rural

White rural voters believe our nation has betrayed them, and to some degree, they’re right according to the new book, "White Rural Rage." Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman explore why rural Whites have failed to reap the benefits from their outsize political power and why, as a result, they are the most likely group to abandon democratic norms and traditions.Their rage—stoked daily by Republican politicians and the conservative media—now poses an existential threat to the United States. Schaller and Waldman show how vulnerable U.S. democracy has become to rural Whites who, despite legitimate grievances, are increasingly inclined to hold racist and xenophobic beliefs, to believe in conspiracy theories, to accept violence as a legitimate course of political action, and to exhibit antidemocratic tendencies.Tom Schaller joins us.

Elizabeth Currid-Halkett is the James Irvine Chair in Urban and Regional Planning and professor of public policy at the University of Southern California. She holds the Kluge Chair in Modern Culture at the Library of Congress, and her research has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Economist, and New Yorker. Her new book is "The Overlooked Americans: The Resilience of Our Rural Towns and What It Means for Our Country."

VerlynKlinkenborg's regular column, The Rural Life, is one of the most read and beloved in the New York Times. Since 1997, he has written eloquently on…