https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/04/05/white-rural-rage-myth-00150395
What seemingly set apart this book is that the authors claimed to have data backing up their assertions. “We provide the receipts,” Schaller said in the interview. What is their data, my friends and colleagues asked, and why do they get it so wrong?
Imagine my surprise when I picked up the book and saw that some of that research was mine.
I’m an academic who studies rural Americans and lives in rural Maine. My job and passion is to pore over reams of data, including some of the largest surveys of rural voters ever conducted. Sitting on my computer are detailed responses from over 25,000 rural voters that I have conducted over the last decade and used to publish a range of peer-reviewed and widely cited research. And I’ve done it all largely to make sense of why rural voters are continually drawn to the Republican Party.
[...]
Yes, such resentment is a real phenomenon in rural areas. But words matter; rage and resentment are not interchangeable terms. Rage implies irrationality, anger that is unjustified and out of proportion. You can’t talk to someone who is enraged. Resentment is rational, a reaction based on some sort of negative experience. You may not agree that someone has been treated unfairly, but there is room to empathize.