Localism, Not Nationalism, Will Cure What Ails Rural America
What JD Vance gets right and wrong about our left-behind regions.
Nine years ago, then-venture capitalist and lawyer J.D. Vance published his memoir Hillbilly Elegy. A vivid and thoughtful retelling of his life growing up in a poor Appalachian expatriate family in post-Industrial Ohio, the book was in many ways a typical American rags to riches story. Yet Vance also tried to offer insight into the unique challenges and problems that face Appalachia in particular, and rural America more broadly.
As someone who grew up in Appalachia and has lived there most of my life (with only a brief pause to attend the University of Virginia for my doctorate), Hillbilly Elegy has loomed large in my cultural imagination, and that of my neighbors, for some time. Before he was known as “J.D. Vance the heir apparent to the MAGA movement,” he was “J.D. Vance the traitor to his people,” who had written a book airing the entire region’s dirty laundry. (To the more generous, he was “J.D. Vance who is not really from here but wrote an okay book about us.”)
Since his rise in politics, all but the most ardent supporters of President Trump seem to have adopted the more cynical view of the book, regardless of what they thought when it was first published.
The truth that few people like to admit is that Vance captured many of the problems that plague rural America. Over the course of the book, he lays bare the devastating effects of job loss, the drug epidemic, generational poverty, and broken families. All of these problems stem in no small part from the economic decline that has beset the rural communities of this land. What’s more, he outlined how many of the people in his post-industrial town did not really want to work hard even when a job opened up; he revealed that many struggling families, rather than prudently spending what little money they had, spent it in frivolous binges; and he showed how the communities of Appalachia can often be far too insular and opposed to necessary change.
In short, Vance showed that for all the incredible warmth, honesty, and hard work that define the people of rural America, there are particular faults in the local culture that perpetuate real problems.
Vance correctly locates the source of many of these problems in the crushed spirit of Appalachia. As Professor Arlie Hochschild recently captured in her account of visiting my home county in Kentucky, many rural Americans feel as though they have lost all sense of belonging and meaning in the modern world. Most long, more than anything, for the restoration of that meaning, while others are so spiritually crushed that they turn to drugs or TikTok to fill the void.
Over the past decade, Vance has transformed his diagnosis of the problems in his home state into a political project. From his vantage place as a senator and now as vice president, he has, with characteristic smarm and verve, sought to articulate a program rooted in a traditionalist nationalism that seeks to revitalize Appalachia and the country beyond.
Being an unusually well-read and thoughtful politician, Vance’s nationalism is not the screaming, reactionary variety one finds at far-right political rallies. He articulates a clearly-defined ideal of nationhood, according to which a nation is more than a simple geographic territory, or even a project dedicated (as the Founding Fathers might put it) to a rights-bearing creed. In Vance’s account of the nation, it is shared history and traditions that really define who we are and who we must be going forward. He openly disdains abstract ideals like life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in favor of residential permanence and shared cultural norms.
Vance’s vision has several policy implications. First, he wishes to revitalize American manufacturing. We are a nation, in his view, of workers, and to lose our tradition of manual labor is to lose a large part of what it means to be American. Secondly, those with strong hereditary claims to citizenship must receive first priority over those who arrived more recently. This cannot be achieved without cracking down on immigration.
Yet while Vance accurately diagnoses many of rural America’s problems, his solutions come up short.
The collapse of rural towns, small industrial cities, and remote farms has coincided with the decline of local cultures. A local identity brings with it pride of place and a certain willingness to live with the disadvantages endemic to the location. When people feel that their locality serves a purpose—that it is embedded within a larger whole—they are willing to tolerate or even embrace its remoteness, slower pace of life, and faulty infrastructure. Rural Americans once thrived on a belief that for all their region’s faults, they were the backbone of the nation.
But Vance’s concept of the nation does not restore this sense of local pride. Instead, it substitutes a globalized vision of tradition for a local one.
The proof surrounds me every day in my native Central Appalachia. As a child, most local businesses in my neighborhood seemed to identify first and foremost with East Kentucky. Many bore names like “commonwealth insurance” or “mountain music.” Though people in the region were patriotic, the primary emotional attachment was regional and not national.
Yet since Vance—and MAGA more broadly—have encouraged a strong dose of nationalism in red states, this has changed. Now when I cruise down the highway I am greeted by “Patriot RV” or “American Laundry and Cleaners.” This is a subtle but telling shift.
