Loving is radical: Rural America and political empathy

After winning the Grammy for Best Música Urbana Album the first thing Bad Bunny said was, “ICE out.” He then continued his acceptance speech with a simple but powerful call for love over hate, saying “we need to be different…we don’t hate them, we love our people.”

This call for loving more than we hate “the other side” stood out to me as what has been missing from the “rural versus urban” debate that consumes politics in the United States. As a self-described “liberal coastal elite,” if you had spoken to me after the 2016 election (when I was only 16) and again after the 2024 election, I would have told you, quite honestly, how much I hated the “other side.” At that time, the “other side” wasn’t limited to Trump or the political systems that enabled him to become president a second time. I meant anyone who voted for him and I was far from alone in that feeling.

“Rural bashing,” as described by Kaceylee Klein and Lisa R. Pruitt, refers to a phenomenon of “harsh criticism - even disdain...” towards rural voters or often all people living in so-called “red states.” While Klein and Pruitt detail that this is not a new phenomenon, they note that it has intensified in the Trump era. Importantly, this bashing isn’t limited to politicians or media, there are a multitude of examples of everyday people unable to feel empathy for those suffering in rural areas because “they voted for this.”

This bashing is further exacerbated by the tendency to equate “rural” with “white." In fact many who support liberal politics fall into the trap of believing that rural white people are the problem. While it is true that rural America votes predominantly Republican, as seen is the 2024 presidential election in which Trump won 93 percent of rural counties, believing rural America doesn’t deserve to benefit from any “liberal” policies or social systems is an uniquely unempathetic belief. As a condition of democracy, many believe that red voters should be held accountable for their actions, or in this case their votes, especially if and when those votes lead to unfavorable outcomes.

(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2025.  

To be clear, I am not saying we need to have empathy for ICE, Trump, or the political and economic systems that have allowed racist, homophobic, sexist rhetoric to flourish. These systems deserve to be challenged, and when necessary dismantled. But when does hate for these systems turn into hatred for the people living within them?

Increasingly, politicians are beginning to realize that writing off rural Americans is not effective or sustainable. As Hannah Thomas has previously discussed on the blog, politicians like Bernie Sanders have been working actively to rally rural American voters rather than dismiss them. Even Hillary Clinton, in her The Atlantic opinion piece titled “MAGA’s War on Empathy,” reflects on her own struggle to feel empathy for people whom she passionately disagrees with. Although the piece, published just last week, may feel like too little, too late, it nonetheless underscores why the rhetoric of active politicians toward rural Americans must change.

If we are serious about creating political change, we must shift our strategies. Active politicians, media, and everyday liberals alike must take note of what is driving us. If the driving force is hate for the “other side” in the form of rural Americans, we will continue to live in a divided America.

Bernie Sanders rallies rural Americans to "Fight Oligarchy"

As part of his "Fighting Oligarchy: Where We Go From Here" tour, Independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has spent the last several weeks visiting districts where Republicans enjoyed a narrow electoral advantage during the 2024 general election.

While the tour kicked off in Omaha, Nebraska, Sanders recently stopped in rural Altoona, Wisconsin on March 8, 2025. Bernie Sanders used his platform to address the myth that rural people are regressive and conservative. Following his stop in Altoona, Sanders posted the following message to Facebook:

We're told that rural America doesn't like progressive ideas. Not what I saw today in our great rally in Altoona, WI - population 9,200. The people here, and throughout the country, understand that health care is a human right and that we need an economy that works for all, not the few.

Sanders spoke to the Wisconsin crowd of 2,600 about how the current administration will harm rural and working-class communities. He also sought to empower and motivate the audience through a targeted call to action, saying:

I worry very much that people all over this country in rural areas especially, do not stand up. What we're going to see in the next few months...over a trillion dollars of tax breaks for the top one percent. We can stop it.

Earlier in the tour, Senator Sanders spoke to an overflow crowd of more than 3,400 people in Omaha. Sanders' next stop was in Iowa City, Iowa, where he filled the historic Englert Theatre. Once he was done speaking to the Englert Theatre crowd, Sanders delivered a second rendition of his speech to the overflow crowd at the hotel next door. This was the first time in Sanders' career that he has given the same speech to two audiences in one night due to extremely high turnout.

Although these cities are not rural themselves, both Iowa and Nebraska are states with significant rural populations. Many people traveled from hours away to hear Sanders speak. So far, the tour has drawn record crowds.

