Rural voters and presidential policy packages

In 21st century politics, there has been the sense that rural populations are to blame for the election of figures such as Donald Trump. A full two election cycles before Donald Trump ran for president, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama attempted to explain small town Americans' frustration while attending a San Francisco fundraiser. 

You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.

And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Hillary Clinton, the former First Lady of Arkansas, called then-Senator Obama "divisive and elitist" over his comments, prompting a row about Clinton's authenticity in courting rural voters. A mere eight years later, Hillary Clinton commented that half of then-candidate Trump's supporters fit into a "basket of deplorables" while the other half felt the "government let them down" and were "desperate for change." In light of her defense of small-town America eight years prior, it's not unreasonable to think Hillary Clinton put rural voters in the latter category. Nonetheless, rural voters felt maligned, even in spite of sympathetic voices from the left. Rural voters did not defect to the Republican Party overnight in 2016. Rather, a prolonged process of vote defection occurred as the New Deal and Great Society coalition of the Democratic Party inevitably broke up. 

I. Rural Populism in the Gilded Age

The rapid urbanization which made rural communities their own distinct sub-class in spatial terms occurred in the first part of the 20th Century, accompanied by the industrial revolution and the type of populist social consciousness not yet seen in Western countries. The period between the American Civil War and World War One was marked by explosive economic growth, the benefits of which were not distributed equally among the socio-economic classes of America. It is now known as the Gilded Age. Likewise, one look at the current stock market's all-time highs and another look at median wages will say something similar about the present moment. With many calling the present moment marked by extreme wealth inequality a new Gilded Age, it's important to look at the first one.

Emblematic of rural people's interests in the Gilded Age was William Jennings Bryan, who ran in 1896 against William McKinley. While McKinley ran on a platform of high tariffs and maintaining the gold standard, Bryan delivered his Cross of Gold speech, outlining a platform of shifting to a more inflationary silver standard to aid indebted people, support for the descendants of "those hardy pioneers who braved all the dangers of the wilderness" away from the Atlantic Coast, and against government favoritism toward business interests. A populist, Bryan insisted that the "attorney in a country town," the farmer, the miner, and the "merchant at the crossroads store" are just as much businessmen as their urban counterparts. The topic of Bryan's speech included calls for inflation, praise for laborers, and denunciation of idle capital holders.

From an economic perspective, modern audiences would equivocate William Jennings Bryan with left-wing political views. However, he was also a Fundamentalist Christian who promoted the criminal prosecution of the teaching of evolution even as late as 1925. Bryan also held complex, seemingly contradictory views on race and religion, extending religious pluralism to Catholics, Jews, and Native Americans while at the same time advocating for the exclusion of East Asian immigrants and Black Americans. 

Ultimately, William Jennings Bryan lost his election, the nation split on then-traditionally partisan lines with the industrialized Northeast, Upper Midwest, and Pacific Coast voting Republican. The South, frontier prairie states settled in the late 1800s, and Washington State voting Democrat. William Jennings Bryan attempted to run again "in 1900 and 1908, before serving as secretary of state under Woodrow Wilson." He would be the last presidential candidate of either the Democratic Party or Republican Party to run on an explicitly pro-rural platform, although many candidates have since made overtures to rural communities as a mere part of their election coalitions rather than the mainstay of their coalitions. 

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1896 candidate William Jennings Bryan may seem like ancient history, but some parallels may be drawn from his appeals for the sake of rural populations to modern-day political appeals to rural populations in political coalition-building. 

II. The Great Party Switch

In the years succeeding the start of the Great Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt built a New Deal Coalition of working-class voters that secured a steady flow of Democratic presidents from 1932 to 1980. While Southerners and rural voters were included in the coalition and benefitted from the establishment of the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Rural Electrification Administration, Roosevelt's "prototypical coalition member was a white worker in a unionized factory. " Rural voters were a part of the Democratic Party's big tent rather than being the center that William Jennings Bryan envisioned thirty-six years prior. 

