Second time I’ve seen that article pop up in the last couple days. It’s got a lot right, but def not all of it. I grew up rural and stayed that way for most of my life, and on thing I think that was left out (or I missed it) is the cultural momentum and good old fashioned peer pressure. Everyone around you behaves in a certain way, you will behave the same way or you don’t fit in. When there’s no escape from your situation it’s not good to buck the system.

It also doesn’t explain the unwillingness to accept that the choices they make at the voting booth work against them other than flailing wildly in anger and voting with their middle fingers.

There’s plenty of movie and TV tropes that still push the simple “country wisdom” way of thinking that mock city dwellers by reductionist simplicity and “git’er dun” vs the overcomplicated and often shifty city slicker trying to upend rural life. Politically and socially that way of thought is still held up as some kind of ideal, unfortunately the result is “don’t actually think about what’s happening, reject nuance” instead of “you’re overcomplicating a situation”, the latter of which rarely happens in political solutions because it deals with lots of different people or rules.

Anyway. The article is interesting, but it’s got some gaps.