Reporting for Barn Raiser, Greg Wickencamp writes about the Iowa crowds' fears and hopes as they attended Senator Sanders' rally in their state on February 22, 2025. Some attendees expressed frustration over rising grocery and feed prices; other audience members worried about their children's job prospects; and others in the crowd said they hoped Sanders' speech would give them hope and motivation. Kelli McCreary, a retired nurse from Toledo, Iowa, noted that her Trump-supporting neighbors are just starting to regret voting for Trump, but that "it's too late."

The theme of Sanders' message seems to be that politicians will not save us, that both political parties have fundamentally failed the American people, and that we have more power than we are led to believe. Sanders told the audience during his Iowa speech:

Trumpism will not be defeated by politicians in the D.C. Beltway. It will only be defeated by millions of Americans in Iowa, in Vermont, in Nebraska, in every state in this country by people who come together in a strong grassroots movement and say no to oligarchy, no to authoritarianism, no to kleptocracy, no to massive cuts in programs that low-income and working Americans desperately need, no to huge tax breaks for the wealthiest people in this country.

For a long time, Bernie Sanders' policies have been degraded by Republicans and Democrats alike for being too radical and extreme. Now, Sanders points out that the Democratic Party has failed to excite people enough to motivate voter turnout. He says that rather than standing for the working class, the Democrats have prioritized corporate interests and need to radically change their approach if they are to succeed in the future.

Whether or not Bernie Sanders will gather enough momentum to inspire significant change remains to be seen. Some Bernie-supporters remain cautiously optimistic. Kelly Schmidt, a University of Northern Iowa graduate from Holstein, Iowa, said that although everyone in her hometown would benefit from Sanders' proposals, she is unsure if her fellow residents will listen. Still, many of those who did listen to Sanders' words left his rally feeling hopeful, inspired, and invigorated.

You can find more information about the rural vote and particular issues that engage rural voters here, here, here, and here. 

Death of the American Dream for rural America

Is the American Dream ("the Dream") dead? The Dream posits that success results from work and sacrifice rather than the circumstances in which one is born. However, in recent years, some have argued that the so-called Dream is illusory, used only as a "strategic and intricate device crafted to keep you where you are." Antagonists propose that the Dream only adds wealth to the rich while keeping dream-chasers on the hamster wheel. 

The Dream can be measured by analyzing generational mobility, which refers to whether an individual's social and economic opportunities depend upon their parents' income or social status. Less generational mobility suggests that the Dream is dead or dying, and more mobility indicates the opposite. Upward mobility means that an individual was born to parents in the bottom 25% of income earners and that they later fall within the top 25% of income earners in America. 

According to most data, residents of rural counties are more likely to be persistently poor, with at least a 20 percent poverty rate persisting for at least 30 years. As reported by The Wall Street Journal, "In terms of poverty, college attainment, teenage births, divorce, death rates from heart disease and cancer, reliance on federal disability insurance and male labor-force participation, rural counties now rank the worst."

According to some researchers, five factors directly correlate with generational mobility: (1) residential segregation, (2) income inequality, (3) school quality, (4) social capital, and (5) family structure. Rural counties have lower incomes, levels of educational attainment, life expectancies, and limited access to health insurance and healthcare providers than their urban counterparts. Why, then, do some rural counties have the highest upward mobility rates in the country but also some of the lowest? 

Perhaps another factor—the ease of migration from rural communities to urban ones—can explain this seeming disparity. Is the solution to "attaining" the Dream to be born into a rural community and leave as soon as possible for an urban one? If leaving is the only answer, should the Dream even be considered a dream?

Supposing that achieving the Dream for rural people is premised on leaving their community, each pursuit diminishes the Dream for those left behind. If the best and brightest pursue education or economic opportunities elsewhere, growth remains stagnant for the home community. Published by The Sun, a U.C. Davis law student references Fresno's inability to attract educated professionals, a phenomenon called "brain drain," the migration of educated and skilled individuals away from their home region. His solution to attract young professionals includes increasing career opportunities, housing, arts, entertainment, and sports.

While stagnant growth may be one side effect of the Dream, one more insidious issue is the Dream's tarnishing effect. If everyone can succeed, why do unsuccessful people exist? Like Vice President J.D. Vance, proponents of the Dream argue that lack of success results from laziness. However, those proponents forget what the evidence proves—a lack of resources impacts the likelihood of success. Often, proponents of the Dream ignore their privilege to bolster their ego and achievements.

Like most things, the Dream may be aspirational in most parts of America. Nevertheless, it seemingly impedes and damages rural America's vitality. It is okay to recognize that dreams vary between people and places. Arguably, for rural America, the question is not whether the Dream is dead but whether it should be.

