For a long time I have seen parallels between rap and country music. Generally speaking, the biggest fans of country tend not to listen to rap music, and vice versa (though certainly I've met plenty of people in my upper-middle-class circles who do enjoy both). Both are also accused of glorifying irresponsible behavior, yet most listeners of either genre don't actually take the lyrics completely seriously. Whether it's a song about drunken redneck sex in a pickup truck or slinging dope and fucking bitches, the songs are primarily enjoyable, catchy, escapist entertainment that invites those who feel separated from people like themselves into a welcoming, like-minded culture.
There's other similarities between hip-hop culture and country culture. Williamson draws parallels between black people accused of "acting white" and white people accused of acting elitist:
The parallels to the “acting white” phenomenon in black culture are fairly obvious: When aspiration takes the form of explicit or implicit cultural identification, however partial, with some hated or resented outside group that occupies a notionally superior social position, then “authenticity” is to be found in socially regressive manners, mores, and habits. It is purely reactionary.
I think this point is really valuable, although I also find the wording problematic. My main beef with this article stems from phrasing like "socially regressive manners, mores, and habits," because while there is some truth in those words, I think it paints with an overly broad brush. To use hip-hop as an example, this line smacks of the typical conservative bullshit criticizing that genre. As Geraldo says in that sample on Kendrick's "DNA":
This is why I say that hip hop has done more damage to young African Americans than racism in recent years
Dismissing another culture as "uncivilized" is an easy way to both end an argument and to drive the other side away from ever agreeing with you. Williamson partially sidesteps the usual hypocrisy right-wing country fans have in their dislike of hip-hop by hedging his statements and ultimately criticizing "regressive" culture whether it exists, black or white.
Despite my criticism of this paragraph, I do generally understand and accept the point he's making. The Trump phenomenon absolutely rejects values that help all sorts of humans come together and achieve great things. However, I think it's a generalization that allows him to (later in the article) dismiss without due process the concerns that a group is voicing—just as criticisms of black culture ignore the systemic racism that black culture responds to and defends black people from.
Another valuable point Williamson makes is how both Trump and rappers like Tupac are/were actually actors playing characters much unlike themselves, with their fans nonetheless willing to accept. He concedes that he doesn't really know how much cultural damage these "uncivilized" characters do. I would argue that the one point where this analogy breaks down is that unlike gangsta rap, Trump actually ran for president on his character's platform—and won. In my mind, that is far more harmful than either the modern country music star or rapper. But as Williamson states, Trump is fundamentally running on the same fauxthenticity (I thought up that word myself as I wrote this, although Google tells me I'm not the first to coin it).
Some rather brilliant quotes:
We’ve gone from William F. Buckley Jr. to the gentlemen from Duck Dynasty
Shake your head at rap music all you like: When’s the last time you heard a popular country song about finishing up your master’s in engineering at MIT?
The populist Right’s abandonment of principle has been accompanied by a repudiation of good taste, achievement, education, refinement, and manners — all of which are abominated as signs of effete “elitism.”
Just below that last quote, Williamson also rightfully points out the GOP's hypocrisy in blasting the same traits of Clinton in the 1990s that they give Trump a pass for in the 2010s. I was glad to see him recognize the racism behind how America is responding to the white victims of the opioid epidemic versus the predominantly black victims of previous decades. (As an aside, I think the opioid epidemic is a great example of how economic hopelessness and systemic, inescapable poverty create massive ripple effects that we like to fruitlessly blame on non-economic factors.)
More right-wing hypocrisy is found in how "'Get off welfare and get a job!' has been replaced by solicitous talk about 'globalization.'" But Williamson's point is not to say that Republicans have come to the "correct" conclusion, but that they have come to the wrong one. He admits there are both external and internal factors for middle-America's failings, but towards the end as he gives his personal anecdote, he seems fixated on the idea that if lazy people would just fix their internal failings instead of blaming elites, they wouldn't have so many problems.
So in a slightly disappointing move, the article eventually circles back to conventional Republican arguments on poverty and inequality. I would argue that better education, universal healthcare, and a whole host of other left-wing social policies would actually put people in a position to make that kind of self-improvement, but that debate's for another day. In the end, we just have another "old-school" Republican, in some ways similar to Arizona's Republican US Senators, whose flawed perspective has been supplanted with an even more flawed perspective. I detest the new perspective, and so do they, but I do not mourn for their old one.
Ultimately, Williamson identifies that white America is embracing not simply an anti-elitist viewpoint, but one of anti-intellectualism, where it's more acceptable to pose as white trash than to be yourself if you have traits of a so-called "elite." In my opinion, conservatives like the author are now reaping what for decades they sowed, but unfortunately the rest of us are also along for the ride.