Over the last decade, America has witnessed a significant shift in its culture. As President Donald Trump was elected twice within a decade, the United States went from embracing a rejection of the establishment by electing him once in 2016, to emboldening the 'Make America Great Again' (MAGA) policy ideas that have made his second term one of the most impactful in our nation's history.
In championing free speech, we advocate for the eradication of the deep state, support a retributive accountability effort in response to RussiaGate, promote fair trade policies for American businesses, and uphold conservative family values that continue to be embraced by the younger generation of Gen Z. Cultural dominance by MAGA has led to a bridge between urban and rural conservatives in rejecting the progressive ideologies that has been pushed in their faces for far too long.
Rural America is the heart of America's traditional conservative values. The themes of faith, family, and self-reliance dominate its culture, and it has embraced Trumpism and MAGA in a way hardly any party movement before it has. Not only are rural Americans voting for Trump in droves, but especially in Appalachia, MAGA has only grown its margins in the area in the past ten years.
We have a hick in the White House, where Vice President JD Vance embodies the rural struggle. The same man who wrote Hillbilly Elegy and came from humble beginnings has risen to become one of the leaders of the nationalist populist movement of MAGA. He understands the reasons behind the voting patterns of our people.
The GOP's challenge is to mobilize these voters to support Republicans even when Trump is not on the ballot. MAGA is succeeding by addressing the values they care about, such as economic fairness, deportation of illegal immigrants, and a rejection of the progressive ideology that is influencing their children at their local state college. The Democratic Party's failure to address the inefficiencies in policy for the working class over the years has allowed MAGA to capitalize on providing solutions.
Rural America is inspired to preserve its conservative cultural identity despite the pressure from leftism that exists in cities, and the America First movement has provided a platform to make that happen. Hicklibs may want to claim that rural areas and Appalachian heritage are not conservative, but they are fallacious. The populist approach to working class solvency for those in rural areas by Trump and MAGA has paid dividends, and the rural regions will continue to embrace conservatism more and more.
While the GOP rarely held sway over the cultural narrative in urban areas, MAGA has managed to bridge the gap in understanding between these regions. While cities are still predominantly controlled by Democrats, the same normal independents are becoming far more conservative because they witness the evil that is progressive Marxism firsthand. Woke policies like defund the police, anti-ICE approaches by metropolitan governments, and harboring illegal aliens have ruined America's great cities like New York City, Memphis, Los Angeles, and the nation's capital, Washington, D.C.
Rampant lawlessness, murder, violence, and crime have shown the true colors of what is happening under Democratic control. Metropolitan areas are quite literally manufacturing conservatives who want to pry their cities from the hands of progressive control. Pushback against DEI initiatives, pro-crime candidates, and appealing to the bottom 20% of the Democratic party have led to destruction not only for the DNC but also for progressivism as an appealing political ideology for normal Americans. Urban areas continue to suffer the consequences of bureaucratic inefficiency, and the progressive overreach has led to the creation of urban conservatives who embrace the America First movement.
Shared frustration among urban and rural conservatives set the precedent for how the future of the GOP will be determined. President Trump and MAGA have done a superb job in rejecting the elitism that both rural and urban America have rejected throughout our United States history. The messaging that MAGA prioritizes is one of nationalist sentiment, economic independence, and a distrust of the elite that has ruined their areas by sending their jobs overseas and letting crime run amok in their streets.
America First conservatism has transcended the geographic barriers of years past and has instead bridged the division America has dealt with for so long. The cultural front that MAGA has helped create amongst urban and rural conservatives has changed the tide of the American political landscape and has set the precedent for how conservatism needs to appeal to the masses in the future.