The philosophical underpinnings of rural bashing, part II: Marcuse’s neo-Marxist “liberating tolerance” as a Progressive ethos

“You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.”

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“If I ever hear that ‘can’t make an omelet’ phrase again, I’ll start doing a little murder myself! It’s used to justify every atrocity under every despotism, Fascist or Nazi, or Communist or American labor war. Omelet! Eggs! By God, sir, men’s souls and blood are not eggshells for tyrants to break!” – Doremus Jessup in Sinclair Lewis’ It Can’t Happen Here

This post builds off an earlier post of mine in which I argued that Progressive elites are invoking Marxist thought (in the form of a neo-Marxist, post-modern ethos) in a way that further alienates rural Americans and fosters a divisive society. I am continuing with a dive into critical theory and post-modern philosophy because we often forget that ideas matter, and intellectuals, those who are in the business of producing ideas, have real consequences. This post considers the work of the neo-Marxist philosopher Herbert Marcuse. For context, when Marcuse was writing in the mid 20th century, he was an intellectual rockstar who had widespread academic and popular influence. He also served as the doctoral advisor for Angela Davis, the renowned Marxist, political activist, and prison abolitionist.

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In 2017, CNN published an article on the leftist Antifa movement, describing the organization’s methodology as one where “[a]ctivists seek peace through violence” (though the headline was later changed).

The notion of any group seeking peace through violence in a democratic society should worry us, for it is always easy to utilize an “ends-justify-the-means” approach to morally defend even the most abhorrent of actions. At the very least, the intellectual and moral foundations of any claim based on such forms of reasoning should be meticulously scrutinized.

A (slightly) less radical form of this reasoning can be seen within progressive discourse on rural Americans, the white working class, and “Trump voters,” in particular. As I noted in my previous post, Hilary Clinton famously (and arguably to her, and the Democratic party's, peril) denounced such people as “deplorables” unworthy of redemption (though she quickly qualified and backtracked on this, but the damage was done.)

More broadly, some social issues that are important to rural America have been framed by Progressives in a manner in which there is only one morally justifiable (not simply morally correct) side to be on. The difference between morally justifiable and morally correct is important here because the issue is not solely that Progressives are articulating that they believe there is only one correct side to be on (every political faction believes this to be the case for their side), but that there is only one correct moral ethos that can be utilized to arrive at a conclusion on a given issue. The upshot entails Progressives limiting (with intellectual and moral justification) the scope of discourse on issues by policing what perspectives are morally worthy of free speech and free expression.

I’ll give one personal example of this. This past summer, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling on Dobbs, a business acquaintance, who happens to be a non-white non-Christian female, approached me at an event to ask my thoughts about what unfolded at her company. She warily shared that just before Dobbs was published, her company sent an apolitical email regarding the Court’s potential ruling. The email was from the head of the company, who stated its purpose was to ensure belonging and safety for all within the organization, regardless of political, religious, or other beliefs and practices. It was a message of unity.

Nevertheless, the heart of the email stated that the company recognizes that the Dobbs ruling will be divisive (regardless of the outcome) and that some folks in the company will be deeply upset whereas others may welcome the Court’s perspective.

At first, I thought, OK, this sounds reasonable. The company was simply playing the middle ground and affirming everyone’s perspective on a heated political issue that was certain to shake many.

But my instincts were wrong. The email generated outrage amongst Progressive employees at the company, and within the span of 24 hours, the company’s executives recanted their original message and scheduled a company-wide video conference discussion with the executives and the company’s head of diversity, equity, and inclusion. What happened?

The ultimate question posed to me by this acquaintance was: "What about me? I thought diversity and inclusion incorporated me as a woman of color, but apparently it doesn’t." 

I have thought long and hard about this issue, and I have concluded that the explanation for what happened at this acquaintance’s company is that Progressives have adopted a Marcusian notion of “liberating tolerance” in which true tolerance entails enacting “intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left.” Hence, the problem with my acquaintance’s perspective (per Progressive philosophy) is that her commitments on the issue of abortion are deemed morally reprehensible and therefore outside the realm of morally and intellectually defensible positions. Let me explain.

Herbert Marcuse was a German-American neo-Marxist philosopher and member of the Frankfurt school of critical theory where he figured prominently alongside Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno. In 1965, Marcuse published an essay titled “Repressive Tolerance” in which he famously articulated and proposed his theory of “liberating tolerance.”

