On the conflation of Southern-ness with rurality, as manifest in the Confederate flag

Will Wilkinson wrote this week under the headline "The Density Divide and the Southernification of Rural America."  Here's an excerpt (and, for reference, Wilkinson grew up in Iowa):

[T]he lived experience of growing up halfway between Branson and Lake Woebegone gave me my cultural bearings — supplied the contrasts that defined a distinct and salient Iowan identity. As those contrasts have faded, so have these distinct regional, rural identities. Everywhere it’s the same cloying pop country, the same aggressively oversized Ford F-150s, the same tumbledown Wal-Marts and Dollar Generals, the same eagle-heavy fashion, the same confused, aggrieved air of relentless material decline. Even the accents are more and more the same, trending toward a generalized Larry the Cable Guy twang. (Larry the Cable Guy is from Nebraska, FWIW.)

* * * 

I call this widening gap between the partisan loyalties of urban and rural America “the density divide.” Hopkins is clearly correct that urban vs. rural has eclipsed North vs. South as the geographic embodiment of our partisan divisions. As the old adage goes, a chart speaks a thousand white papers. The divergence is crazy.

However, I suspect that battle between North and South lives on both culturally and geographically. The North has drifted out of the countryside and concentrated itself into our cities. At the same time, America’s rural and exurban counties have slowly become more and more homogenously Southern. The South has risen again … in rural Maine?

This piece reminds me some of what I wrote in this 2011 article, "The Geography of the Class Culture Wars."

Oh, and by the way, the South is the most rural region in the United States.  In that sense, a conflation of rurality with the South makes at least a little sense.