I'm also from the rural Midwest. My home county [0] is 97.3% white. It also went heavily for Trump (72.95% vs. 21.88% for Clinton) and claims three astronauts. Enrollment in my high school for 2013-2014 was 552 [2]. The population of my home town has dropped by about 10% in the last 25 years (est. 4,252 for 2015). Basically, I have a lot in common with the author and can relate to where he's coming from.

Let me add a bit of context, however.

I don't live there now, although I'm not too far away. Most of my family still lives there but, roughly 15 years ago, I moved one county to the north, and now live in Bloomington, Indiana, which is much, much more diverse.

My hometown, as I mentioned, is overwhelmingly Republican. Regardless of who the Democrat was in the presidential race this election, they almost certainly would have lost my county. Suprisingly, there were a lot of folks in my hometown who did not care for Trump. At all. To them (and me), it truly came down to "the lesser of two evils". For many of them, that was Trump.

I'm lucky enough to have traveled a fair bit. I've been exposed to much more "culture" and "diversity" than many others I grew up with (who still live in my hometown, of course). My thoughts and beliefs have changed tremendously. I consider myself fortunate to have "gotten out".

A lot of my friends and family "back home", however, are the same as they've always been. I agree with the author when he says that us rural folks need to "get out more" (paraphrasing, of course).

I'm trying to avoid going on a way-too-long "defense" of "rural America" but I do want to mention one thing in particular. Immigration and globalization are huge issues to many folks here. They don't care much for foreigners and the "Mexico issue" is a big deal. You know why?

Even though the population of my home county is only ~45,000, I personally know several hundreds (possibly into the thousands) of people who have seen their (manufacturing) jobs disappear. My mother's last day of work -- after 30 years -- was just about two months ago. Her employer, after moving ~3,000 jobs to Mexico over the last 15 years, finally shut down for good... and that's just one company. Her fiancee will also be out of a job in a year or so. His employer is also moving operations to Mexico (his previous employer did the same). We've had several other companies around here do exactly the same thing.

The primary reason for the 10% population drop in my hometown is because a manufacturing company shut down and moved out. This area has probably lost 10-15k jobs in the last 20 years. No, they aren't high tech programming jobs making six figures, but they made a decent enough wage to support a family. People get bitter when they lose their job to someone who will do it for 5-10% of their wage.

This causes them to not care for "corporate greed" or the party that allowed it to happen (Secretary Clinton's husband is the one who signed NAFTA into law, remember). So no, they don't care for corporations or large government or the typical politician. They also don't want Hillary coming for their guns (yes, I've had that several times in the last month or so).

I'm not trying to "pin the problem" on any one group in particular and while I do agree that rural America could benefit by "getting out more", perhaps coastal America could try, just a little bit, to understand WHY rural America feels and believes the way it does.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_County,_Indiana

[1]: http://www.wbiw.com/local/archive/2016/11/lawrence-co-genera...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_High_School_(Indiana)