>those outside “rural America”/“red states” simply do not understand those inside - and to only a slightly lesser degree, vice-versa. I don't know, a lot of pe

>those outside “rural America”/“red states” simply do not understand those inside - and to only a slightly lesser degree, vice-versa. I don't know, a lot of people say that "city-dwellers" (an obnoxious term) don't understand rural Americans and the left doesn't understand the right, but from where I sit the left has been trying to warn everyone about the creeping approach of fascism and the far right within the Republican party for years, and rural people are the ones just now realizing the leopards are coming for their faces too. Rural Americans still talk about Hillary Clinton's "deplorables" comment as if it were the greatest insult to their honor and dignity since the burning of Atlanta, but she was spot on. And predictably, rather than clean their own house, rural Americans preferred to trauma bond with Nazis and pedophiles than admit a "New York liberal" could have a point. Rural people aren't as special as they think, you'll find Gadsden and Confederate battle flags in big cities everywhere. I promise you that people in Portland and New York understand "Don't Tread on Me" and that "Defund the Police" came from just as serious a place. It just happens that black activism gets commoditized, sanitized and rendered inconsequential by the same system that romanticizes the Lost Cause and right-wing activism.