Sunday's New York Times looked at Lindstrom, MN, but as author Charles Murray makes clear in his much-discussed new book "Coming Apart: The State of White America," the big-city journalists could have chosen any one of thousands of small towns across rural America. The story: The Americans most unhappy with federal spending on health and social services live in communities that have become disproportionately dependent on that spending for basic needs.
This small-town girl's take: It isn't that people don't see their growing dependence. They do, and they deeply wish it were otherwise.
The small town folks of my South Dakota growing-up years cherished what may have been an exaggerated notion of their own independence. Oh, they acknowledged their reliance on their immediate neighbors, and felt a duty to personally contribute to community-building projects -- a new golf course, an improved city park, a new high school in time for my senior year. But they also believed that hard work and clean living were sufficient to provide adequately for one's self and one's immediate family. And generally, in the three decades after World War II, they were. Being "on the dole" carried a deep stigma.
It's galling to people with that mindset to confront the consequences of eroding middle-class incomes and family support systems for the elderly. Without Social Security and Medicare, many elders would face poverty and untreated physical disorders. Without food stamps and free school meals, many children would be hungry in small-town America.
The dissonance of that reality with small-town Americans' self-perception has much to do with the anger that's become the emotional context for American politics in recent years. But anger won't fix what ails small-town economies. Neither will an abrupt withdrawal of a safety net that's holding a growing share of those Americans out of poverty.
