Will Wilkinson: The Density Divide and the Southernification of Rural America

[Nevilledog]

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Erik Loomis
@ErikLoomis
This is a very good essay. @willwilkinson talks about the Midwest and I concur. It's also the same in northern Idaho and the old timber towns of Oregon and Washington. It's all the Confederacy now.

The Density Divide and the Southernification of Rural America
The Old North/South Split Lives on in the Urban/Rural Divide
modelcitizen.substack.com
5:34 AM · Aug 31, 2021

https://modelcitizen.substack.com/p/the-density-divide-and-the-southernification

When I was a kid, the accents changed. Driving north from central Iowa through the corn toward Minnesota, the dialect would gradually get a little Fargo — a little Norwegian bachelor farmer — maybe an hour or so from the border. Past “the Cities,” you’d encounter the Oop! Uffdah! deadpan in full hilarious effect.

Likewise, heading south, the accents would gradually trend Joe Dirt as Missouri drew near. Below I-70, the twang whistled Dixie.

In the intervening forty years, these differences have become harder to hear. They’ve grown faint. Regionalized accents reflect differences in historical patterns of migration and settlement. Swedes didn’t flock to the Ozarks. Scots-Irish didn’t cluster in St. Cloud. It shouldn’t surprise us that linguistic and cultural connection to ancestral settler communities would attenuate over many decades and waves of newcomers who alter the local ethno-cultural mix. I suppose I shouldn’t find it surprising, then, that the distinctness of Iowa, Minnesota, and Missouri’s rural white cultures have faded, too. But I do find it striking. When I tour the hustings these days, that’s what strikes me: it seems so much the same wherever you go.

I didn’t understand this when I was a kid, but the lived experience of growing up halfway between Branson and Lake Woebegone gave me my cultural bearings — supplied the contrasts that defined a distinct and salient Iowan identity. As those contrasts have faded, so have these distinct regional, rural identities. Everywhere it’s the same cloying pop country, the same aggressively oversized Ford F-150s, the same tumbledown Wal-Marts and Dollar Generals, the same eagle-heavy fashion, the same confused, aggrieved air of relentless material decline. Even the accents are more and more the same, trending toward a generalized Larry the Cable Guy twang. (Larry the Cable Guy is from Nebraska, FWIW.)

*snip*

[Boomerproud]

1. They all listen to the same low watt small town radio stations

that have rush wannabes on all day long telling them they've been screwed. Sigh.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

2. That's a big part of it!

Last edited Tue Aug 31, 2021, 03:40 PM - Edit history (2)

That, and evangelical churches.

There was a time, in my part of Ohio, when Southern Baptist churches would've stood out as an oddity. Now they're all over the place. (Edit: It was a slow and steady change over the last 40+ years in this area.)

[roamer65]

7. Grifting is a big business, now.

[KT2000]

3. A sense of belonging

found in country music plays a part too.

[uponit7771]

4. K&R, all because the USDA ***OVERT*** racist policy of not lending to non whites

[liberalla]

5. Bookmarking to read later...

[roamer65]

6. They are a bunch of spoiled white trash who can't handle the demise of the American empire.

It’s never their fault. Always someone else’s fault for their “misfortune”.

They blame the Chinese, the Mexicans, African Americans and list goes on.


Get used to it, deplorables.

The factory jobs aren’t coming back. This is 2021.