Starting in 1964, President Lyndon Baines Johnson released another policy package to rival The New Deal: The Great Society. The overarching goal of the Great Society was to combat poverty and inequality in the United States. Among the package were provisions that specifically extended aid to rural areas of the United States. The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 sought to mobilize volunteer workers through the Job Corps to both urban and rural areas. The act's Title III provisions also eased the issuance of loans to those living in rural communities. The Food Stamp Act of 1964 served the dual purpose of giving aid to Americans living under food insecurity and bolstering the agricultural economy. The Housing and Urban Development Act of 1965's Title X provisions extended insured rural housing loans, an interest rate capped at 5%, an extension of housing authorizations, and provided an expanded statutory definition of both under "2,500 inhabitants" or under "5,500 if it is rural in character."  The act also extended financial assistance to nonprofits constructing water distribution and treatment facilities in "smaller municipality or rural areas."

Historical data compiled by a 2014 article by Drew DeSilver at the Pew Research Center from the Census Bureau indicated marked success in reducing poverty rates among children and the elderly. From a regional perspective, anti-poverty measures yielded the greatest percentage decrease in the American South, although the region still outpaces the West, Midwest, and Northeast in terms of poverty. The continuing disparity may be indicative of why American Southerners continue to feel left behind going into the 2010s.

Delineating further from a regional view to a population density view, the US Department of Agriculture compiled data on the decline of poverty rates in metro and nonmetro populations from 1959 to 2019. The data indicated a sharp decline from 1959 to 1974, followed by stagnation, an increase going into the 1980s, and then an unsteady decline before rising again in the mid-2000s. Although the decline in poverty clearly begins at least starting in 1959, during Eisenhower's penultimate year in the White House, it is a reasonable presumption that the Great Society's economic measures were not counter to the material interests of rural populations. The Great Society being a continuation of the New Deal makes more sense of the chart.

Despite its focus on urban renewal, the Great Society's economic package hardly abandoned rural communities. Government support and economic liberalism won over white working-class voters, many of whom called rural communities their home. However, the social revolution of the late 1960s made it difficult for the Democrats to hold their coalition together. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 resulted in another split between the Democrat Party and its Southern constituents during the 1964 election. Although predominantly rural states in the Midwest and Great Plains rallied for Johnson in 1964, the Democratic Party lost the Deep South to Barry Goldwater. 

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In the 1964 election, the particular history of segregation in the Deep South resulted in a defection from the Democratic Party while every other characteristically rural state remained with the Democratic Coalition.  

Now would be an important time to mention, although it is beyond the scope of this paper, that rural communities have their own regional and cultural traits. The predominant religious denomination of a community will also influence the political leanings of that community. The traditionally English-American Calvinist (i.e. Reformed Church, Baptist, Methodist, etc.) rural South will carry their own political beliefs separate from rural German-Americans in the Lutheran Upper Midwest. The presence of Catholic communities not usually associated with the rural United States adds its own political flavor. The difference in local cultures is one explanation for why distinctive regions of the United States associated with rurality may vote for comprehensively different candidates in the same election cycle. 

The Democratic embrace of social movements "such as feminism, the anti-war movement, environmentalism, and social libertarianism" caused a rift between the party and their socially conservative and economically progressive white working-class constituents.

On the dimension of economic sustainability, Lyndon Baines Johnson's Great Society policy package lifted an enormous amount of Americans out of poverty. However, it contributed heavily to deficit spending. The fiscal costs of the ongoing Vietnam War added even more to the budget deficit. 

Republicans interrupted the Democratic winning streak in the 1952, 1956, 1968, and 1972 victories of Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. Although victorious in their respective elections, Eisenhower and Nixon both operated under the overarching social welfare economic paradigm set by the New Deal and Great Society policy packages. However, as more Southern Americans began defecting from the Democratic Party in the late 1960s, President Nixon was able to exploit the growing social rift among the Democratic Party and working-class white Americans. Among Nixon's supporters were a geographically diverse array of Manhattan construction workers frustrated with college-educated protesters, Native Americans seeking self-determination, and white Southerners disillusioned with the Democratic Party. Among his other seemingly contradictory acts, Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency in spite of his private disdain for counterculture environmentalists. Like William Jennings Bryan, the social conservatism of Richard Nixon was complex and difficult to caricature. 

