How Ignorant Rural People Maintain the Way for Fascists to Seize Power

The conservative viewpoint can feel as indomitable as the sea, and it’s coming for us with the fury of a storm

I’ve had a couple of people write and incorrectly comment that the key to control of American politics lies in capturing the suburban vote. Today, I’d like to engage in a dialogue to help shed some light on why it’s ultimately devastating to base our strategies on this misconception.

It helps to visualize suburban areas as a churning point where conflicting ideologies crash into each other. The more progressive worldview of urban areas comes into direct contact with the more conservative worldview of rural areas.

I think of it as a shoreline. The ocean represents conservatives, the land represents the liberals, and political power shifts with the crashing and retraction of the waves. Conventional wisdom says that in order for a political viewpoint to gain power, they must influence the voters in the middle.

It’s our job to make the land encroach upon the sea.

The thing is, at this point, it’s important to stop and recognize that the concept of the “swing voter” is what has dictated the strategies of the DNC for decades. I contend that the GOP does not use the same methodology when it comes to its election strategy. They’re more concerned with voter suppression and taking advantage of the disproportionate political power given to rural areas.

Over the last few voting cycles, it’s clear that the United States has been on an appalling descent towards fascism. Even when the opponents of fascism have “won” the march towards authoritarianism is only slowed, never reversed. The only logical thing to conclude is that the “swing voter” strategy has failed.

The question before us then is: What should we do instead?

The problem of “liberal elites”

This isn’t the first time I’ve attempted to initiate a discussion on this issue. What usually transpires is that “liberal elites” rush to correct me before I’m even extended the courtesy of presenting my arguments.

I’m flooded with statements accusing me of “being part of the problem” and whatnot. There’s a reluctance to even acknowledge my viewpoint because of the insistence that anyone who disagrees with the viewpoint of the “liberal elites” is, by definition, a fascism apologist.

I’m not the first person to note how this attitude itself aligns with an authoritarian perspective. That’s confusing when you consider that these arguments come from the so-called “anti-authoritarian” side of the American political spectrum.

You can achieve some understanding by recognizing the term “liberal elite” is a misnomer. We do have “elites” in the United States, but there aren’t any liberals. Instead, we have extreme conservatives and moderate conservatives.

“The political parties are the same”

You don’t often see people admit their error in voting for a law-breaking, white supremacist, or fascist candidate. Instead of saying, “I was a fool for voting for that person,” they are more inclined to justify themselves with a statement such as, “Both political parties are the same.”

That kind of lazy argument cannot be allowed to go uncontested. The reality is that one political party appears to be committed to establishing an authoritarian regime that’s willing to overturn elections at the whim of an all-powerful dictator. Whereas, the other political party is uncomfortable with that idea, but not enough to do much about it.

So, in that sense, the two political parties are not the same. One is okay with suspending the Constitution, and the other is, at least, aware of the Rule of Law.

However, there is another way that the DNC and the GOP can be called “the same.” Although they disagree on certain issues, at their hearts, both the DNC and the GOP are rooted in a conservative mindset.

The entire political spectrum in the United States of America is dominated by conservative ideology. The failure of our political system, and our country as a whole, can be attributed to the fact that there is no liberal influence in our government whatsoever and there hasn’t been for a long time.

This is what “a descent into fascism” means. It’s been right in front of your eyes this whole time!

“But what about Bernie and Alexandria?”

I understand that there is a strong resistance to the suggestion that no liberal groups wield any political power in the US. In fact, many people think this is a shocking statement to attempt to defend. But this response is a consequence of the incessant stream of unfair propaganda that tries to scapegoat “out-of-control liberals” for everything.

There’s no such thing!

We know that when evil people make accusations against others, they’re really making a confession. Why is it so hard to understand that this regularly deployed tactic has distorted our capacity to perceive the true nature of the American political spectrum?

The word “liberal” is so constantly demonized in politics and the media that people are startled and embarrassed at the proposal that there’s nothing at all “liberal” about the United States.

This is a conservative country. Conservatives need to own the problems.

There are many countries in the world where the political viewpoints of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would be shared by politicians who are defined, in that country, as moderate conservatives. These are countries where issues like universal health care and free education are no longer a part of their political debate. The United States isn’t there yet because it’s entirely dominated by conservative ideology.

Same-sex marriage

“But what about same-sex marriage?” my detractors exclaim. “We have same-sex marriage, and that’s liberal!”

No, it’s not! Sexual orientation is a basic human right. It’s not political at all! We only think it’s political because AMERICA IS CONSERVATIVE!

That example represents how distorted the American political mindset truly is. The simple fact is that there are many places in the world where moderate conservative politicians have no problem with the concept of same-sex marriage.

