Building bridges with conservative rural Americans

An interview with Iris Basile

Photo credit: Pixabay

This transcript has been edited for length.

Iris Basile is a 32-year-old transwoman who grew up in North Plains, Oregon, USA. Because of her experiences with abuse and addiction growing up in a rural town, her goal is to become a therapist and help small/rural communities. She is currently a second-year student at Portland State University pursuing a Bachelor’s in Social Work with a minor in Spanish.

Iris was my student in the Human/Nature class at Portland State University. I was struck by the depth and grace of her insight into the human psyche and her commitment to building bridges between progressives and conservatives. This interview arose from my desire to share her insights with the degrowth community.

Arwen Spicer: You grew up in rural Oregon, which predominantly identifies as socially conservative. Can you talk about your lived experience as a progressive in a more conservative community?

Iris Basile: I haven’t lived in my hometown for quite some time now, but I was working there again last year, and I feel like a lot of people in communities like these have more of a “live and let live” kind of style where, if you’re not prompting these conversations, generally there’s no friction. And even in conversations I would have with people where we very clearly had differing beliefs, a lot of the times it would stay... “friendly” is not the right word but “amiable.” There are times where you bite your tongue a little bit because you pick your battles. But overall, I wouldn’t say it was really that rough.

And when I was younger, I wasn’t this socially progressive. You can’t even tell a lot of times until you get more exposure to the rest of the world, and then you realize, “Oh, this place is more socially conservative.” But for the most part it’s pretty friendly and respectful. It’s more the politics rather than the person that causes the harm, like policies and things.

AS: Could you say more about what you mean by “the politics rather than the person that causes harm”?

IB: Yeah. A lot of times, if you need help, they will provide help. It’s just one of those things where, weirdly enough, while they might provide you with help, the conservative platform generally hurts, and there’s a bit of a disconnect between the way those [policies] hurt people versus seeing or helping somebody right in front of you.

There’s a joke by a comedian, Gianmarco Soresi. He’s walking along with a conservative person and there’s a transwoman in heels who’s walking ahead of them, and one of the heels breaks and she falls into oncoming traffic, and the conservative person leaps into action, grabs her, gets her out of the street, and gives like some diatribe about, “This is why people shouldn’t do this.” And the comedian goes, “If it were just me there, I would have gone, ‘Oh no, she’s dead!’” Which I think speaks to [how] rural communities have this strong ethos of helping. In person, that’s really what comes through. Then, it’s the back end where it’s the effects of these policies that are the bad thing. And then people just don’t like changing the policies they vote for. It’s confusing. It’s funny.

AS: It would be nice to bridge that disconnect in some way.

IB: Well, I honestly think exposure is how to do it. A lot of people, when it’s right in front of them, then they know and they see [harm that occurs to marginalized people]. And it’s just hard because, by definition, rural [areas] are more isolated. There’s less opportunities and chances [for exposure], especially for sustained and consistent exposure to different people’s beliefs, lifestyles, etc.

AS: Maybe that’s a good segue into our next question. You’re planning to pursue work as a therapist...

IB: My goal is to become a community psychologist or therapist for rural areas. I want to do individual counseling or couples, and groups, but I really would also like to work on community counseling, like building or organizing communities with a therapeutic mindset, trying to help communities with that type of healing. Because I believe that a lot of the current political tension stems from these places getting isolated and left alone. I wouldn’t so much say “left behind,” because some of them made more deliberate choices, but kind of left to their own devices. I think part of what has made it difficult for more social progressivism to get in is that these places get left alone. A lot of people grow up and leave. Very few people stick around.

And these places are also an excellent breeding ground for traumas and abuse. Then, you can get these long-term, generational issues, where you’ll have untreated mental health or other stresses, and these can lead to more mental health problems or addictions. So when life moved really quickly in the last fifty years, it was this jump with so much change: technological, social, financial, Bitcoin, all these things. Then, it doesn’t help that large agri-businesses have decimated local or smaller farming, which a lot of rural communities [traditionally] relied on. Then, things like mining and logging and those industries have also really died. So these places have dealt with [rapid social change] while simultaneously getting economically depressed.

In Behave [by Robert Sapolsky], it talks about how when you’re under stress, you become more conservative. Even people who are more socially progressive, when you put them under stressful conditions, they will make more conservative decisions. And when you’re under stress, one of the easiest ways to relieve stress is to punch down. Because things like racism and bigotry are easy ways to self-elevate to relieve stress in a world that increasingly makes it difficult to express anger at the appropriate mechanisms causing a lot of these problems. So with these communities, I want to try to change the method of stress relief.