By the time President Gerald Ford succeeded Richard Nixon following the latter's resignation, concerns about economic stagnation and inflation forced both parties to shift toward fiscal austerity. The types of policy aid packages delivered to the working poor under the New Deal and the Great Society became increasingly rare. Both the social and fiscal aspects of the Great Society's policy package fell out of popularity. President Ford was the first to attempt to address inflation with his "Whip Inflation Now" plan, amounting to a call to American households to limit spending in an effort to keep prices down. Unsurprisingly, the plan was unpopular and was likely a contributing factor to Gerald Ford's defeat at the hands of Georgia peanut farmer Jimmy Carter. An observation gleaned from the 1976 election map is that America's Southern states had not irreversibly defected to the Republican Party. When presented with a Democratic candidate from Southern agrarian roots, Deep South Americans were willing to vote Democrat; this pattern would later be repeated in 1992 and 1996 with the election of Bill Clinton. Jimmy Carter continued Ford's efforts to halt inflation, appointing Paul Volcker to be the chair of the Federal Reserve. Although at the price of high interest rates and the resulting double-dip recession of 1981 and 1982, the Carter appointee finally defeated the inflation scare by the early 1980s. 

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In December of 1979, after over two years of preparations, Jimmy Carter announced his Small Community and Rural Development Policy, an effort aimed at reducing the type of rural material deprivation he experienced as a young man and establishing local councils to inform state decisions on agriculture and rural development. Unfortunately, the nature of the short four-year term of the presidency makes long-term projects difficult to manage. In 1980, Carter polled unusually well in the rural South, carrying the vast majority of rural black voters. Reagan carried only 60% of the most rural 90% white majority counties in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. Nonetheless, Carter lost the election in an electoral landslide. The Reagan Revolution put an end to Jimmy Carter's designs in the next year. 

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III. The Reagan Revolution

Where rural Americans benefitted from the New Deal and Great Society's left-leaning economic package, they felt alienated by the increasing social liberalism of the Democratic Party. The Reagan Revolution offered the opposite: fiscal conservatism and social conservatism. The government would begin investing in financial institutions and businesses rather than directly into communities. Factors from within and without the United States in the 1970s culminated in the 1980s Farm Crisis. Reagan's Food Security Act of 1985 attempted to mitigate the effects of the farm crisis by temporarily reducing interest rates to 1988, expanded the list of eligible rural utility borrowers, set price supports for particular crops, expanded the eligible use of food stamps, and set government purchase quantities for many of those same crops. Two years later, Congress and Reagan passed the Agricultural Credit Act of 1987, which sought to extend financial aid to agricultural financial institutions. Although Reagan is criticized for failing to stop the continued loss of small farms, it is worth mentioning that farm centralization held a steep trend starting in the 1930s with that trend tapering off only by the mid-1970s. 

Credit: Katherine Lacy

In the election of 1988, Vice President George HW Bush capitalized on the popularity of the Reagan administration and won election to the presidency against Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis. However, H.W. Bush would only enjoy one term due to the poor aging of Reagan economic policies, his reversal on his promise not to raise taxes, and his lack of popular appeal in comparison with Bill Clinton. 

One-hundred years from William Jennings Bryan's 1896 election, rural communities were once again in play. In 1992 and 1996, Bill Clinton, former Arkansas governor and expert saxophone player, won two consecutive elections against World War Two veterans George H.W. Bush and Bob Dole. The Southern States appeared split between the candidates while the Great Plains region predominantly leaned toward Bush and Dole. Like Carter before him, Clinton's Southern roots led Southerners to see in him a trustworthy candidate. Clinton accomplished his victories by capitalizing on discontent with the Republican Party's tax advantages given to the rich during the Reagan Revolution and defending against seemingly reckless spending cuts to education and Medicaid. Nonetheless, Clinton operated within the prevailing paradigm of the social and fiscal Reagan Revolution, giving concessions to Republicans in the form of police union-approved crime bills and welfare reform limiting recipients to two years before assistance would be rescinded. His relative social conservatism won him points with rural communities, although his willingness to embrace the new financial professional class and globalized economic order ultimately proved disastrous for the economies of rural communities.

Credit: 270towin.com

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Clinton went on to split rural voters again with the Republican Party again in 1996 before George W. Bush won predominantly rural regions of the United States in 2000 and 2004. The split between urban and rural residents for Gore and Bush was measured at 34 percentage points, only to be outstripped by "Jews and white Christians" at 40 points and "other voters and the religious right" at 36 points. Al Gore's environmentalism in particular made him appear threatening to communities dependent on coal mining and power generation. The election of 2000 proved to be a massive reversal of Clinton's gains in rural counties, and it was the final party reversal of most rural states to date. 

