The Lie That’s Taught as Truth in Rural America

Our chance at prosperity has always been sold as nothing but a “dream”

Image by Walter Rhein

There were no Black people in the community where I grew up. It was a small town of only 2,000 residents utterly lacking in diversity. My hometown was in Anishinaabe land, but we rarely saw Anishinaabe people, and we never discussed them or their culture at school.

It was a conservative, authority-based community and we weren’t allowed to ask questions. I’m a naturally curious person, so I was often punished for arriving at perfectly reasonable conclusions. The result was that I became mistrustful of authority, and I learned to hide what I truly believed.

Growing up, it was obvious that there was something wrong with the snake oil philosophy the people around me were trying to sell. When I smelled it, I became as skittish as a horse shying away from his own shadow. Still, their ideology seeped in, and it remains as much a part of me as my bones and flesh.

Today, I think I can be useful in providing insight that might help bridge the divide that’s become all too apparent in our society. A major misconception is that this chasm is something new. The truth is that it has always been there, it’s a structural flaw that’s been present since the birth of our nation, and until it’s recognized and fixed, it will always hold us back.

They attempt to deny critical details

The mental armor I created to navigate rural beliefs proved sufficient for survival, but there were also detrimental effects. I’ve been combative for most of my life. It also took me a long time to learn how to trust. Like an addict, there’s a constant pull to fall back in to the comfort of the lies that were told to me as truth. But those are stories for another day.

When you’re innately curious, you start to notice things. For example, it’s impossible to teach American history without mentioning Native People. You can’t remove every book that refers to them from the library anymore than you can erase homosexuality by removing all LGBTQ content.

References to Native People are everywhere. 27 states in the Union have names that derive from Native People. There’s an appallingly racist depiction in Peter Pan. One thing connects to another. Once you start censoring any mention of Native People, soon you will have nothing left.

Whether you embrace true history or you deliberately try to bury it, smart kids are going to have their curiosity piqued. They’ll notice the gaps and use their intellect to play connect-the-dots. They’ll recognize the truth whether you tell them or not.

A commitment to a flawed ideology

Despite the fact that it was futile, the authority figures in my rural town did attempt to censor the truth about Native People and many other things. Of course this mindset doomed them to failure because their ambitions were simply not feasible.

They liked to think of themselves as “good Christian Americans,” but this land isn’t called “America” and they don’t truly follow any of the teachings of Christ. Their biggest failure of all was that they simply weren’t “good.”

But these were the only people I had to care for me and teach me as I grew up. In some ways, I despise them. In other ways, I pity them. But even now, knowing all that they did wrong, I remain grateful for their occasional acts of kindness. Despite all that we disagreed on, I could sometimes make them laugh.

Maybe it’s Stockholm syndrome. I often feel conflicted when I criticize rural ideology. Maybe my feelings are mixed up due to my natural nostalgia over childhood. I love life. I love learning. Youth is a time of exploration and I remember all of my first experiences with fondness.

Delusional beliefs lead to violence

Both our past and recent history have shown that people who cling to a delusional fantasy about themselves and their place in the world are capable of terrible violence. We saw it during the Civil War. We saw it during the January 6th attempt to overthrow our country by erasing the majority vote.

When I sat and watched the rioters attack the Capitol, I felt a strong sense of anger and revulsion. However, I think I’m different than most people in that I didn’t fear that mob. Physically, I could be mistaken for them, and I know how to camouflage my ideology so that they wouldn’t notice me.

I grew up with people like that. I can revert to authentic mannerisms if I need to in order to deflect violence. I walked among them when I was powerless. Figuring out how to shield myself from their attention is the first lesson I learned in this world. The trick is doing neither too much nor too little. Don’t be too loud, and don’t cower. If you’re loud they’ll become suspicious or see it as a challenge. If you cower, they’ll see you as a potential victim.

They don’t want deference and they don’t want direction, as pathetic as it might sound, they’re seeking comrades.

Their weakness is that they’re desperate to believe they’re not alone. I wouldn’t want to walk among them, but we’re not always completely in control.

All our politicians and media personalities are clueless

Try as they might, liberal elites can’t comprehend the mindset of the delusional, authoritarian, rural mob. Centrist elites can’t comprehend them either. The sad truth is that not even conservative elites really know the full consequences of the buttons they push.

Conservatives can run rural mobs like technology they don’t understand. It’s the difference between being able to make a phone call, and the knowledge required to build a communications network. Conservative elites can incite the rural mob to a destructive rage, but they can’t control or stop the devastation once it has been unleashed.

This isn’t a relationship of servant and master. It’s more like puppet and marionette. Or, perhaps, it’s more like arsonist and fire.

Every day I become more frustrated as I watch the news and I see ill-conceived, self-righteous, and arrogant methods deployed to placate rural conservatives. There’s nothing more irritating than watching some pampered jerk who has had every advantage in life go on television and lecture me about what we have to do in order to “reach” those that oppose creating a society based on inclusivity, equality, diversity, and progress.

