Review: Rural Rebellion by Ross Benes

All politics are local in the U.S. But since the 1980s, the local state political scene has trended towards mimicking national politics. States, like their citizens, are becoming more divided, which means internally the states are under single party control. The reasons for the political divide are multiple and varied. While gerrymandering and voter suppression play their parts, they’re not the whole reason. The Democratic National Committee (DNC) too often uses excuses to avoid doing the work in so-called red states. As Stacey Abrams demonstrated in Georgia, there are no red states; there are just states the DNC has given up on. But even that is too simplistic an explanation. Ross Benes demonstrates this by looking to the state of Nebraska where he grew up and went to college. In Rural Rebellion, Benes analyzes how his home state turned itself into a Republican stronghold.

Disclaimer: The author provided me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions that follow are mine and mine alone.

TL;DR

Rural Rebellion by Ross Benes is part memoir, part contemporary history, part political analysis. It blends these aspects together effortlessly to document Nebraska’s rightward trend. Highly recommended for political junkies, and a must read for the Democratic National Committee.

From the Publisher

After Ross Benes left Nebraska for New York, he witnessed his polite home state become synonymous with “Trump country.” Long dismissed as “flyover” land, the area where he was born and raised suddenly became the subject of TV features and frequent opinion columns. With the rural-urban divide overtaking the national conversation, Benes knew what he had to do: go home.

In Rural Rebellion, Benes explores Nebraska’s shifting political landscape to better understand what’s plaguing America. He clarifies how Nebraska defies red-state stereotypes while offering readers insights into how a frontier state with a tradition of nonpartisanship succumbed to the hardened right. Extensive interviews with US senators, representatives, governors, state lawmakers, and other power brokers illustrate how local disputes over health-care coverage and education funding became microcosms for our current national crisis.

Rural Rebellion is also the story of one man coming to terms with both his past and present. Benes writes about the dissonance of moving from the most rural and conservative region of the country to its most liberal and urban centers as they grow further apart at a critical moment in history. He seeks to bridge Americas current political divides by contrasting the conservative values he learned growing up in a town of three hundred with those of his liberal acquaintances in New York City, where he now lives.

At a time when social and political differences are too often portrayed in stark binary terms, and people in the Trump-supporting heartland are depicted in reductive, one-dimensional ways, Benes tells real-life stories to add depth and nuance to our understanding of rural Americans’ attitudes about abortion, immigration, big government, and other contentious issues. His argument and conclusion are simple but powerful: that Americans in disparate places would be less hostile to one another if they just knew each other a little better. Part memoir, journalism, and social science, Rural Rebellion is a book for our times.

Rural Rebellion is a short book, but it’s packed with good analysis. Benes uses his own life and experience in Nebraska to explain and relate the larger trends in the state. Benes structured the book around religion becoming political, immigration, corruption, the partisan trend in the non-partisan legislature, the crusade against higher education, and the Democratic infighting in the state. Each topic gets a bit from Benes life, a bit from interviews, and some diving into data. Interestingly, the book starts with the local memory of when the actors from To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar came to town. The contrast of conservative people reminiscing about drag queens sets the tone for the book. Benes isn’t going to deal in stereotypes. Nor is he going to provide simple reasons for the causes of the rightward trend. Benes shows how this trend, though, has made the state’s politicians more closely resemble their national parties. In particular, Ross’s discussion of the non-partisan state legislature is fascinating. In it, he shows how Republicans have changed the legislature to make it more partisan and less independent from the governor. This chapter alone is reason enough to get money out of politics.

Since Benes grew up in Nebraska, his roots are in conservatism, but as with many who leave home, that conservatism morphed into a centrism. This gives him an even keeled look at his home state. Benes tries to deal with the humans underneath the ideology and mostly succeeds. This is not a book for people who want a reason to blame the voters of Nebraska for their own troubles. It’s not as simple as that. But, for anyone who reads this, they will get a good account of the reality of conservatives.