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In his first year of office, George W. Bush announced his opposition to the Agriculture, Conservation, and Rural Enhancement Act of 2001 due to concerns about overproduction, price depression, a regressive tax on milk consumption, subsidies going to the largest of food producers, and the risk of "subsidies exceeding limits under WTO rules." Much like Clinton and Reagan before him, George W. Bush openly embraced the bipartisan consensus around the globalization of trade. Unlike previous iterations of agricultural bills, Bush seemed to be opposed to subsidies, ultimately relying on his trust in free trade and the free market. Ultimately, the bill was not passed. In 2004, Bush went on to solidify his lead in his election against John Kerry. By 2008, years of free market and free trade principals came to a head. The 1999 Repeal of Glass-Steagall significantly deregulated the banking sector, encouraging the mingling of commercial banking and investment banking interests. The opening of international trade to developing markets allowed US employers to shut down largely rural manufacturing centers in favor of cheap labor elsewhere during the leadup to the 2008 recession. After working-class America felt the brunt of the recession, the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 seemed to reward major corporate and financial institutions. Working-class Americans were left to their own devices. 

Credit: Sarah Low

The rise in income inequality due to the recession, where the upper income bracket recaptured the vast majority of the income share lost by working class families, started to fuel an increasingly loud movement of political populism. This brings us to the moment described in the introduction of this post: the 2008 landslide victory of Barack Obama without any need to appeal to rural voters. By election day 2008, rural communities were already thoroughly disillusioned with both parties. Rural turnout declined massively from 2004 in many locations. By 2012, Democratic priorities fully shifted away from the Clintonian 1996 strategy. 

IV. The End of History

While social conservatism may have been the cause of rural defection to from the New Deal Coalition starting in the 1960s, it does not fully account for the now uniform changes starting in the 2000s. 

With the fall of the Soviet Union, world leaders announced a new economic world order defined by commercial interconnectedness. The 2001 accession of China to the World Trade Organization was already met with suspicion of non-compliance from the start. The increasingly global nature of economic competition hit rural areas hard. In spite of the credit Reagan enjoyed from rural voters, his NAFTA agreement with Canada and Mexico deprived rural areas of the manufacturing appeal they previously enjoyed when compared to the previous manufacturing sites in larger cities. The trend, starting in the 1980s, only intensified with the introduction of China into the World Trade Organization in 2001. The 2000s further deprived rural areas of "about a quarter of their manufacturing jobs due both to overseas competition and increases in productivity."  Left-behind working-class communities ultimately sought out both progressive and protectionist economic policies to scrape back what their leaders gave to multinational corporations and foreign workforces. 

V. The Present Moment

The United States does not have its modern-day William Jennings Bryan. Desperate for change, rural voters swung in favor of New York reject Donald Trump.

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The 2020 election yielded similar results as far as predominantly rural states went, looking almost like a reversal of the 1896 map. Although Joe Biden won victories in the Rust Belt, states which saw their hay-day during America's industrialization, rural-coded states in the late-to-be settled Great Plains and late-to-industrialize South largely held for Trump. 

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In the absence of Scranton Joe from the end of the 2024, the Democrats lost a number of blue-collar communities in the Rust Belt.

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The subtext in the last three elections is this: rural America was not the deciding swing factor in Trump's victories and defeat. They have swung Republican in every election since 2000. Rather, the Rust Belt states in the Upper Midwest were in the balance. The rural political appetite, disillusioned with the establishment of both major parties, would have better stomached the economically left political outsider Bernie Sanders than Clintonian party establishment figures like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. 

Recent polling from the 2024 election was conducted across 1,713 interviews and ten battleground states. The poll attributes economically populist policies to rural voter preferences and attributes the unwillingness to vote for, at the time, Joe Biden to the lack of appearances and messaging directed toward rural communities. When poll answers were phrased without party attribution, responses trended toward more economically left and populist policies calling for elite and corporate accountability. Contrary to expectations, conservative social topics did not predominate the concerns of rural voters. Given more polling, Democratic Party strategists may come to understand that rural areas are not unwinnable so long as they refer to historical winning strategy of letting fiscal progressive messaging take center stage in the party platform. Although he partially got rural America into this mess, Democrats should still heed the immortalized words of Bill Clinton: "It's the economy, stupid." 

