DUer Rural_Progressive posted this yesterday and in it I think we've got a seed for change.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1014&pid=2137880
As a farmer myself living in a red portion of WA state
I interact with many of the people you're describing.
Nice people if you're a member of their tribe or behave in a way that allows the tribe to accept you.
I don't have a lot of time to read whole books but boy do I enjoy listening to audiobooks whenever possible. Listened to these two recently and in my opinion they do an excellent job of providing very well documented versions of the US history most of us didn't get taught in any of our high school or college classes.
If you truly are interested in understanding why we were bound to end up where we are give these two a read (or listen):
White Trash by Nancy Isenberg
American Nations by Colin Woodard
Once you have a better idea of where we came from it is much easier to understand how we got here.
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Im re-upping my audio book subscription to listen to those two books. Imagine if we understood these people, even a little bit, how much more likely we would be to be able to persuade them.