Exposure Is Needed

A recurring theme throughout Rural Rebellion is that liberals have a stereotypical view of conservatives and vice versa. These views come from the fact that the U.S. is self-separating into bubbles of like-minded thought and ideology. This is true in life, in media consumption, and online. Benes talks about how his exposure to new places and new ways of thinking is what broke him out of the conservative mold in which he grew up. But Benes correctly notes that this is often a one way road. People from the big city do not visit small towns to understand their lives. At most, liberals read accounts of the NY Times sending its reporters to the heartland and then boycott the NY Times for not demonizing the people.

One of the great examples that Benes uses is how kids all over the U.S. are taught that going to the big city is an educational trip. While this is true and important for a child’s education, the reverse never happens. Kids that live in cities with monuments never travel to the countryside to learn about farming or small town life. Maybe there should be field trips for city schools to go to the countryside and see a different way of life.

The reality of this country is that we stigmatize people not like us. This is as true for Democrats as it is for Republicans. With the fracturing of our media and the increased isolation social media incentivizes, the divide will only worsen. The rhetoric on both sides of the aisle is increasingly divisive, and the extremely online voters drive the rhetoric to new extremes. The U.S. needs an adopt-an-opposing-voter policy where a Democrat and a Republican have a conversation about anything except politics to remember the humanity in each person.

Politics in the Pulpit

Like Benes, I grew up Catholic. I was anti-abortion because it was the only perspective that I knew. But as I moved around the world and got exposure to different ways of thinking, I became disillusioned with the Catholic church. In every city that I’ve lived in, I’ve tried to find a Catholic church, but in every city, I don’t go back. I like going to mass on Easter and Christmas because those are the only two masses that do not get politicized. I want to go to church to learn how to better myself spiritually, but the Catholic church in the U.S. has gotten out of the business of spiritual improvement. U.S. Catholics are obsessed with abortion, and, though, they claim to be ‘pro-life,’ they don’t spend as much time advocating to end the death penalty or to support and care for people who are actually alive. Some Catholics do live a pro-life life in which they support all aspects of life, but they are rare. In the U.S., only could a lifelong Catholic, who was a committed father, never divorced, goes to mass every Sunday, be considered less of a Christian than a man twice divorced, who cheated on every wife he’s had and who restarted the death penalty and only goes to church for photo opportunities. But that’s because abortion is an obsession for the U.S. Catholic church.

Benes describes the Catholics of Nebraska, but I wonder if he encountered any Qanon believers among the NE Catholics or if that’s a protestant phenomenon. Benes does not discuss Qanon in relation to religion and Republicans in Rural Rebellion. Whether that was a conscious choice or not, I applaud the decision. Benes wants to portray regular Nebraskans as taking on the Catholic church’s abortion obsession. Even people who wouldn’t believe the Qanon nonsense will swing hard right because of abortion. As Benes notes, the pulpit now is filled with phrases like “culture of death” that when repeated over and over, stick. This seems more like political propaganda than religious sermon.

Benes discusses this well in his chapter on religion, and even though he wasn’t trying to, he’s pushed me over the edge of believing that churches should lose their tax-exempt status. Or at the least, they should have to register as political organizations. If they want to preach political dogma from the pulpit, they should be treated as political organizations.

Immigration and Nebraska

The chapter on immigration makes the point that Republicans use immigration as a fear/anger tactic to drive their party to the polls. Republicans have turned immigration into the simple answer for all of America’s woes. Benes also notes that conservatives haven’t moved much on their opinion of immigration, but Democrats have dramatically changed their opinions. Included in this chapter is an example of how the town of Schuyler helped immigrants adjust. By working with them, the city was able to get the outcome it wanted without resorting to changing the laws. Helping others should be a conservative value, but it doesn’t seem to be.

