Why Appalachia — and rural America — clings to Trump

Back in the days before child labor laws and before it became conventional wisdom that no young person could develop proper character without playing two dozen sports mastering three instruments and maintaining a GPA I had the straightforward job of driving milk cows to our alfalfa field in Virginia s Blue Ridge Mountains for a few limited high-protein grazing I learned that cattle had an awesome tendency to overgraze this luscious stuff becoming dangerously bloated with gas unless they were precisely acclimated to consumption over time and that my best efforts and those of my trusty shepherd dog seldom succeeded in getting the Guernsey rogues out of the field before they sickened themselves During the last minimal weeks I ve been part of a group of veteran journalists and strategy wonks who discuss Donald Trump s relationship to Appalachia We have spent a lot of time over the years covering and contemplating the enduring issues of mine safety poverty flooding and a large number of other problems facing the region We have been pondering how it can be that the Trump administration is reversing gains made over the last meager decades while areas like Eastern Kentucky and West Virginia and with specific exceptions the whole of the -state region of million people have voted overwhelmingly for this administration and continue to endorsement its strip mining of progress But how do we explain the reasons for this behavior such as how much of Appalachia went from heavily Democratic to MAGA-supporting in just a scant decades In fact the question can also be petitioned of much of rural America A journalist in our group recalled that one of our heroes Tom Gish the crusading editor of The Mountain Eagle in Whitesburg Ky inevitably insisted that if people had the right information they would make rational decisions in their own best interests Such optimism we agreed requirements to be tempered in these times But how do we explain the reasons for this behavior such as how much of Appalachia went from heavily Democratic to MAGA-supporting in just a limited decades In fact the question can also be sought of much of rural America It takes a few digging The great inspiration Thomas Jefferson drew from Jean-Jacques Rousseau s writings on the social contract before penning one of mankind s the majority eloquent documents in July of was based on his belief that people would make rational indeed democratic decisions if they had the right information Rousseau was a repeat entrant in the prestigious Dijon Prize contests and literally won the coveted award a second time in for his Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men In one of those essays Rousseau wrote The first man who having fenced in a piece of land announced This is mine and revealed people na ve enough to believe him that man was the true founder of civil society From how numerous crimes wars and murders from how plenty of horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind by pulling up the stakes or filling up the ditch and crying to his fellows Beware of listening to this impostor you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all and the earth itself to nobody ' It follows that once there are countless fences people must enter into social contracts to regulate essential things like who s the main rooster and whether milk-producing Guernseys or steak-producing Angus get first dibs in the alfalfa fields Jefferson reasoned that Americans had never contracted to make King George III the main rooster he could take his monarchy and stuff it That s the philosophy that secured us life liberty and the pursuit of happiness Enlightened self-interest is the root from which Rousseau s philosophical forest flourishes The English being less romantic and worse cooks than the French spotted an anomaly in all this Back when every English village had a commons where everyone could graze their sheep they noticed a few farmers tended to increase their herds It was obviously in that farmer s self-interest to do so there being no direct cost to him Related The art of resistance Trump s attack on humanities triggers a blowback movement Eventually however the lush commons became something like adobe hills The English recognized this destructive pattern but it took until for ecologist Garrett Hardin to give it a name and framework in his influential essay in Science magazine entitled The Tragedy of the Commons Hardin used the example of herders sharing a common pasture where each herder s rational decision to add one more animal to graze would eventually lead to overgrazing and the pasture s destruction His central argument was that individuals acting independently and rationally according to their own self-interest behave contrary to the whole group s long-term best interests by depleting or spoiling the shared pool Hardin was particularly concerned with population advance and deposit depletion arguing that freedom in a commons brings ruin to all While his solutions were sometimes controversial his core insight about the conflict between individual rationality and collective welfare has become fundamental to understanding everything from environmental program to economic regulation What our milk cows taught me on that mountain farm Hardin elevated into a principle that explains much of what ails modern society This concept of overgrazing can also involve more than support and alfalfa fields It also applies to ideas and principles whether in England Appalachia or the rest of America For generations Appalachia existed as a kind of social and economic commons for the country where promises of help federal commitment job training flood protection healthcare care access were offered as communal sustenance Each wave of politicians agencies and even well-intentioned outsiders acted in their own short-term interest to make these promises while securing votes funding or moral satisfaction But like herders adding one more cow these promises were often poorly implemented underfunded speedily abandoned or designed more for political optics than lasting change Over decades this relentless grazing of pledges without consistent effective follow-through degraded the shared reserve of trust down to bare earth Why believe this promise of help when the last dozen withered The MAGA vote isn t necessarily an endorsement of specific policies it s a desperate lunge toward any alternative a grazing of the last bitter stubble of hope left in a field systematically exhausted by decades of unfulfilled commitments from both traditional political parties The literal commons of Appalachia its mountains forests and mineral wealth were exploited under the banner of progress leaving environmental ruin and economic instability in its wake This physical overgrazing mirrors the exploitation of the region s social commons Just as outside corporations extracted coal until the land and communities were depleted outside political forces extracted votes with grand promises acting in their lust for power until the reservoir of trust was drained The region s shift to MAGA reflects a final seemingly rational act of self-preservation by mountaineers who feel the entire system governing this shared pasture of opportunity and fairness has failed them They are opting for a disruptive herder who however flawed at least indicates the old depleted grazing rules no longer apply Tom Gish s faith that the right