MAGA-style nationalism has proven itself incapable of stemming the tide of rural decline. The past ten years have not seen a rejuvenation of rural America, nor do there seem to be any indications that the economic trends of the last half century are starting to reverse in these regions. Instead, rural communities are finding themselves sinking further and further into economic stagnation. Their population continues to decline at a rapid rate and rural voters feel just as spiritually displaced as ever. In short, as nationalism has risen to the heights of American political power, rural communities have continued to sink to the bottom of the economic abyss.
This is not a new phenomenon. Years before modern globalism emerged, nationalism was already eroding local cultures and institutions. You could even say that the nationalism that Vance praises—embodied by figures such as Theodore Roosevelt and Otto Van Bismarck—paved the way for the internationalist outlook he so openly disdains. By undermining the power of local community, nationalism weakened the most natural and deeply rooted ties individuals posses. After such ties have been cut, the ethical argument propounded by numerous religions and philosophies—that all humans are one community regardless of place—was able to exert its influence without substantive opposition.
Champions of rural America must reject reactionary nationalist attempts to rewind the clock back to the 1950s. They need a totally new solution to rural malaise—one that combines the localism of the past with the values of the open society that will likely dominate the coming century. This is not an easy task; it asks us to combine two things that have not historically gone well together. Yet it is the only real hope for rural America.
How might it come about?
The first step is for government and civil society to rejuvenate local cultural institutions. For instance, in my native Eastern Kentucky we should work hard to make local newspapers a strong cultural force again. We should restore historical buildings and landscapes, beautifying cheap utilitarian constructions so that they fit with the vernacular culture, and preserve local environments. We should refurbish the folksy brick buildings native to this region, tearing down or renovating eyesores, and conserving the stunning Appalachian Mountains that are the physical home of my people. Perhaps most importantly, we should invest in local art, music, and culture. This could mean cultivating a serious appreciation for bluegrass music, Appalachian literature, and local history. Learning to appreciate the culture of one’s home is a guaranteed path to restoring a sense of purpose to the locality.
Furthermore, rural America needs a robust middle class. The characteristic values of modernity—pluralism, innovation, equality, freedom—have not always taken easy hold in the remote regions of this country. They are the values of a middle class that can afford to worry about such things. To cultivate a strong rural middle class will be no easy feat—it requires rethinking the basic workings of our economy, which has come to favor centralized power over place-based needs. Yet this is what regions like Appalachia need if they are to adapt to a modern economy.
All of this requires investment in the sort of infrastructure it will take to update rural America. This includes roads and airports, but also technological infrastructure like fiber optic cables. Remote, idyllic towns with a unique culture are uncommonly well-suited to hosting those who wish to do remote work while raising a family. Likewise, industries that America will never feel comfortable farming out to other countries—like nuclear energy and weapons production—could naturally be housed in rural locations.
Rural America is in serious trouble. Vice President Vance deserves a great deal of credit for being one of the earliest and most eloquent voices to sound the alarm. Yet Vance and the nationalist MAGA movement offer a solution that is every bit as bad as the problem—one that offers no hope for the rejuvenation of a struggling people. My neighbors, friends, and coworkers in rural America need a politics that restores localism while updating Appalachia for the era of technological modernity. We have no use for the nightmare of nationalism, which will undoubtedly kill the patient before it cures the disease.
Jeffery Tyler Syck is an Assistant Professor of Politics and the Director of the Center for Public Service at the University of Pikeville in his native Kentucky.
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While I agreed with much of your thinking about Appalachia, having lived there for 18 years in a small art-centered town in the Eastern Panhandle of WV. (I was in a bluegrass band, had three plays with local themes produced in two local theaters, was a market gardener with a stall in a farmer's market and manned a small mental health clinic dedicated to serving the underserved. So I have earned my right to say this, I hope.) What you do not mention is the role of backwater bias as promulgated in small Christian churches, by which I don't mean all, only too many, of them. I used to sit in on a Sunday at the Primitive Baptist church because the melodic structure and intonation of the hymns was a literal immersion in what Rumi called 'the sea of love in which the intellect drowns." I was engaged in local politics also, and at one point had a sit down over beers with a WV State Supreme Court justice who said, as a matter of fact, that the biggest problem with WV politics and culture in general was the MAGA bias of the preachers most people listened to across the state. By not taking a good hard look at that, you're doing West Virginians a major disservice.
This is very good. The revival of these rural areas should build on their cultural strengths but not let them go backward in time . The right kind of local investment might be able to make these areas grow again!