Originally Authored at TheFederalist.com
Very Important Columnists Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman just released their book White Rural Rage, about flyover Americans and their support for Donald Trump. They’re doing rounds through the Democrat media circuit to plug it. One of those fun little appearances happened on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
It’s hard to put into words just how delusional and dishonest the segment was — as in, every single word. These highfalutin “journalists” have their heads so far up their own keisters, they wouldn’t know the honest truth if it introduced itself by name and punched them in the face.
Not only do the writers, who purport to be experts on Middle America, misunderstand everything about it. They also project Democrats’ nastiest and most conspicuous political impulses onto white, rural folks. It’s like the pot calling the kettle black — if the pot were actually white, racist, conspiratorial, anti-democratic, and violent.
“We lay out the four-fold, interconnected threat that white, rural voters pose to the country,” Schaller said with a straight face to Mika Brzezinski. In the author’s telling, rural, white voters are every kind of -ist, -anti, and -phobic imaginable, including “racist, xenophobic, anti-immigrant, and anti-gay.” They’re also mega conspiracy theorists, Christian nationalists, and anti-democratic. And to top it all off, rural whites “excuse or justify violence as an acceptable alternative to peaceful public discourse.”
It would be laughable if it weren’t so insulting — not only because it slanders good folks in flyover country, but because it also offends every viewer’s intelligence. We all see Democrats’ dirty tricks and aren’t fooled by a pseudointellectual book by two white guys hating on other white guys for disagreeing with their opinions. It’s pure projection.
So let’s just see how Democrats measure up to their own “white rural rage” rubric.
1. Racist, Xenophobic, Ant-Immigrant
Democrats don’t even try to hide their racism anymore, so this one’s easy. From President Joe Biden insisting you ain’t really black if you don’t share his opinions, to saying black people aren’t smart enough to succeed on merit or to procure a driver’s license, to discriminating against white people and Asians in hiring and higher education, to cheering segregation, to targeting nonwhites with abortion facilities, to ignoring black on black violence, and more, Democrats display their racial animus every day.
For an increasing number, their hatred of Israel makes it hard to hide their xenophobia too. And while those in favor of open borders would claim to be pro-immigrant, they stop the moment illegal foreigners reach their communities.
2. Conspiratorial
“[White, rural Americans are] the most conspiracist group,” says Schaller. “QAnon support and subscribers, election denialism, Covid denialism and scientific skepticism, Obama birtherism.”
This is rich. For starters, infinitely more Democrats — including at the highest levels of elected office, in elite media circles, and in the upper echelons of higher education — have bought into the Russia-collusion hoax, Brett Kavanaugh gang rape conspiracy, and other media deceptions than the factions of Republican voters who buy into QAnon and Obama birtherism (and, by the way, possess zero institutional power).
Plus, we’re all old enough to remember when Democrats contested every lost election outcome under the sun in the years leading up to 2020, with their cries hitting a fever pitch in 2016.
Their gaslighting on election security is so brazen that we know it will ramp right up again with their next loss, especially if that loss just so happens to be to Trump in November.
And don’t even get us started on Covid science denialism — like claiming the vaccine was safe and effective, cloth masks worked, church was more dangerous than Black Lives Matter protests, kids wouldn’t suffer from Zoom school, and there were no downsides to firing swaths of loyal health care workers, first responders, and qualified service members who had no use for the mandated jab. Wait, who were the science deniers again?
3. Anti-Democratic
White, rural voters also “don’t believe in an independent press, free speech,” adds Schaller. “They’re most likely to say the president should be able to act unilaterally without any checks from Congress or the courts or the bureaucracy.”
Hmm, remind me again which political demographic is working with Big Tech and corporations like Amazon to ban books and censor dissenting political opinions under the guise of “misinformation.” Just this week New York Attorney General Letitia James — who is waging no-holds-barred lawfare to convict and bankrupt Trump in the Empire State — urged Colorado to deny cake artist Jack Phillips his First Amendment rights of free speech, expression, and association.
As for freedom of the press, also this week, Biden’s FBI charged investigative journalist Steve Baker with four misdemeanors for his coverage of the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.
Let’s play a little game. See if you know who I’m talking about: He’s a president who openly ignores the courts when they slap him down, governs via executive order and bureaucratic sweep, ignores the Constitution and other established law when it doesn’t suit him, is currently weaponizing the federal government boot his No. 1 political opponent off the ballot, and, in fact, is guilty of a worse version of what his opponent is charged with but has been deemed too senile to be prosecuted. In other words, he’s above the law and anti-democracy. Hint: His primary voting demographic is not white, rural voters.
4. Political Violence Over Civil Discourse
I know Democrats are still high on celebrating their favorite national holiday: Jan. 6. But I’m sorry, was it a Trump voter who just self-immolated in front of the Israeli Embassy while screaming “Free Palestine”? Was it angry, white Republicans who lit Minneapolis, Kenosha, Seattle, and Portland on fire?
Is it rural white Americans in the headlines these days shooting up schools and churches — or leftist gender goblins who want to get back at white “crackers“? And how about the more than 400 Catholic churches, not to mention crisis pregnancy centers, that have been attacked since the 2020 summer of rage?
We all know the answer.
Couldn’t Be More Wrong
The wildly false information spread by the likes of Schaller and Waldman is so much bigger than media bias. It’s political projection that amounts to brazen Democrat propaganda. And networks like MSNBC are happy to give it a platform.
You know it’s propaganda because this is how propaganda always works. Just listen to Waldman’s assessment of Trump voters, whom he admits have some “real and profound” economic- and infrastructure-related grievances:
The trouble is that what Donald Trump gave them was not something that was actually going to fix those problems, but was just a kind of a way to channel their rage and anger. … It wasn’t really about the material condition of their lives. Because he didn’t improve their lives, but he got more support in rural areas in 2020 than he had in 2016 despite the fact that none of their problems had gotten any better under him.”
Horsepuckey. Ask any average rural, white Americans (or any American for that matter), and if they’re honest, they’ll say they absolutely saw the “material condition of their lives” improve under Trump. In the housing market, in the manufacturing industry, in the grocery store, at the gas pump, at the border, in churches, and on and on it goes.
But the propaganda press already knows this. It’s why their only remaining tactics are projection and “don’t believe your lyin’ eyes.”