People who grew up in mansions and went to private schools and got a Mercedes convertible for their 16th birthday and were handed a national news anchor job the moment they left their elite, ivy league school, do not know how rural conservatives think. They just don’t.

Then they’ll presume to lecture me until they are blue in the face rather than give me even one second to have my say.

A country of desperation

What we have in the United States is a major percentage of the population teetering on the brink of ruin. They’re clinging to the last tattered remnants of a lie, and they’re well aware that the torn fabric is insufficient for providing them any protection against the howling winds.

They won’t say so because they’ve been told they must be stoic and tough. They fundamentally believe the only way out is to continue valiantly onward. “Our heading is perfect, our society is perfect, the only weak link is that you fail to give enough!” The desperate rural population refuses to recognize that this is the lie masters have always lectured to their exploited laborers.

If one man is duped into doing the labor of two, then one man doesn’t have to endure the hardship of work. But why stop there? Why not divert the profits from ten people, or a hundred, or all people?

The pitiful self-delusion of stoicism

The rural conservative mob grew up watching John Wayne and Clint Eastwood scowl at them through television screens. All their parents and teachers and friends and loved ones did the same. Stoicism is grafted to their sense of nostalgia. They can’t let it go, it’s the only memory they have of anything that approaches happiness.

They won’t ask for help, but in every other way they’re begging for it. They’re pleading for it. They’re desperate to the point where they’ll throw their lives away in a futile, half-baked, half-organized assault on the Capitol.

At this point, they don’t really care if they live or they die.

They know that they’ll never earn enough money to retire. They know they’ll probably get sick and die in misery because they won’t be able to pay their medical bills. They know they’re ignorant alcoholics who nobody will ever love.

They’ve been conditioned to despise all the means of escape from their wretched state of existence.

The truth lies in the things they refuse to recognize

Deep down, the angry conservative mob knows that Native People were here first and that they were better to us than we deserved. We don’t hide it. We celebrate it every Thanksgiving!

Kids in schools trace their hands on construction paper so they can make turkeys to hang in classroom windows. It’s tradition! From the starting point of that tradition, smart kids can follow a path of reasoning that will lead them to the truth. You don’t need many breadcrumbs to find the way. What are we going to do, cancel our national holiday?

The conservative mob knows that the LGBTQ community and the Black community is entitled to every right and protection that anyone else should expect in a free society. Deep down they know this, and that knowledge fills them with futile, inexplicable rage.

They’re constantly angry because they know they’re wrong. They know that they’ve been feeding on a steady diet of snake oil. It doesn’t work. It has failed them. They’ve wasted every second of every day of their sacred gift of life.

That’s a hard truth to have to face.

They know a lot of things that they spend all their outward energy attempting to deny and renounce. They’re so desperate and unhappy that the only thing that brings them any comfort is to purchase a ridiculous pickup truck that they can’t afford. This they drive around with an obnoxious flag emblazoned with a profanity trailing in the wind behind them. They also cover their walls with the very guns that they might someday use to take their own lives.

Until the bitter end, they’ll celebrate their right to live an unexamined life. Worse still, they’ll defiantly confuse their choice with freedom even though, in truth, it represents the opposite.

The ship is sinking

This is our national problem: How do we create an option that’s more appealing than self-destruction for those that were raised on a diet of denial and who only now have begun to perceive that the world is leaving them behind? This is our task because this frustrated and delusional population is growing larger every day and they’re awakening to the futility of everything they’ve been trained to believe.

Their dim awareness is why they recoil at anything “woke.” There is a reason their reaction to that term is so disproportionate. It touches on a live wire that’s becoming increasingly impossible to ignore.

Part of me is inclined to just leave the rural conservative mob to its fate. I don’t like them and I feel they must be held accountable for their crimes. But I can’t help but wonder if I only believe that because our culture has always had an obscene obsession with the concept of punishment. I already told you there were detrimental effects to the mindset I adopted to escape the rural sinkhole. I fear it has tainted me.

Another part of me is concerned that, despite their baseline of incompetence, there might be enough of them to ensure we all go down together.

There is an appalling power in desperation.

The dream has ended

Our only way out of this is to renounce the lie that’s taught as truth in rural America. We must embrace fundamental change. The “American Dream” has never been real. That’s why we always called it a dream.

Accept the truth that this country has never been great.

We must adopt brutal honesty in place of beautiful lies. We can no longer tolerate the belief that stoicism in the face of futility is noble when it’s really fear that dictates the choices of our population. This is not the land of the brave, this is the land of the cowards and it always has been. The tragedy of rural conservatives is that they’ve put so much faith into our national lie of greatness that they must either succumb to denial or look back at their wasted, sorry excuse for a life with soul-crushing regret.

Don’t make the mistake of believing it represents an act of compassion to coddle them. The pain of regret is considerable, but the agony of remaining on this path, and condemning our children to this path, is even worse.

Forget the American dream. It’s nothing but an outdated promise that was conceived as a distraction before we truly knew what was possible. It’s time to find the courage to embrace the fullness of reality.

The breadcrumbs are there. Follow them.

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