The basic premise of liberating tolerance is that it is a form of “censorship, even precensorship.” It is justified because, according to Marcuse, traditional tolerance towards all people, including those with whom you disagree with, is actually a mechanism for protecting and furthering oppression within society: “[tolerance] is in many of its most effective manifestations serving the cause of oppression.” Hence, Marcuse proffered, there is a need to subvert the “oppressors” (the political Right) by being intolerant towards their thoughts, ideas, and perspectives and by being especially tolerant of the political Left.

Extraordinarily, Marcuse further argues that in order to effectuate “liberating tolerance,” the Left ought to go beyond the realm of law (“But I believe that there is a ‘natural right’ of resistance for oppressed and overpowered minorities to use extralegal means if the legal ones have proved to be inadequate,” and to even use violence if necessary (“If they use violence, they do not start a new chain of violence but try to break an established one. Since they will be punished, they know the risk, and when they are willing to take it, no third person, and least of all the educator and intellectual, has the right to preach them abstention.”)

Circling back to my acquaintance, we can now better understand why her position on abortion (despite her status as a woman of color) is no longer a morally justifiable position amongst the Left. Again, this is very different than saying that it is not a morally correct position; rather, the Left seems to be arguing (perhaps implicitly) that there are absolutely no grounds upon which such a position could be defensible or even articulated. It is a position exclusive to the oppressor.

All of this is to say that I believe this philosophy is being equally applied to many rural Americans broadly, especially those who voted for Trump. Voting for Trump, regardless of rationale, is a line that once crossed, is due nothing by detest. You become an irredeemable deplorable. This is especially so if you actually believe in conservative perspectives on deeply contested social issues. It is even so if you are a life-long Democrat who simply isn’t comfortable with joining the post-modern realm of pure moral relativity and lack of objective truths.

This is quite the convenient (and pernicious) ideology for those who invoke it. And, ironically, it’s roots are in liberal, elitist academia and its victims include some of the poorest and most neglected members of society. Perhaps it’s time to redefine and reconsider the “bourgeoise” and the “proletariat”.

Interestingly, Progressives have now become “the new Puritans,” as Noah Rothman cleverly articulates in the title of his new book: The Rise of the New Puritans: Fighting Back Against Progressives’ War on Fun, in which he argues that “in pursuit of a better world, progressives are ruining the very things which make life worth living.”

We should all pay heed to the contours of Progressive post-modern philosophy and the dangerous outcomes it produces. And we should all be weary of the form in which it manifests. Perhaps the irony of all ironies is the case of “Trumpism” itself being a form of neo-Marxism (articulated here and here.)

To conclude, it is worth pointing out that the neo-Marxist philosophy that stemmed from the Frankfurt school was not wholly false—it contained an element of truth in its critique of consumer society. But the Frankfurt solution, or alternative, to rampant capitalism and commodity culture was essentially Utopia, devoid of any pragmatism and utterly impossible.

The late English philosopher Sir Roger Scruton explains the missing piece by clarifying that the Frankfurt critique of capitalism is essentially a Biblical critique of idolatry sans God. Hence, Dr. Scruton expounds, the partial truth of the Frankfurt critique is in its diagnosis of a real problem (that of Capitalist consumerism) but its proffered solutions are disastrous because of its denial of God, who is then substituted with “Utopia,” promised, but impossible:

[i]ndeed [the partial truth of the Frankfurt critique] is the truth enshrined in the Hebrew Bible, reformulated time and again down the centuries: the truth that, in bowing down to idols, we betray our better nature. 

By turning to God we become what we truly are, creatures of a higher world, whose fulfilment is something more than the satisfaction of our wishes. Through idolatry, by contrast, we fall into a lower way of being–the way of self-enslavement, in which our appetites shape themselves as gods and take command of us.

[The Frankfurt School’s] attack on mass culture should be seen in the Old Testament spirit, as a repudiation of idolatry, a reaffirmation of the age-old distinction between true and false gods—between the worship that ennobles and redeems us, and the superstition that drops us in the ditch. For Adorno the true god is Utopia: the vision of subjects in their freedom, conscious of the world as it is, and claiming that world as their own. The false god is the fetish of consumerism—the god of appetite, who clouds our vision and confiscates our choice. 

(Roger Scruton, Fools, Frauds, and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left, 144 (2019).

The philosophical underpinnings of “rural bashing”: How progressive appeals to Marxism perpetuate the otherizing of America’s heartland

There are two antipodal tropes that may come to mind when one thinks about rural America: backwards communities of white trash, redneck, racist hillbillies, or close-knit communities that thrive on religious values and rich interpersonal relations. Obviously, neither form of these broad generalizations (the negative “white trash” nor the positive “close-knit”) accurately depicts the diversity within rural communities in America. But what happens if the values underpinning the ostensibly “positive” side of this framework are no longer deemed positive in the perspective of the urban masses? It seems, in that case, that rural people simply become a “basket of deplorables”.

