'A desperate lunge': Inside MAGA's hold on Appalachia and rural America

Retired Standard & Poor’s Director Jim Branscome has a theory for why Appalachia and rural America clings to Trump, and it has everything to do with exploitation.

“What our [greedy] milk cows taught me on [my] mountain farm, [Ecologist Garrett] Hardin elevated into a principle that explains much of what ails modern society,” Branscome told Salon.

Most English villages used to have a “commons”, a collective grazing area where everyone could feed their sheep, but some farmers took advantage of the commons by increasing their herds and razing it.

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The literal “commons” of Appalachia — its mountains, forests and mineral wealth — were similarly exploited under the banner of progress, said Branscome, “leaving environmental ruin and economic instability in its wake.

“… Just as outside corporations extracted coal until the land and communities were depleted, outside political forces extracted votes with grand promises, acting in their lust for power, until the reservoir of trust was drained,” he writes.

“The region’s shift to MAGA reflects a final, seemingly rational act of self-preservation by mountaineers who feel the entire system governing this shared ‘pasture’ of opportunity and fairness has failed them. They are opting for a disruptive herder who, however flawed, at least claims the old, depleted grazing rules no longer apply.”

The MAGA movement is adept at exploiting this vacuum, says Branscome. Voting for it can seem a rational, if nihilistic, act within a degraded information commons. It is a rejection of perceived “impostors,” like the coal companies who oversaw the “overgrazing” of the region through destructive mountaintop removal, sending profits to distant shareholders but leaving the pollution here.

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“The MAGA vote isn’t necessarily an endorsement of specific policies; it’s a desperate lunge toward any alternative, a grazing of the last bitter stubble of hope left in a field systematically exhausted by decades of unfulfilled commitments from both traditional political parties,” said Branscome.

The consolidation of American agriculture reflects a similar pattern hurting much of rural America, with corporate farms operating at margins that family farms can’t match. They buy up land as family farms collapse and undermine the social fabric of rural communities — the school boards, volunteer fire departments and local businesses that family farmers traditionally supported.

“It’s all overgrazing,” said Branscome. “It’s all a tragedy of the commons, and we can’t agree on exactly who to blame for signing this social contract — or how to renegotiate it before the pasture becomes permanently barren.”

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But the challenge here isn’t identifying the problem, argued Branscome. The English had already figured out the problem with the abuse of the commons centuries ago.

“The challenge is mustering the collective wisdom to manage our shared resources before they’re grazed beyond recovery,” he said.

Read the full Salon report at this link.