archive

As America’s rural communities stagnate

If rural Americans are being “left behind”, why don’t they just move? President Trump and Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee want to help “forgotten” farmers — they won’t be able to. Heather Long on America’s forgotten towns: Can they be saved or should people just leave? Telling rural people to move won’t solve poverty: Geography is only partly to blame for the shrinking fortunes of small towns. Where the small-town American Dream lives on: As America’s rural communities stagnate, what can we learn from one that hasn’t? America’s polarization threatens to undo us: More and more, the geography of the U.S. is one of winners versus losers — but the populist backlash puts our future at risk. Damn the politics of today’s rural whites if you want, but at the very least cut the Populists as much slack as we do other past social movements.