The Real America
These two maps tell very different stories of how partisan voters are actually distributed throughout the US. The red map suggests that most of America is largely Republican, and that the Republican base is located in the "fly-over" states of middle America. The middle America that's home to the decent Americans – the salt of the earth that has lost its savor. Most people come away with the impression that our blue state – red state divide exists between densely populated urban centers located primarily on the coasts, and this American heartland – a vast geography where amber waves of grain join purple mountain majesties – the homeland of America’s farmers and a wide array of rugged individualists exemplified by Cliven Bundy, Joe Arpaio, and the quintessential everyman, Joe the Plumber.
This red map purports that an American mythology, shaped by our historical Westward Expansion that began in the early 1800s, fuels our contemporary hyper-partisan culture. But does this depiction of the distribution of American culture accurately explain the philosophies that underlie today’s policy differences? Or is it simply another act of disinformation that reinforces decades of Republican marketing conceived to splinter the Democratic base into countless special interest groups, energized by single issues that appeal to personal emotions at the expense of national interests – and ironically, at the expense of their own followers’ self-interest?
How does the red map explain the central policy of Republicans - legislating low taxation rates for the richest Americans who reside far away from the fruited plain? How do corporate tax breaks benefit the “ordinary Americans” who attend dystopian Trump rallies dressed in patriotic regalia but return to work the next day as greeters at Walmart?
Republicans have quite successfully cast Democrats as amoral libertines in their support of Roe v. Wade, and yet their condemnation is delivered by religious zealots like Mike Pence and Roy Moore – hypocrites of the first order who adulate the most morally squalid president in our history. Republicans have succeeded in casting Democrats as weak on labor - successfully hijacking a traditional Democratic voting constituency while simultaneously enacting union-busting legislation with right-to-work laws in the states they control. For decades, Republicans have worn the mantle of patriotism while engaging “ordinary Americans” in oil wars that have laid waste to the Middle East – wars that have filled veterans’ hospitals with mangled soldiers in need of specialized care – all the while building their case for privatizing the VA and effectively adding a profit margin for its new corporate owners.
The appeal of the Republican Party among its base is due to a marketing plan devised as a divide and conquer strategy. But it's also a function of the lie told about where their base actually resides, a claim belied by the second, white map. While we are engrossed in the machinations of Sheriff Joe and his devoted acolytes, we fail to recognize that the majority of Republican voters live in the suburbs of large cities. They don’t have herds of cattle, and they live far away from the fruited plains. They have jobs, college funds, and retirement plans.
Trump snidely declared that he “loves the uneducated” during the 2016 campaign, and Democrats assumed he was talking about his rural base. Maybe he was talking about the Democrats.