This chapter is somewhat lacking. Benes suffers from the same problem as many journalists; he’s unwilling to call racism, racism. There is an added barrier for him in that calling people he grew up with racist is difficult and very, very hard to do. He acknowledges the anti-immigrant fervor in Nebraska, but he attributes this to politicians and media creating an echo chamber. This is true but only part of the story. Benes correctly notes that the people of Nebraska don’t consider themselves racist because of how they treat people. But racism isn’t just burning crosses in people’s yards. Institutional and structural racism exist, and Benes notes explicitly how politicians in Nebraska make laws specifically to make immigrant lives more difficult. He gets close when he notes that it’s not just illegal immigration that these people and their politicians oppose. He claims that most people don’t believe what the extremely online folk do, and this is only partly true. The silent ones may not believe some of the more extreme beliefs, but they often believe in the myth of color blindness and that racism only exists as way to bludgeon conservatives. For example Benes talks about calling the town next to them “a soccer town” or “Little Mexico,” but he doesn’t acknowledge the racism inherent these labels. The phrases separate and reinforce the foreign-ness of the brown-skinned kids. These labels are passed down through school athletics, and it’s a form of structural racism. Did Benes and his school chums call other towns “Little Germany” or “Little Poland?” He doesn’t say; so, maybe. But without indicating if referring to other towns as their countries of perceived origins, the reader has to assume this only applied to that town. Nicknames for town like this seem harmless to most conservatives, but they fail to recognize how the subtext of these nicknames is that they’re not like you, they’re not from here. And that division may not be noticed by the conservative conscious mind, but it’s still there nonetheless. And the kids from “Little Mexico” understand explicitly what is meant.

GOP versus Education

Rural Rebellion’s chapter on the Nebraska GOP’s war on higher education is excellent. He starts with a Turning Point USA protest that got blown out of proportion and then moves on to show how hard the GOP works to undermine higher education. (In Missouri, the Republican party is working hard to undermine all education.) He points out that the TPUSA incident was small and between a handful of people. The majority of the student body and faculty didn’t participate and didn’t care till it blew up to national attention. Benes follows the incident through even after the national interest has moved on. He also points out that conservative obsession with higher education as indoctrination doesn’t fit with people’s lived experiences.

I loved this chapter. It’s valuable to point out that there is no easy solution either. Conservatives scrutinize higher education for any mistake and use that mistake to push for tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the wealthy. At a time when the world is becoming more technological and losing good manufacturing jobs, college educations are needed to prepare the workforce of tomorrow. But engineers, lawyers, and doctors do not make the whole entirety of an economy. The U.S. needs English majors, psychologists, historians, economists, and, yes, even diversity studies programs that conservatives love to make fun of. Without a degree, the chances of upward mobility decrease dramatically, and the trend is beginning to slow for those with degrees as well. If red states want to remain competitive, they’re going to need higher education.

There Are No Red States

The final chapter on the Democratic party of Nebraska in disarray is horrific. I, in 2018, registered for the first time as a Democrat. Reading how the party has failed that state was infuriating. In addition to the usual in-fighting one would expect of a political organization, Benes documents how the national democratic party wrote off the state. If the democratic party ignores voters, how can we blame them for siding with the party that reaches out to them. Benes demonstrates how out of sorts the democratic party is in the state. He notes that the national party under Bill Clinton and Barack Obama took a more national approach. But if the Democratic Party wants to be the big tent party they claim, they have to fight for votes in Nebraska. Georgia flipping blue is proof of that. Texas has been growing bluer every year because of the investments Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden made there. Pair Rural Rebellion with Stacey Abrams work in Georgia to see that local organizers – local PARTIES – require support because their efforts pay off one hundred fold better than a top down national strategy. But with the condition that the national party left Nebraska’s democratic party, it will take investment and time by organizers in Nebraska to see results. But it will pay off.

Conclusion

Ross Benes’s Rural Rebellion tells the story of Nebraska’s shift ever rightward. It’s part documentary, part horror story for liberals. Benes gives conservatives and his neighbors a fair shake, and he admits that there’s no easy path to a blue Nebraska. The last chapter of the book shows that the Democratic party isn’t really making an effort to take Nebraska voters seriously. It’s vital to the future of our democracy that the Democratic National Committee invest in red states. Don’t believe me? Just read the excellent Rural Rebellion to see the effects of writing off a state.

Rural Rebellion by Ross Benes is available from University Press of Kansas.

Primmlife

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Review: Rural Rebellion

TL;DR

From the Publisher