High Country News on "rural white scorn" (or, we are all angry, rural whites)

I rarely see the High Country News in print, but this month was an exception.  They sent me a hard copy of the January 22 issue because I'm quoted in the story about the "State of Jefferson," a feature I wrote about here on Legal Ruralism and here on Working Class Whites and the Law.

What I noticed in that hard copy that I might otherwise have missed is this editorial:  the movements produced by white scorn.  It draws parallels between the Bundys (of Malheur and Sagebrush Rebellion-esque fame in Nevada) and the State of Jefferson movement, but then goes beyond those more obvious commonalities.

I'll excerpt part of the editorial here, a part that cleverly challenges liberal elites (the sort who support the High Country News and generally assume they are a world away from rural white folk)  to think about what they have in common with disgruntled rural white folk:

Both of these stories, which took place more than 700 miles apart, reflect a dangerous undercurrent: the simmering scorn of rural white America, which is feeling increasingly disempowered in this cultural moment. The Bundys, the Jefferson separatists, and a wide swath of working-class whites feel left out of the conversation, as national policies, cultural changes and global markets leave them behind. Their resentment helped bring Donald Trump to power, gave the Bundys a form of legitimacy and coincides with the more dangerous movements of white supremacy and white nationalism.

However, rather than dismiss the Bundyites and Jeffersonians out of hand, we might be better served, one year into the Trump presidency, by asking whether or not we are all in the same boat after all. If you are not one of the elite 1 percent that holds 40 percent of U.S. wealth, and if you are not represented by the corporate interests that dominate our politics, is it possible you have more in common with these folks than you think?

I think these comments are pretty clever from an ally-ship, political coalition building standpoint.  It challenges us to think what we liberal elites have in common with the disgruntled, rural and white movement.

Cross Posted to Working Class Whites.