A San Francisco Progressive Screams from White Rural America, January 20, 2016
Immersed & Isolated in the Conditions that Created the Possibility for a Capitol Insurrection

I knew who was coming to the Capitol yesterday because I was studying them in 2016. Those who could not imagine the white (mostly) rural Americans storming the Capitol until yesterday need to ask themselves what’s missing in their perspective or training that blinded them to all the signs.
Everything I publish is based in 3.5 years of firsthand in-field anthropological ethnographic documentation and experience in the cultural conditions that continue to grow in Rural American Cultures (RAC). It’s time to turn fully toward the 60 million humans who live on 97% of the land mass (with all those natural resources) and address our American authoritarian cultural problem.
The skeleton of our democracy still exists. For democracy’s shell to stand tall and move forward in confidence with the people’s power, we need to enflesh the democratic structure with embodied everyday democratic practices that maintain our democracy between elections.
Democracy cannot be imposed. It cannot be elected. It cannot be bought. It cannot be attained through prayer. It must be lived in bodies, in relations, in all of us. Every single day.
A little of what I learned in Rural American Cultures:
Cathy B. Glenn, Ph.D. is an independent critical researcher, creative, and cultural worker whose areas of expertise are power, culture, and change. Formerly Private Principal Investigator for The Center for U.S. Rural Cultures Studies, she is now Educational Content Director and Developer for The Relational Democracy Project. She spent 5 years functionally outside capitalist demands, documenting the experience, and it changed her fundamentally as a human being. She is available to consult.
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