Bad Bunny vs. Turning Point USA: reflection of the American divide

Leading up to the super bowl, there were many headlines regarding Bad Bunny and what his performance would entail. I expected Bad Bunny to be using this platform to make a statement, similar to how Kendrick Lamar did last year, as a response to this tense political climate. A week prior to the big event, Turning Point USA announced their own version of a rival halftime show. When I heard of this, I was disgusted. It felt like a direct attack to further the nation’s divide. Turning Point has been sowing seeds of political division for years, and now it is on full display, taking the focus away from America’s pastime. All the while, TPUSA stays in the headlines for what might be an even more damaging initiative as they plan to infiltrate high schools in Nebraska, sowing similar seeds of political division in our nation’s youth.  

Bad Bunny holding the original Puerto Rican flag during his Superbowl halftime performance

Photo Credit: NPR; Kevin Sabitus/Getty Images (2026)

On Sunday February 8, 2026, there was the first ever full Spanish halftime show. Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime performance was more than just a regular halftime show. Benito’s message was clear: love is more powerful than hate. Bringing the Puerto Rican and Latinx culture into the most watched American sporting event was a beautiful reminder that America is more than just whiteness, and that culture is to be celebrated. The trailer that Apple Music released prior to Bad Bunny’s performance was a great reminder that: “my music is for everyone.” The trailer was a video of Bad Bunny switching dance partners, with every new partner being a person of a different race, occupation, culture, again emphasizing that anyone can enjoy his music. The Americas (North, Central, and South) are a combination of many latin cultures, and the United States, specifically, is a very unique country that is the melting pot of all cultures. Bad Bunny ended his performance with a beautiful display of every single flag that makes up the Americas. Meanwhile, Bad Bunny lists them off saying, “We are America!” Bad Bunny’s halftime show had an average viewership of 128.2 million viewers (making it the 3rd most viewed halftime show), with peak viewership of 137.8 million viewers. NFL reported that 55% of their social engagement with Bad Bunny’s performance was from the international market. 

While people from all over the world were excited for this performance, some were very upset that a musician who only sings in Spanish would be the halftime performer. Many white Americans were disturbed that the NFL would choose a non-English speaking performer for the “all-american” sport of football. So, in opposition to Benito Bowl, Turning Point USA decided to announce that they would stream their own halftime show featuring Kid Rock, a problematic MAGA rock-n-roll artist. Their version of the Superbowl halftime show was titled the “All-American Halftime Show” and it ended up having about 6.1 million viewers during its airing. There is no current data on exactly who and where people tuned in from for the TPUSA halftime show, however I would assume that the viewers were mostly white Americans. One person who was asked which halftime show they were going to watch, answered Kid Rock because “I don't understand Spanish” and that Bad Bunny “isn’t what this country is about.”  I had seen other interviews (that I cannot find anymore) that had other justifications for watching Kid Rock because they grew up listening to Kid Rock, or that they know more of his songs over Bad Bunny’s, but I can’t help but wonder if there is an underlying tone of racism happening. 

Between the two halftime shows, Bad Bunny’s numbers blew Kid Rock’s out of the park. But it begs the question: Is this how American society will continue? Will there be a continuous divide forever? A Turning Point USA spokesperson told Fox News they plan to have another “All-American” halftime show in 2027 after their “massive” success this year. Will TPUSA’s “All-American” rhetoric work to keep Americans divided by race? 

TPUSA Propaganda to Youth and Rural Areas of the U.S.

Nebraska Governor Pillen hosts students for TPUSA Club America high school partnership 

Photo Credit: Governor Jim Pillen (2026) 

On February 10, 2026 the governor of Nebraska announced a partnership with Turning point USA to bring a Club America chapter to every Nebraska high school. The official website of the Nebraska Governor had a press release about what happened at the event.

Governor Jim Pillian hosted an event at his house to make the announcement, which involved local high school students, college students, TPUSA director, Chapter President at Creighton University, and the attorney generals. Governor Pillion is a vocal supporter of Charlie Kirk, and during the event he said: 

“Through this partnership, we get one step closer to Charlie’s vision of seeing Club America in every high school in the nation.”

There are 22 high school chapters in Nebraska, however Club America has more than 3,200 chapters nationwide, which is 13% of all high schools in America. Students who attended this event ranged all the way from Ogallala to Lincoln, Nebraska. 