[We need] to get people more connected to the places where they live and the people that live with them. Rural people barely go to the doctor, let alone going to mental health [providers]. So [I want] to find ways to help improve mental health without using traditional mental health settings, to give people more toolkits. Most people who are in bad places or are potentially doing bad things don’t like [their situation] either and want to change, but it’s really, really hard. [Without help with their problems], there’s no point for them to make some of these more socially progressive changes. Why would they? The system isn’t good, but it gives them somewhere to release their anger, which is better than nothing.

AS: It’s interesting that you’re talking about a therapeutic model on the community level. For me, that overlaps a lot with the degrowth community, where there’s an emphasis on local autonomy but focused not on the level of the family and the homestead but the community.

IB: Well, I think, as a species, we evolved for, what, like between 100 or 150 people in a community where people have these deep entwined social connections.[1] I think people want to get back to that. Co-ops and stuff like that will probably continue to be more and more popular, especially when the other side of the coin is these massive conglomerates. The only way to keep yourself out of almost being a serf is to lean on the community around you and work to provide yourselves with what you can and then interact with the wider world for other things. That’s not to say isolationism is good, but a better balance [is possible] between what we have now and just solely taking care of your own.

AS: That reminds me of the writings of Ursula K. Le Guin in some of her utopian writing: people often live in small communities but have larger networks where they connect interculturally.

IB: It’s basically like systems of representation which we kind of already have. I think part of it, too, is keeping people civically engaged and educated, because some of [our social systems are] very labyrinthine. But an important thing is just getting people to connect within their local contexts.

AS: Earlier, you noted that rural communities are a place where experiences of trauma can be likely. Can you say why it might be more likely in rural places?

IB: It’s a more specific type of trauma, like [physical] injuries. A lot of these places have more farming, livestock, mining, logging, etc. These are all professions that come with higher risk, and you can get injuries. You’ve got stress. Then, it can create an environment where it’s easy for people to lash out or get hurt and then perpetuate it or fall into addictions, like alcohol, in particular. Alcohol is just insane in rural communities. Opiates are a huge problem too, but alcohol’s been there, and I think alcohol will be there after opiates leave. Plus, the privacy [i.e. social remoteness] creates an environment where it’s easy for things to perpetuate.

AS: Is there anything else you’d like left-leaning people to understand about the type of conservative community that you’ve lived and worked in?

IB: Just that they’re people… I think it’s easy for people to go along [with conservative movements] without fully being on board. The amount of people I knew while working at the bar in town who would stand up for me or defend me but then vote Trump! There was one lady, in particular. One of the employees at the bar was a black lesbian and then there was me. And this lady loved us both, you know what I mean? She befriended us, talked, and hung out all the time. She still voted for Trump, because there’s just enough of a disconnect there. Eventually, she kind of came around and felt bad, and there’s a bit of “It’s a little late now,” but at the same time, a lot of people, they’ve got all this other shit to care about. There’s this propaganda from all sides, but the heavy fire hose points a little further to the right than the left. It’s all of these things. It takes time and space for people to get out of these things, especially in a way that’s not jarring or traumatic.

It’s cliché, but there are far more similarities than differences at the end of the day. A lot of times, if you just give time and space, people can surprise you. That’s not to say that anybody owes giving out olive branches or attempting to bridge divides, because… I’ve described it to people kind of like reaching out to a stray dog. Sometimes you might get bit in the process of doing this sort of rehabilitation, and nobody is obligated to do that. But if it’s something that you’re interested in, it’s worth it sometimes to just give people space to unwind through some of their stuff. They’re people. They deserve kindness. You deserve kindness. Make sure you don’t let people disrespect you. And at the end of the day, the politics don’t necessarily make the person.

AS: Was there anything else that you wanted to share that we haven’t touched on?

IB: Honestly, the only thing I would like to share is my caveat that I am a student. This is all based on personal experiences, and I am still working some of this out. I don’t want to come off as a person with a paintbrush just making these absolute statements or anything like that.

AS: Sure. Your experiences are valuable, and thanks for all the thought that you have put into this.

IB: Thank you.

Footnotes:

[1] Ehrlich (2024) argues for a comfortable group size of under 150, while Dunbar and Sosis (2018) find evidence for group stability at roughly 50, 150, or 500 individuals.

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