Do you know any white people that live in rural areas?
According to two authors, those people are the most dangerous people in the country.
In fact, they’re a threat to democracy.
‘White Rural Rage’
Leave it to MSNBC to trot out alleged “experts” to warn everyone of the inherent dangerousness of being white and living rural.
Tom Schaller is a professor of political science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and Paul Waldman is an opinion writer. The duo joined MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Monday to promote their new book “White Rural Rage.”
And they claim there’s all sorts of raging going on out there in the country.
Co-host Mika Brzezinski asked the authors, “Why are white rural voters a threat to democracy at this point? You would think, looking at Joe Biden and Donald Trump’s background, that the opposite would be true.”
Schaller said that he and his partner “lay out the fourfold interconnected threat that white rural voters pose to the country,” in their new book.
“They are the most anti-gay, xenophobic in the country. QAnon support and subscribers, COVID denialism, Obama birtherism,” Schaller said.
It’s unclear how any of these positions translate into opposition to choosing our elected representatives, but they pressed on.
He said he had a mountain of polls as evidence for his claims, and warned that white rural Americans continue to espouse “anti-democratic sentiments.”
“They don’t believe in an independent press, free speech. They’re most likely to say the president should be backed unilaterally without checks from the courts, and the strongest white Christian nationalists,” Schaller said. “Fourth, they’re most likely to excuse or justify violence as acceptable.”
Schaller said white rural voters became this way because of the “problematic education systems,” “poorer infrastructure” and “a lack of economic opportunity” in rural parts of America.
“That kind of left them open to someone like Donald Trump who would come along and tell them something that was true, that there is a system that has not served them well,” Schaller also claimed.
“They’re pissed off,” Waldman said.
Racist as Hell
Could you imagine two “experts” going on television and warning, as a blanket statement, that inner city blacks are overwhelmingly bigoted and dangerous? They would instantly be accused of racism.
And their accusers would be right.
But on MSNBC such racially-charged rhetoric seems just fine apparently.
So long as the targets are rural and white.
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