The chapter president of Creighton University, Emma Smith, spoke at the event about her experience with TPUSA. She mentioned that Turning Point does not tell her exactly what to think, but more so challenges her way of thinking and being confident in her beliefs. She stated:

“Politics used to be something I avoided entirely, now it’s a part of my everyday life, not because I have to, but because I want to. Because I care deeply about the direction of this country and I believe my generation has a responsibility to protect what is right, rational and worth preserving.”

When I read this quote, initially I thought, wow what a great thing that young people are caring about politics and wanting to get involved. Because usually teens and college students are not as engaged with the news or politics, but as you get older you tend to get more involved; so it’s great seeing that people are more engaged at a younger age. But then I remember all the horrible things that TPUSA and Charlie Kirk stand for.  

TPUSA is known for their far-right political rhetoric and Christian nationalism, advertising these ideals to students across college campuses throughout the U.S. and even at some events abroad. Members of TPUSA have expressed racist, homophobic, and transphobic speech while on college campuses. Furthermore, TPUSA provided charter buses to students to attend the January 6th Capitol riot. The founder of TPUSA, Charlie Kirk, has spread across multiple platforms his anti-immigrant, anti-muslim, and misogynistic views. He is someone who has been very loyal to Trump and his MAGA agenda. 

My issue with TPUSA having chapters across Nebraska high schools and spreading their message to young students in general is that they are normalizing hate speech as a political view and brainwashing these young Americans to believe that white nationalism and christian nationalism is okay. If high school students are surrounded by people who have these hateful beliefs, they are likely to be influenced by them. And if the majority of high schoolers all start joining TPUSA Club America, anyone who disagrees with TPUSA’s message would likely not be vocal about it. High school is a very weird time socially for kids; being a teenager, navigating the high school social scene can be complicated. And when a majority of kids follow a certain idea or group, it is likely that many will follow suit. Also, it is likely that people wouldn’t know any better, they would think well this is what is “normal.” Teens and young adults are very easily influenced by their environment, and it will shape their future beliefs. 

My Final Thoughts

For me, the weirdest part of people’s annoyance is that they “don’t understand spanish” and thus cannot enjoy Bad Bunny’s music and performance. This felt like a weird microaggression that was hiding their internal racism, because – what do you mean you can’t enjoy the music? Personally, I listen to Bad Bunny all the time and I haven’t understood Spanish since learning it for my language course in high school. I also listen to k-pop artists, Ayra Starr, Kali Uchis, and many other global artists – yet I don’t speak a lick of Korean, or Nigerian, or any of those other languages! Music can be enjoyable even when you do not understand the direct translation of what the artists are saying. 

Propaganda is a very effective tool in influencing people, especially young people. Media usage to promote certain political beliefs is more popular than ever because of social media. To see political content, people used to have to do research or watch the news or go out of their way to know what was happening. But now with social media, access to information is so readily available. Whether you choose to see certain “takes,” it naturally can pop up on your feed anyway. Bits of the news are even more accessible on social media since most young people do not actually go watch cable TV anymore. And if it is not on your feed, it can be sent to you easily as well. My worries of TPUSA being the main influence of the younger republican generation is that those people will normalize hateful speech and reverse the progress that has been made in America (regarding pro-choice, LGBT+ rights, pro-immigration). 

When looking at the beautiful and diverse message that Bad Bunny brought to his performance given what is happening in the United States right now, compared to the message the Turning Point USA has been promoting for the past few years – it makes me worried about how the divide within Americans will only grow.

Gun violence is also a rural issue

Gun related injuries caused 46,728 deaths in the United States in 2023, underscoring the scale and urgency of firearm violence nationwide. The American Public Health Association, has declared gun violence a major public health issue, emphasizing the consequences of gun violence beyond crime statistics. Firearm deaths include homicides, suicides, accidental shootings, and law enforcement related deaths, each not only contributing to death but also a ripple effect of trauma through communities. Beyond gun related death, the impact of being exposed to gun violence has also led to an increase in behavioral health outcomes for American youth.

 Credit: Alan Cleaver, 2009

Despite the breadth of this crisis, federal approaches to gun violence prevention have shifted by administration. During his second administration, Trump has revoked multiple initiatives related to gun safety, including the School Safety Committee and rescinded the former Surgeon General’s advisory which identified gun violence as a public health crisis. These actions signal a move away from framing gun violence as a matter that requires public health interventions. Instead, gun violence is often framed as an urban crime problem concentrated in large cities. This framing is not limited to a single administration, in fact violence involving firearms has often been portrayed as a uniquely “big city” problem. This narrative tends to frame urban areas, particularly cities with Democratic leadership, as chaotic and in need of enforcement or federal intervention, such as the deployment of the national guard by Trump.

