Donald Trump is holding back rural America

Nicholas Jacobs is an Assistant Professor of Government at Colby College.

He is co-author of the 2023 book “The Rural Voter: The Politics of Place and the Disuniting of America’s Rural Voter” In this conversation, Jacobs reflects on the orchestrated chaos of the Age of Trump and how he is trying to navigate it.

LZ Granderson: The right-wing and the larger neofascist movement are experts at weaponizing language.

LZ: Language is powerful because it is ambiguous, and lots of people with different answers can buy into it.

He says rural Americans are increasingly voting in lock-step with one bloc; rural vote in rural America is “nationalized” Therefore, there is a rural vote, LZ writes.

John Sutter : Rural America is more complicated than often portrayed, but actually has a much larger degree of commonality than we like to believe.

He says a sense of identification with a particular place is so pronounced in rural communities that it sort of takes over.

Sutter asks: Why do rural communities who were already primed for suffering continue to vote for the person who so mismanaged the pandemic, arguably making it worse?.