I take exception to the following:

Finally, the whitelash thesis is convenient because it absolves liberals of not recognizing how their own obsession with diversity has encouraged white, rural, religious Americans to think of themselves as a disadvantaged group whose identity is being threatened or ignored. Such people are not actually reacting against the reality of our diverse America (they tend, after all, to live in homogeneous areas of the country). But they are reacting against the omnipresent rhetoric of identity, which is what they mean by “political correctness.” Liberals should bear in mind that the first identity movement in American politics was the Ku Klux Klan, which still exists. Those who play the identity game should be prepared to lose it.

This concedes that the attempts to create a pluralistic society have been an effort to impose values upon people who do not agree. What makes this interpretation more special than simply stating that there are people who militate against my desire for a pluralistic soceity?

Cry me a fucking rivver.

Suddenly America's white males discovered they had an identity when it came to a white woman? Convenient.

What happened to things like childbirth and child care abortion and early education and disabilities and various kinds of emergency care that don't much touch men, mostly women. 

For years and years the Republicans and teabaggers have been racking up wins based on their form of identity politics - God, guns, country music, military, and hatred of liberals.

In 2010, only 2 years after Republicans ran the economy into a ditch and giving Dems 21 new house seats, they turned around and gave the Republicans *63 fucking new seats*, even as Obama still tried to recover the economy, give them affordable health care, rescue Detroit and other manufacturing they say they're so worried about.

Let me try this again. FFFFFUUUUUCCCCCKKKKK THEM. I didn't hear them bitching to Bush about his lack of job growth or his wasting trillions on unneeded wars or tax breaks for the rich. I didn't hear them busting their Congressperson's chops for interfering with Obama's stimulus or health care. I did hear lots of rightwing sniggering over Obama's "socialism" and Kenyan birth. Every fucking 4 years we spend like a year in Iowa listing to what fucking rural white America has to say while we never even go close to California. So what words of wisdom did Iowa as proxy white hayseed give to all these candidates? 

The Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics Iowa poll found 90 percent or more of Republicans said they want to spend a lot of time on the budget deficit, national defense, taxes and terrorist groups.

Topping the Democratic list were energy, at 92 percent, followed by income inequality at 90 percent and the nation’s infrastructure at 88 percent.

Only job creation, which was fifth on the Republican list and fourth among Democrats, showed up in the top five of either party.

So tell me, if unemployment and poor-paying jobs are so important for these Republican voters, why is "deficit" #1 and  *taxes* #3 when the poor wouldn't pay taxes anyway, and the deficit stimulus would have been to help out poor people and enact farther reaching programs. (and don't fret about Trade not appearing on the list - Iowa dumps most of its entire agricultural output on the rest of the world, between grains and corn syrup and what not - the main negative effect of NAFTA wasn't in manufacturing - it was driving poor Mexican farmers out of business. U S A! U S A!!!)

The biggest problem isn't the poorness of the rural white voter - it's their identification with completely bullshit ideals and goals that the Republican leadership has fed them for decades, and their ability to pin all of its failures on Democrats aka liberals. National defense and terrorism are scaredy cat issues. Budget deficit is another concern troll item, and I bet for "taxes" they're all thinking "taxes on the rich" - but they've learned to identify with the rich. Republicans vote Republicans, Democrats vote Democrats. If they're disgruntled, they stay home or vote 3rd party - they seldom switch.

Hillary had a web site for issues for salvaging Rural America - her position a year ago wasn't bad, but the platform by last summer was pretty pathetic - 2 paragraphs, 1 on family farms. Hint: there's 1.4% farm population out of 15% rural, or maybe 9% of country folks tied to farming/fishing/forestry. It's shrunk, will keep shrinking. When we talk about rural survival, talk about something else.

What about jobs? Scott Walker as governor of Wisconsin has pushed against unions forever - what do Republicans think about Walker trying to lower wages for low-paid people?

As for elections, sure, we can ask a candidate to visit more rural locations, but there are 365 days in the year, 1 candidate, rural locations are by definition tiny & dispersed, and she was banging away at North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Ohio - states with similar problems. We have proxies like Russ Feingold that represent the candidate's issues, local politicians and advocates who've been bustling around the states forever. Hillary may have visited Michigan only 4 times, while Trump 8 - but Obama rescued Michigan big time in 2009. Trump just yesterday claimed he saved Ford jobs from going to Mexico - another completely bullshit claim out of a guy who'll say anything. Is this what rural white America needs to be entertained, to be "taken seriously"?

Try this come to Jesus - Stan Kinison used to tell Ethiopians the solution to their famine - "MOVE!!! You live in a FUCKING DESERT". Cold, callous, not quite the same for rural America, but still.... that was just a warmup. Continuing with Jesus...