A 2002 study on the perceptions of rural America found that rural Americans are often associated with a strong sense of family, hard work, commitment to community, strong religious beliefs, self-sufficiency, and loyalty to their country. In 2002, many, if not all, of these phrases connoted a positive image for most Americans. This no longer seems to be the case, especially for progressive elites who are increasingly adopting new and constantly changing sets of values at least partially influenced by “wokeness” and ultimately rooted in Marxist thought. This begs the question: does wokeness foster rural bashing even if not explicitly?

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The concept of family has traditionally been a hallmark of the American dream. However, aspects of the progressive movement have sought to change this. For example, the feminist thinker Sophie Lewis recently published a book titled Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation. She invokes the philosophies of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Charles Fourier, and Alexandra Kollontai to argue that the family unit is fundamentally classist and oppressive. She thus argues that it ought to be abolished. This perspective is shared by the founders of the popular social justice movement Black Lives Matters who, as self-proclaimed trained Marxists, are committed to “disrupting the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure…”.

Even feminism, which has received widespread support in its various fashions amongst most liberals and even many conservatives, has become enmeshed with a Marxist take on the family unit. This is articulated in a 2020 Vice article titled “We Can’t Have a Feminist Future Without Abolishing the Family.”

Strong religious identity is another association with rural Americans that has become a suspect trait in the eyes of the urban masses who have become increasingly secular, especially those with college degrees and high incomes. As evidence of this, one need not look further than titles like The God Delusion and “Why Are Atheists Generally Smarter Than Religious People?” 

Further, many rural people, most of whom are religious, recognize that their values are “very different” than those who live in cities. These values shape rural people’s political positions on social and economic issues, which in turn accentuates the rural-urban political divide.

More importantly, religious values shape the overall worldview of religious people. Religion is often more than mere faith; it is a way of life. Under this framework of religion as a way of life, we can better comprehend why rural people could be seen as hard working, committed to community, self-sufficient, loyal to their country, and committed to a strong sense of family. These are traits rooted in the Christian tradition.

For example, a Christian worldview recognizes the dignity of honest labor, the dignity of hard work. Acedia, one of the seven deadly sins, can be interpreted as spiritual sloth. But sloth also pertains to general laziness, a characteristic that is so demised by working-class rural folks that it warrants the designation of one as “white trash.”

This has been flipped upside down in the progressive worldview that is inspired by Marxist philosophy. To Marx, a worker qua his work, “does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind.” (Karl Marx, “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844,” in Robert C. Tucker, ed., The Marx-Engels Reader, 2nd Edition (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1972), 74.)

We can see the influence of this perspective on the minds of young liberal workers (often corporate) who engage in and justify practices such as “quiet quitting,” where employees mentally disengage from their work, doing just the bare minimum in order to collect a paycheck. In other words, what is there to cherish of commitment to “hard work” in a society that is becoming a “post-work world”.

So, what remains when “family” no longer means family (and is essentially devalued), hard work is despised as a ploy by capitalist elites to exploit the labor of the proletariat masses, religion is nothing but the folly of senseless peasants, and loyalty to one’s country is substituted with calls to completely dismantle most, if not all, institutions regardless of their efficacy or stability (and without a serious plan for rebuilding)? Only one caricature remains: the backwards redneck racist hillbillies of rural America who are allegedly too stupid to even vote in accordance with their own interests. 

As I pointed to elsewhere, arriving at this conclusion is a sign of our own intellectual laziness. 

In order to bridge the gap, progressives ought to make a serious effort to at least understand and respect (though not necessarily celebrate or agree with) the values of rural people. To fail to do this is to ignore their lived reality, which is precisely the opposite of what progressive theories (i.e., Critical Race Theory) are supposed to do. Mary Matsuda, a prominent scholar of Critical Race Theory famously argued that CRT must utilize the various intellectual traditions of people as a "new epistemological source for critical scholars." For Black rural communities in the South where the vast majority of residents are deeply religious Christians, this would seem to entail that the intellectual tradition of the Black Church (i.e., Protestant Christianity) must be utilized as an epistemological source for addressing the concerns of these communities. 

In other words, the religious worldview of rural Americans is essential to their identity; to ignore it is to ignore their lived realities and, instead, to resort to cheap caricatures.