A Quiet Genocide: Rural America and the Continuing Plague
It is…an odd time. Still in the throes of a massive societal quarantine, we are watching as the Trump Administration and its associated propaganda tools and corporate conspirators are itching to “reopen” America, a euphemism for deciding it’s time to put Americans back at risk for the sake of an unstable economy. Thousands are still dying, are still being infected, and yet, the “plateau” in New York City, the most ravaged area in the country, seems like a signal that things might be winding down and it might be time to look toward the future.
However, experts are still sounding the alarm. Even the most optimistic forecasts admit there may be “rolling quarantines” over the next eighteen months, perhaps as many as three other events like the one we are currently enduring. Others warn that returning to business as usual would cause another spike and more human misery, more than likely hurting the economy even worse than if we continued our shelter. And there is the looming, but mostly unspoken, threat of the virus seeping into the rural parts of the country after having attacked our cultural centers.
A child of rural America, I’m now hearing horror stories of mounting tension and spreading infection. Our rural communities, middle America, the interior of the country, is swimming in coronavirus. Confirmed cases are growing, doubling in some cases, even while testing remains virtually inaccessible in these regions. It’s going to get even worse, especially if we reopen America, or whatever slogan they’ll try next, and, most tragically, these deaths will probably never be known or counted.
Sometime in the future, granting there is a future, the story of how America betrayed itself will be looked at by scholars and experts and seem like an insane horror story. These will have to be non-Americans, of course, and the reconsideration will have to take place when there is no America as our legacy is to absolve ourselves of every crime. But make no mistake, what has happened to rural America is a crime.
Right now, following decades of top-down, Reaganomics manipulation, the rural parts of our country have been devastated. They’ve been hollowed out by Walmart. By corporations looting, polluting, and addicting Americans to drugs that are designed to be addictive. The schools are falling apart or can’t hire teachers. There are no jobs. There is no local economy or culture. The towns are unconscious on their feet, ready to fall at the slightest breeze. And all of it has been by design.
Like my family, rural Americans are more likely to have preexisting conditions. They’ve been worked hard, exploited by industry, exposed to chemicals, addicted to pain relievers and prescription medications. They are more likely not to have health insurance or at least decent health insurance. They are taught to grin and bear the pain, to avoid going to the doctor because the bills are exorbitantly high and can bankrupt them.
The hospitals are either understaffed, decrepit, or altogether closed. Health options are limited. Doctors are limited. And when the pandemic hits these towns, the rural Americans who do seek health are going to overload the system in no time at all. Not to mention, many have been convinced by Fox News, Right Wing media, and Donald Trump that this pandemic is a political hoax anyway.
And that’s just the healthier of the citizens. The nursing homes are going to be sites of horrendous suffering. Even though rural towns are drying up, the Baby Boom generation that populated them when they were growing are still there, many of them in retirement communities or retirement homes, those places are also understaffed and decrepit. The virus will run wild there and will take a huge toll.
This is all expected and inevitable, but it will also be invisible. Small-town newspapers are all but extinct. The mass-deregulation under Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton have allowed wealthy media moguls to corner markets around the country, consolidating their power over reality, and all but destroying any local media. These newspapers, if they’re still open, usually function with one to two reporters and their ability to cover the madness that is to come will be limited by their lack of resources and lack of regional or national reach. Even in the best of times, national media turns its eye from Middle America, focusing instead of the movement of the rich and the wealthy, the connected and the metropolitan. They have missed the great tragedies of the 20th and 21st century in rural America, the decay of the American Dream and the death of rural communities.
The tragedy is going to be as massive as it is preventable. As with everything in this disaster, it is obvious that a major reconsideration is necessary. This country is not built on a strong foundation but is geared to serve the interests and greed of the wealthy and powerful. It is not sustainable in the least, and the Republican Party has ensured it would all fall at some point. The conversation should be how to rebuild this in a sustainable, sane, humane way, but even the discussions we’re having are tinged with how to enrich the rich even further at the expense of those actually suffering.
We could use this as an opportunity to make America better and actually functionable. Rural America would need to revitalized and given purpose and direction. But, for now, that just won’t happen. Middle America is only beginning to feel the pain and their eventual and inevitable tragedy will more than likely be ignored as it devastates what’s left of the wreckage.
Jared Yates Sexton is the author of American Rule: How A Nation Conquered The World But Failed Its People, available for pre-order from Dutton/Penguin-Random House. His work has previously appeared in The New York Times, The New Republic, The Daily Beast, Politico, and elsewhere. He currently serves as an associate professor of writing at Georgia Southern University and is the co-host of The Muckrake Podcast.