Manufacturing and agriculture have changed - irrevocably. They're not coming back in any sense of how they used to be. And we don't want them to. They seemed like great jobs at the time, but lots of people worked themselves to death at an early age, and if you've seen the Grapes of Wrath or any other farming movie, you know the continual struggles with banks, natures, collapsing markets, and so on. The glory years weren't so glorious. Same with the factories - 8-10 hours a day on the line? (more back before unions - hey, why is it you guys are so anti-union when they got you good wages? you want nostalgia - putting it to the man was never better). Those thick clouds of smoke hanging over the mills? It was great while it lasted, but now that we've exported enough that 9 of 10 most polluted cities in the world are in China, we have a bit of perspective on the matter.

The internet came to rural America 25 years ago, and you haven't done much with it but watch Netflix and order online books. Sure, there were a few successes like that big Gateway Computer distribution center up in Nebraska, but mostly you've treated your generation's telegraph exactly like the Indians did the railroad - in complete ignorance and denial until it was way late. Yes, the railroad took their buffalo and all their land, and the internet and Walmart's distribution centers and everything else is coming for your little towns (the farms are already largely gone - the "family farm" is a joke in most instances, kind of like those Williamsburg colonial towns folks like visiting on vacation. How come all the Googles and Ubers from from San Francisco, even though Warren Buffett's from Omaha? It took 5 people to start up Twitter, 5 people to start Facebook, 2 to start Google.

But every time something new gets mentioned in rural America - health care for all, new energy, global warming, whatever - you guys spend all your time bucking any progress. That's a lot of buses gone by waiting for the right one to get on.

If you want a good view of how things are going, look to the South in the 1920's - one of those "it can't get any worse" situations that despite limits of nature and physics got even worse. Yeah, they'd built up a society based on cotton and slaves with a bit of cotillion and steamboats and whiskey thrown in for good measure, and when the first 2 collapsed, they either got up and moved or sat there and scratched the dirt for another 80-100 years, until FDR helped pull it together with social programs and infrastructure and a few new enterprisers like Ted Turner started popping up.

Yep, you can be like them 1920's southerners, like that 1927 Louisiana Flood that Randy Newman sang so nice about, wishing for the big return, that someone from Washington will pay them some nevermind.

Or you can come up with your own vision. One of the reason the South's risen again is cause they stole your jobs, since believe it or not, shipping *everything* overseas or south of the border is too expensive. (One reason Trump's claim about saving Ford jobs is bullshit is because Ford only offshores the cheap cars where there's no margin). The South took new car plants but without the union labor wages or working conditions. Don't remember all those articles in the 80's about rust belt heading south? I sure do.

So given that you now live in an agricultural and manufacturing desert, watcha gonna do? Scream at the sky, hope for someone to create a new factory, or get up and have your Thomas Edison or Charles Goodyear moment, try 100-1000 combinations of something until it works?

Because guess what - no matter how many cowboy hats and country records you buy, you're not cowboys and never will be and if you could you'd find you don't wanna. Unless you have a half billion dollars, you're not going to create a competitive farm. With automation and a ton of money you might be able to create a serious pharma plant or semiconductor fab, but you need some pretty state-of-the-art knowledge to succeed, and as the smartasses in California and Boston have discovered, a lot more businesses fail than succeed. You don't have beaches or impressive landscapes to visit, so forget about tourism. And for all the Republicans have you fretting about terror, you're not even interesting or dense enough for them to terrorize.

The only thing you *do* manage to contribute to each new technical generation is a new generation of kids to send of to these more and more high-tech wars. That would seem to be a completely negative outcome, but at least our involvement is measured in tens of thousands these days rather than a half million at a time in Vietnam and well over a million for WWII. But here's the thing - besides validating your religion, which you probably don't need any help with, the Republicans haven't given you fuck all in at least 50 years, aside from stoke your resentment or come up with a cynical insincere slogan. Okay, the Democrats may not visit enough, but when they do, they offer ideas, pieces of which apply to you. They may be smartass city folk, young liberals, but if you check the Old Testament they were complaining about them at the time of Jehosophat, and will be complaining about come the Rapture, and you might as well not lose any sleep over. Especially when you're losing jobs and even your jobs.

So next time the slick pol comes around with some God, guns, Ameican way and launches into his "culture war" schtick like they used to sell rheumatiz medicine from soap boxes on corners, ask him what his plan is - tell him you already have a gun and know how to use it, that Jesus will take care of hisself, but these jibs and economy that all these Republican "businessmen" are so self-pleased about sure seems to go to shit when they're in charge and flourish when not.

Because if you're concerned about pay inequality, that's the main source - some people just ain't no good with money and can't be trusted if they are.