However, gun violence is not just a problem for large American cities. In September 2025, the Center for American Progress released findings showing that rural counties have higher overall rates of firearm mortality and gun homicides when compared to small, medium, and large metropolitan counties. Using the National Center for Health Statistics Classification Scheme for Counties to define rurality, the report found that there were 16.6 firearm deaths per 100,000 residents in rural counties, compared to 11.5 deaths per 100,000 residents in large metropolitan counties. This gap is largely accounted for by the high rate of gun suicides in rural counties, in fact gun related suicides accounted for nearly six in ten gun deaths in 2023 and nine of the top ten counties by gun suicide rate were rural.

Rural and urban areas are often pitted against one another in political discourse, and the gun violence debate is no exception. Guns are typically more integrated into daily life in rural areas, where they are used for hunting or personal protection, and firearm ownership rates are generally higher. Even so, the statistics of firearm mortality in rural counties is striking. Shaped by media coverage and political rhetoric, many Americans may have internalized the idea that gun violence is concentrated in large cities.

Importantly, many counties with higher rates of gun related death are located in states with comparatively weaker gun laws. Guns hold a great cultural significance to many rural communities and rural traditions should not be vilified in the process of treating this public health issue. However, this crisis cannot be ignored for much longer and policymakers and communities alike need to work together to find the middle ground between effective gun regulations that preserve rural culture and combat real violence.

The banshees of inisherin: friendship and the village

The Banshees of Inisherin is a dark comedy that came out in 2022. It is set in the 1920s and was written and directed by Martin McDonagh. The movie centers around two longtime friends, Colm, and Pádraic, living on a remote island called Inisherin off the coast of Ireland. These two friends used to spend their days in the pub, drinking the day away, until Colm decides to abruptly end the friendship.  Colm explains that Pádraic is just too “dull” for him and that he has no desire to waste more time hearing him talk. Colm is a composer and is motivated to leave a legacy through music. When Pádraic refuses to accept this, Colm escalates the conflict by threatening to cut off one of his own fingers every time Pádraic talks to him. 

  

Image Source: Wikimedia Commons (2005)

This film has a lot to say about the nature of friendship in remote areas. After Colm cuts off his first finger and throws it at their door, Pádraic’s sister is convinced it is time to leave the village and move to the big city. She tries to convince Pádraic to join her, but he remains committed to the village.  

This begs the question: could a feud escalate like this in a big city? I doubt it. The extent to which the two friends are entangled in one another’s lives would be impossible in a big city.  In this village, there is only one pub, only a handful of roads, and Colm and Pádraic continue bumping into one another. 

However, neither is willing to give up their village life.  Pádraic loves his donkey and his daily rituals. The social fabric of Inisherin gives him a sense of rootedness. Is it because he is dull that he has no ambition beyond the remote island? This is a central tension the film plays with. On the one hand, Pádraic does not crave legacy and enjoys modest pleasures: arriving at the pub at 2 p.m., taking care of his donkey, chatting about nothing, really. This contentment reflects his orientation, not his intellect. He values kindness, and kinship. Colm, by contrast, equates ambition with depth. Ambition itself may be rooted in a kind of urban-centric orientation. A post from 2014 demonstrates popular culture contributes to simplified or stereotyped portrayals of rural life.  In Banshees, those tropes exist, but by complicating them, the film portrays a more layered portrayal of rural life. 

Why can’t the ambitious composer leave the island? Colm craves the quiet of village life, so he can focus on his composing, but he is unwilling to accept that village life requires him to tolerate the villagers. Would he actually be happier in the big city? In the city, what he would gain in anonymity, he would certainly lose elsewhere. Yes, he wouldn’t have to put up with Pádraic, but he would have to deal with consequences of city life like noise and chaos. Colm’s anxiety about legacy would not disappear in the city; it would likely intensify.  By the end of the film the irony is apparent. The ambitious composer, Colm, has self-mutilated. His ambition does not make him morally superior to Pádraic.   