information leads to rational decisions assumed a healthy commons of shared truth and institutional credibility But decades of seeing mine safety regulations weakened after disasters poverty statistics ignored or flood relief funds absent or mismanaged eroded that commons When institutions tasked with stewarding the population good like regulatory agencies or traditional political parties are perceived as captured by outside interests or are incompetent trust in the information they provide and the solutions they offer vanishes Want more sharp takes on politics Sign up for our free newsletter Standing Room Only written by Amanda Marcotte now also a weekly show on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts The MAGA movement adept at exploiting this vacuum offers a potent but factually dubious alternative narrative Voting for it becomes a seemingly rational if nihilistic act within a degraded information commons A rejection of the perceived impostors to use Rousseau s term who oversaw the overgrazing even if the alternative offers no real plan for restoring the pasture of hope Nowhere is the tragedy of the commons more literally and devastatingly visible than in mountaintop removal coal mining More than mountains have been destroyed by this process with million acres surface-mined for coal in central Appalachia Each coal company asserts to act in the best interest of its owners and utilities that want cheap coal blasting away mountaintops to reach thin seams of coal is far cheaper than deep mining But collectively this efficient extraction has buried thousands of miles of streams poisoned water supplies and left moonscapes where ancient mountains once stood The profits flow to distant shareholders while the environmental and vitality costs remain with local communities who lose their mountains their clean water and often their wellbeing to benefit a commons of cheap electricity What took millions of years to create gets destroyed in months for coal seams that power our air conditioners and charge our electric vehicles the ultimate irony of environmental overgrazing worship of so-called technological advances and thoughtless consideration of future generations Federal and state regulators have been complicit in this devastation by not enforcing the scant restrictions already in law and bowing to coal company pressure to ignore the protests of individuals and communities harmed by shaving the tops off of chosen of the world s the greater part beautiful mountains Consider the financial emergency when banks issued mortgages to anyone with a pulse knowing they could package and sell the exposure to others Each institution acted in its apparent self-interest but collectively they grazed the financial commons down to bare ground leaving taxpayers to restore the pasture We see this tragedy playing out across rural America in contemporary times where groundwater aquifers that took millennia to fill are being pumped dry in decades Each farmer drilling deeper wells acts rationally Their crops need water their families need income But collectively we re mining an irreplaceable commons that our grandchildren will inherit as hardpan The Ogallala Aquifer which rests beneath the Great Plains and was once thought inexhaustible now drops several feet per year in selected areas turning what was once America s breadbasket into the next day s dust bowl Each acquisition makes economic sense for the corporation but collectively we re losing the social fabric of rural communities the school boards volunteer fire departments and local businesses that family farmers traditionally supported The consolidation of American agriculture reflects this same pattern Corporate farms can afford to bid up land prices and operate on razor-thin margins that family operations can t match Each acquisition makes economic sense for the corporation but collectively we re losing the social fabric of rural communities the school boards volunteer fire departments and local businesses that family farmers traditionally supported Rural broadband illustrates the commons trouble perfectly Telecom companies avoid the expense of serving sparsely populated areas because it s not profitable for any single company Meanwhile rural communities fall further behind in the digital economic system creating a commons of connectivity that remains tragically underdeveloped while urban areas enjoy multiple high-speed options We see it in in current times s immigration debates where sanctuary cities and frontier states clash over materials and responsibilities Local communities act in their perceived self-interest various offering protection others demanding enforcement while the national commons of immigration plan remains tragically overgrazed by competing political interests We witness it in social media platforms where individual users and corporate algorithms optimize for engagement and profit collectively creating an information commons so degraded by misinformation and polarization that democratic discourse itself suffers State change represents perhaps the ultimate tragedy of the commons where individual nations and corporations pursue economic self-interest while the atmospheric commons becomes increasingly uninhabitable for everyone Even our newest realm volatility from meme stock frenzies to cryptocurrency bubbles reflects the same pattern Institutional investors chase quick profits while collectively destabilizing the financial commons that supports retirement accounts and economic stability We need your help to stay independent Subscribe at present to endorsement Salon s progressive journalism The tragedy extends to our political system where gerrymandering dark money and extreme partisanship serve short-term political interests of political parties while degrading the democratic commons that serves us all Each side grazes their portion of the political pasture down to the roots leaving scorched earth for future generations This is how we end up with strength care systems that over-consume support financial institutions that privatize profits while socializing losses federal agencies that prioritize fiefdoms over constituents facility and immigration policies that satisfy no one while serving everyone poorly It s all overgrazing it s all a tragedy of the commons and we can t agree on exactly who to blame for signing this social contract or how to renegotiate it before the pasture becomes permanently barren The challenge isn t identifying the dilemma Rousseau and the English figured that out centuries ago The challenge is mustering the collective wisdom to manage our shared tools before they re grazed beyond recovery Unlike my family cattle we can t absolutely move to a fresh field when this one is exhausted On July we celebrated the remarkable creation of this republic It s time for those in Appalachia and the whole nation to really ask ourselves in all our overgrazing of support and ideas and principles if we have exhausted the commons Trust and hope are our the bulk precious support and we are tragically exhausting a once-bountiful supply Read more about this topic Rural hospitals will be hit hard by Trump s signature spending package People are terrified Fear over Medicaid cuts across rural America could sway specific Republicans Pride paradox Sociologist Arlie Hochschild on Trump s manipulation of white working class voters The post Why Appalachia and rural America clings to Trump appeared first on Salon com