Americans have such a skewed sense of self-importance that they rarely can be bothered to observe how political debates play out elsewhere. In countries such as Portugal, LGBTQ+ rights are not nearly the contentious political issue they are here.

Take a trip, you might learn something.

Politicians in the United States debate things that shouldn’t be up for debate

Through the passage of time, opposition to human enslavement ceased to be a “liberal” or “progressive” position and became one of the unquestionable pillars of civilization. “Conservatives” or “traditionalists” were the ones who resisted social advancement by defending the atrocities of human enslavement.

“That’s the way we’ve always done things!”

This historical context is left out of public education for a reason.

Going back to slavery should be considered outside the realm of what politicians are allowed to discuss, yet I have little doubt that some American politicians harbor that viewpoint. This should indicate as to how extreme the US truly is.

In modern America, women have been stripped of their right to bodily autonomy. In some parts of the world, this action is seen as an unpardonable human rights violation, but not in conservative America.

A philosophy left in the wilderness to rot

In a healthy political system, all ideologies should seek progress. The political debate should consist of the best way to maximize the benefits of our cultural and technological advancements while keeping social disruption to a minimum.

What we have in the US is a mislabeled “liberal” party that is committed to slow progress (which is actually the definition of “conservative”), and an abomination that’s called “conservative” that either wants to stop progress entirely, or move us backward.

The modern conservative philosophy got this way because “elites” have been so fixated on suburban areas that they were content to abandon rural areas to a slow and lingering death.

But they haven’t died. They’ve been left alone to incubate a new mind-rotting virus. Now, they’ve managed to rouse themselves like zombies and march on Washington to inflict their sickness on us all.

In a functioning government, progressive ideas are continually accepted into mainstream thought. Because of this mechanism, “conservative” viewpoints are always perceived as traditional even though every great advancement in any society always came as a result of decades of progressive activism.

The ignorant voting public lacks this context, and that is why America is going to pieces. Everything that’s wrong with our country is a result of a misplaced commitment to belief systems that have been left to rot on the discard pile of history.

Conservative viewpoints mutate in rural areas

The problem with the “elite” of the United States is that they really don’t care what happens to rural areas. As a result, the backward thinking of rural areas has only gotten worse. Conservatives don’t care about rural populations either, but they’ve figured out how to gleefully participate in attacking the “elite” in order to gain seats of power.

The “elite” fixation on suburban areas is perceived as insulting to rural communities and rightfully so. For the life of me, I don’t understand why our “best minds” and our “elite politicians” repeatedly ignore the fact that our country’s political mechanism gives rural areas a disproportionate amount of political power.

Elites are inclined to complain, “Ignorant people in rural areas keep stopping us from doing anything.” However, those same elites never participate in any outreach to rural areas in an attempt to dismantle the mechanism that makes fascism an inevitability.

No, they only see as far as suburban areas because that’s the easiest path to short-term power. However, it’s not the path to long-term progress. Our government is dysfunctional because elites are content to leave rural areas to sink on their own.

In writing this, for the first time, I see some reasoning in providing disproportionate political power to rural places. Only through this mechanism can our politicians be encouraged to embrace policies that serve everyone at every level of our society. The part of our society that’s broken is that the “elites” refuse to bring enlightenment to the ignored rural areas even though those areas have the political power to sink our whole society.

There’s plenty of blame to go around here.

It’s time to look beyond the next election

I don’t understand why “elite” politicians are so dim about the influence of sparsely populated states like Wyoming. Despite being the least populated state, Wyoming has two senators and one congresswoman. That’s a huge amount of political capital.

If you look at recent election results in Wyoming, you’ll see that Democrats generally lose by 100k votes. My question is why the DNC isn’t working to create jobs in Wyoming that are likely to be filled by Democrats. Bringing Democratic pockets to rural states like Wyoming that have historically been written off by the “elites” would be a way to claw back some of that political capital.

You wouldn’t have to relocate a full 100k voters. Once educated, progressive ideas started to get a little more representation, and many of the younger voters already in that state would begin to switch parties.

Think of it as an inoculation against the mind-rotting virus that tends to develop in abandoned rural places. Let’s embrace a strategy that can put the “United” back into the United States.

The thing that our political “elites” don’t seem to understand is that there is a methodology for appealing to the kind of rural voters who have been allowed to free fall to the point where they’re now defiantly pro-fascism.

Focusing on suburban areas is an example of treating the symptom rather than the disease. The key to fixing the divide in America is to put a plan in motion to bring enlightenment to the same rural areas the “elites” have written off for decades.

We’ve got to stop being fixated on the shoreline and work to calm the ocean. It’s a bigger task, but in embracing this approach we exchange the certainty of defeat for at least a chance of success.