[DeweyCA]

This is a LONG, but very stimulating by Dr. VDH. He makes a political distinction between primarily rural people and urban progressives. Personally, I would make the distinction primarily between rural people who tend to be conservative and have traditional biblical values because they see what works and have to live with the results vs. smug urbane progressives who often are wealthy enough to remain largely unaffected by their stupid policies and thus don't have to reconsider the wisdom (or lack thereof) of their ideas. Dr. Thomas Sowell says that this is often true of academic intellectuals: they never have to consider if their ideas actually work because they are not punished for their bad progressive ideas. They don't suffer any consequences for their stupidity, so they never learn.

[DeweyCA]

This idea of liberal elites not having to suffer the consequences of their bad ideas, and thus not learning from them, is what makes us view them as being “out-of-touch” with reality. The elites really do live in an artificial world.

[HiTech RedNeck]

We got a redneck revolution on!

How do I share something like this without coming across as self glorifying or self promoting? But I did see it years ago... yes, I did. It sounded to me like the only sensible exit from the corner we were painting ourselves into, to just rudely trudge across the wet paint, not caring what it looked like or what kind of temporary mess it made.

Who knew that God actually had this on His books?

I’m proud of America, or rather, proud of what God did with America.

https://soundcloud.com/daniel-levy-6/redneck-revolution-demo

[Falconspeed]

“New York Times columnists have yet to find themselves flattened by Chinese writers willing to write for a fraction of their per-word rate.”

True. The spoiled brats with protected jobs are clueless about the reality of 85% of Americans: replaced by cheap labor, stunned by high gas prices and sick of drugs in the high schools.

Trump and Palin both tapped into the real American experience of hurt.

[W.]

Long but fun. Thanks!

[GOP Poet]

Great post!

[Jeff Chandler]

One reason that Trump may have outperformed both McCain and Romney with minority voters was that they appreciated how much the way he spoke rankled condescending white urban liberals.

I read an excerpt from an interview with Buddy Ebsen in which he recalled how popular the show was with African Americans. He said he was always approached by AAs in public -- airports and such. I'm sure the appeal was for similar reasons. The Clampetts were looked down upon by the rich white folk, yet always came out on top.

[onyx]

The final election map told quite the story. Coastal, left-wing elites and extreme or radical left-wing elites. (Unreal - my Mississippi district went for Hillary ... ugh).

Isolated from ordinary, every day, paycheck to paycheck Americans, these liberals don't relate to Trump voters primarily because they don't have to and don't care to or want to.

We're beneath them, but not enough for their pity, only their rage and scorn. LOL.

We're misguided, and, deplorable and irredeemable. We believe in God, the Ten Commandments and we're the stupid idiots who still attend Church, and either home school or endorse Charter schools.

We're those dinosaur "Conservatives" AKA as racists, xenophobes, Islamophobes, misogynists, lesbian and homosexual haters, obstructionists, warmongers, progressive haters and just plain haters.

Of course, we're also uneducated. High school education, if we're lucky...LOL. Otherwise, we're drop-outs, hillbillies, if you will.

Our greatest, unforgivable sin: We had the colossal nerve to turn out in droves by the millions to VOTE!

WE ELECTED Donald J Trump, POTUS - #45.

Praise God! Thank You, Lord.

We have OUR President!
The Patriots President.
The Peoples President!
DONALD J. TRUMP

[Tench_Coxe]

"After all, the elite in Washington and Menlo Park appreciate the fresh grapes and arugula that they purchase at Whole Foods. Someone mined the granite used in their expensive kitchen counters and cut the timber for their hardwood floors. The fuel in their hybrid cars continues to come from refined oil. The city remains as dependent on this elemental stuff—typically produced outside the suburbs and cities—as it always was. The two Palo Altoans at Starbucks might have forgotten that their overpriced homes included two-by-fours, circuit breakers, and four-inch sewer pipes, but somebody somewhere made those things and brought them into their world. "

I would like to see a poll on the "elites" think the food on their grocery shelves comes into being. It certainly doesn't magically grow itself on the shelf....

[lewislynn]

As I recall early on VDH was more in the same anti-Trump camp as the "two young men in tight “high-water” pants" than he was with the farmer in Fresno.

He'd like to make the reader now believe his neighbor was the farmer in Fresno, the truth is the (like minded?) guys in skinny jeans in Palo Alto are really his neighbors.

[BunnySlippers]

Thank you for this post.

[ArmstedFragg]

Great, even by his standards!!

[jcon40]

Rural vs urban living creates 2 separate worlds.

Politics wants to offer one set of rules to govern both.

Each way of life has different problems and solutions yet urbanites are obsessed with ramming their opinions down the throats of rural America.

That the resources of the rural areas are in the control of urban think is the best starting point in forming a line of defense for rural America.

Sick of urban rules and their obsessive modeling

[Beagle8U]

I think the Prof is trying to explain to liberals how the rest of America feels about them. I doubt even he knows fully how we really feel.

The fact is we have grown to hate their filthy rotten guts. It’s well past the point where we wouldn’t piss in their ear if their head was on fire.
Most would gladly set their head on fire after they beat the piss out of them!

If it were up to me we would cut off food shipments to the cities and starve the bastards to death. Let the ghetto dwellers rise up and eat the rich liberals.

[StAnDeliver]

"For some minorities, sincerity and directness might be preferable to sloganeering by wealthy white urban progressives, who often seem more worried about assuaging their own guilt than about genuinely understanding people of different colors."

Missed a sweet spot here. Should have gone forward with this for several grafs; including some fealty to the notion that the Constitution is not a suicide pact. To wit:

"Changes come more slowly to rural interior areas, given that the sea, the historical importer of strange people and weird ideas, is far away. Maritime Athens was liberal, democratic, and cosmopolitan; its antithesis, landlocked Sparta, was oligarchic, provincial, and tradition-bound. In the same way, rural upstate New York isn’t Manhattan, and Provo isn’t Portland. Rural people rarely meet—and tend not to wish to meet—the traders, foreigners, and importers who arrive at ports with their foreign money and exotic customs."

Again, this isn't even true - rural people relish their iPhones. Thusly, communications at the speed of light (or wifi) filled the screen with libtard finger-pointing - "strange people [with] weird ideas" - you can't get your email anymore online without going through a libtard gateway. We reached out and broke off that finger.

[4Liberty]

Liberals hate that Donald Trump will be the face of their beloved big government.

[nathanbedford]

Please do not apologize for the length of the piece. Writing of this quality leaves the reader wanting more and more.

[gattaca]

I love VDH’s articles. He has an eloquent way of writing and getting his point across.

[June2]

Wow! Awesome article!

There are so many great parts to this article, I’ll need to go back and reread it again just to soak it all in.

[Godebert]

Good post. I enjoyed the many analogies to ancient Greece.

Maritime Athens was liberal, democratic, and cosmopolitan; its antithesis, landlocked Sparta, was oligarchic, provincial, and tradition-bound.

red-state Sparta vs. deep dark blue Athens.....

[RayChuang88]

One really wonders did Victor David Hanson ever read Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games novel trilogy. Collins' description of the fictional capital of Panem might as well be describing a combination of New York City, Washington, DC, the Los Angeles Basin and the San Francisco Bay Area of 2017.