The dark rigidity of fundamentalist rural America

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If you run into an a-hole in the morning, you ran into an a-hole.

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If you run into assholes all day, you're the a-hole.

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Intellectuals have absolutely no humility when they discuss what rural Americans want/need and how they think.

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The problem is they don’t understand themselves, the reasons for their anger/frustrations, and don’t seem to care to know why.

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Oh, look, another Champion of Tolerance spewing hate speech against an entire demographic. If he'd done this to women, it would be called mansplaining. If he'd done it to Jews he'd be called anti-Semitic. But since he's targeting white Christians west of Philly and east of San Diego, that somehow makes it acceptable. He comes off like a pretentious waiter explaining to customers why he is owed a gratuity and they don't deserve good service. An election is a contest between sales teams. The Democrats had a product America didn't want, and they failed to sell it. Stamping your feet and pouting that your failure to sell your product is actually a failure on the part of your tasteless customers isn't going to get you the sale. It's just going to further alienate the customers. Instead of absorbing this lesson, though, the author, like the Democratic Party itself, is just doubling down and insulting the customers louder. The author is practicing the same sort of fundamentalism he criticizes. He sees his own worldview as being the only right one, the only acceptable one, and everyone else just has to get with the program OR ELSE. And we wonder why rednecks arm themselves against a future where Hillbots put them into concentration camps. The author is as out-of-touch as has been alleged. He claims to be from fly-over country himself, but given that he won't even sign his name to this hateful screed, we can't exactly take him at his word. I am a lifelong resident of where Appalachia meets the Rust Belt, and the girls here don't wear dresses except to church and proms. Even then, they aren't made of gingham. That's a stereotype that lives only in the imaginations of Judy Garland fans in Greenwich Village. I doubt this guy has ever left his own borough, let alone ventured outside the City.

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