The film also invites us to consider if there is an obligation to remain friends with people we can’t stand. Most people are comfortable with the idea that individuals have a right to decide not to be someone’s friend.  In a big city, Colm could more easily exercise this right. On a remote island, less so. Island life necessarily conflicts with the individual rights we take for granted. Individuals cannot freely choose their associates in a place this small and remote.  In a rural context, residents must coexist, even if that means tolerating an unwanted interaction from time to time. This demonstrates that the principles we believe in are often constrained in practice by forces like geography. 

The central tragedy for Pádraic is his realization that the social order is collapsing. When his fellow villagers don’t believe in the community, he can no longer experience the sense of belonging he craves. Inisherin represents the type of rural environment that is stuck between two worlds. It is unable to deliver the sense of community that Pádraic relies on, nor can it deliver the sense of individuality that Colm seeks to assert. The tension between community and autonomy is at the heart of the film’s tragedy. 

The rural other in American horror films

Horror films reflect societal fears, often in a very literal sense. Rosemary's Baby (1968) deals with contemporary societal fears of a loss of bodily autonomy and John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) reflects the "eerie discomfort" of suburban life. Some of the most strikingly violent of these societal fears seems to manifest in the conflict between rural and urban.

The most famous example of this phenomenon is Tobe Hooper's underground slasher The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). The film follows a group of Austin hippies who get massacred on a road trip through the countryside after encountering the Sawyers, a monstrous family of cannibals (though notably only one actually gets killed with a chainsaw). It illustrates the archetype of "backwoods horror" where urban people encounter rural spaces as a horrific underworld filled with backwards cannibalistic murderers. 

The Sawyers' backstory has echoes of modern discussions of rural decline. They find themselves in their current condition of poverty and decay because their family slaughterhouse was shuttered. The Sawyers kill their victims with these slaughterhouse implements, using meat hooks and placing one of them in a large chest freezer typically used for animal meat. Their association with slaughterhouses indicates that the film perceives the inherent violence of that rural industry as a corrupting force, and with the slaughterhouse gone, those violent tendencies are turned towards instead wayward urbanites. 

 The Sawyers and other backwoods murderers also represent an antithesis of modernity in a way that is meant to horrify the (primarily urban or suburban) audience. In The Rural Gothic in American Culture, Bernice Murphy describes the chaotic clutter of the Sawyers home as an example of how they: 

"like nothing better than to hoard junk that will then be strategically placed around their home in order to create an atmosphere of maximum creepiness…This focus upon the pack-rat sensibilities of the backwoods aggressor emphasizes the fact that mainstream American culture appears to find something inherently suspicious about the self-sufficiency of those who make their own belongings rather than buy mass-produced products in a store like ‘normal’ folks. The ‘make do and mend’ philosophy of those who recycle or salvage what others would throw out, though seen as admirable in narratives which emphasize ‘positive rurality’ (such as The Hunger Games trilogy and Walden) are here further markers of deviants." 

The Domain, Round Rock, Texas, where parts of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre were filmed.

Image Source: creativecommons.org  

 

The Sawyers are so monstrous as to appear almost inhuman, with heavy makeup and costuming otherizing them from the rest of the cast. And their characterization does not reflect rural Texans in any real sense. In contrast, John Boorman's Deliverance (1972) at least treats its Appalachian villains as recognizably human. One of the most famous scenes in the film even involves a kind of cultural exchange, with one of the city dwellers engaging a local in a banjo contest.

 Still, as a Guardian 50 year retrospective highlights, Boorman portrays the rural subjects as "ghoulish caricatures" who commit heinous acts of physical and sexual violence arbitrarily. The film treats them as part of the wild and untamed natural landscape. The urban dwellers, intending to conquer canoe down the wild Chattooga River, find themselves in over their heads because they fail to recognize the savagery of the area's rural occupants as a part of the landscape they intend to conquer. 

The Chattooga River, where Deliverance (1972) takes place.

Image Source: creativecommons.org 

 Both films tap into the urban/suburban audience's fear of rural spaces and people. Tobe Hooper emphasizes an inherent violence in rural industry redirected due to economic misfortune. Boorman portrays his rural subjects as wild and untamed as the Appalachian mountains they inhabit. And both films associate the divide between rural and urban with viscerally portrayed acts of violence. That they were both so financially successful and culturally significant speaks to a cultural perceptions of rural spaces as fundamentally apart from polite society.