areas have reaped the rewards of electing largely moderate, competent Democratic leaders. Meanwhile, rural areas have elected Republicans drawn from a party that is increasingly incompetent, corrupt, and willing to engage in outright racism to win elections.
This disparity may affirm progressive ideas about successful and inclusive governance, but it also holds grave implications for the country as a whole.
Anger is roiling in Republican America, along with conspiratorial fabrications about who to blame for their condition. A harbinger of this trend is Antlers, Oklahoma, where I grew up: a once-thriving town in the southeastern part of the state, bordering the lush Ouachita foothills of dense forests, abundant agriculture, and lucrative tourism resources. The town rebuilt after a devastating 1945 tornado, but it has not weathered 21st century politics.
Racially and politically, Antlers is […]
My first home, as a child in Pushmataha county, was part of Sardis, Oklahoma — a settlement even smaller than Antlers. Electricity didn’t come to Sardis until 1949, the year after I was born. The next major extension of progress there was about 30 years later, when the Army Corps of Engineers created Sardis Lake, which buried the whole town with about 30 feet of water. … [ I went to an out-of-state college on scholarship and didn’t look back; my last visit was about ten years ago.] It is painful to consider how completely the direct interests of rural communities have been discounted, and how fully abandoned these once proud people and their towns have become.