The Culture War Comes To Nebraska

Saturday, September 5th, 2020, was a particularly bad day in America for Republican political optics. The same day that five small craft sank during a “boat parade” near Austin, Texas, a white Chevrolet Silverado was spotted driving around Lincoln, Nebraska, with racial vulgarities written on its back window. The reaction on social media was swift: many clickers, including Nebraskans like me, hastily expressed our outrage. Perhaps too hastily.

Makes me fucking proud to be a Nebraskan. 🤬 https://t.co/3dI2Qfy6PS

— Kevin L Nenstiel (@KLNenstiel) September 6, 2020

Nebraska is a deeply divided state. This statement can have multiple definitions. We could describe the way our two largest cities, Lincoln and Omaha, dominate the outlying state, economically and culturally. It might mean how these two slightly Democratic-leaning cities perch amid an otherwise overwhelmingly Republican-leaning state.Whenever outside investors consider sinking money in Nebraska, they seldom look outside Lincoln and Omaha.

Douglas and Lancaster counties, of which Omaha and Lincoln are respectively the dominant cities, have between them about one-third of Nebraska’s population. However, they have much more of Nebraska’s educational and financial services industries (the only doctorate-granting schools in the state are in these cities). They also have Nebraska’s media presence. The filmmakers behind About Schmidt reduced Nebraska to two parts: Omaha and Interstate 80.

The truck, photographed cruising Lincoln’s largest business district, has 34-county plates. That identifies it as Fillmore County, about an hour’s drive from Lincoln. Like most of what’s commonly called “Greater Nebraska,” Fillmore Country has an economy anchored on agriculture and light industry. As you’d probably imagine, this means it isn’t wealthy. That’s reflected in demographics: the county’s population has declined steadily, by two-thirds, since its peak in 1890.

Fillmore County is part of a larger Nebraska cultural and economic structure that’s largely been abandoned by modernity. Just as most of America’s economy and culture have concentrated in a few cities, like New York and San Francisco, Nebraska’s economy and culture have stopped at the Lincoln and Omaha city limits. The rest of the state is often fifteen years behind on technology, economic development, and demographic trends.

Someone like me sees this divide, where socioeconomic elites hoard access to life’s nice qualities in shrinking geographic enclaves, and think: we should rebel against our overlords. The financial services kings who shrink our state and starve our countryside don’t just hurt country-dwellers; they undercut their own access to healthy food grown on the soil. Nebraska’s economic caste system hurts the rich as badly, I believe, as the poor.

Many Greater Nebraska residents see it differently. Given evidence of massive economic oppression, they blame the poor and disenfranchised. As I’ve written before, many Nebraskans see themselves squeezed, not by rich urbanites, but by growing Black and Hispanic populations moving into the area, looking for work. So apparently, a rural truck owner took his message, tied to a “Trump 2020” banner, and drove it into the rich part of the state.

Apparently. But…

According to news reports, the truck’s owner denies everything categorically. He claims his vehicle was vandalized, that he’s been doxxed, and both he and his ex-girlfriend, a single mother, have been subjected to threats of violence. He only went into Lincoln for the reason most Greater Nebraskans do, to conduct commerce and while away an evening, and he got targeted with vulgar, offensive property damage for no apparent reason.

The "Sower" statue atop the Nebraska
capitol building reflects the state's
agricultural heritage

My mind boggles at the contradiction. Like many outsiders, I assumed he launched his offensive into Lincoln from outside. But did Lincolnites actually attack him, possibly for his out-of-town plates? Was this possibly not a small-town attack on perceived city elitism, but an attempt to keep the country people down? Right now we only have “he-said, they-said,” though news reports indicate nobody else reported similar vandalism, so I’m skeptical.

Joining blue-collar life in Greater Nebraska has made me deeply doubtful that America will reform itself voluntarily. As long as America’s White working class sees itself as primarily White, and working class only secondarily (or not at all), they’ll never unify against their mostly White economic oppressors. In Nebraska, where economic elites are geographically concentrated and the working class are spread out, this conflict becomes territorial as well as economic.

But the rural-urban divide has two sides. Since I moved to Nebraska in 1992, I’ve witnessed hostility run both ways: Western Nebraska cattle ranchers wear their boots and Stetsons defiantly into Lincoln and Omaha, while the state legislature repeatedly cuts funding for schools and social services in Greater Nebraska. This truck threatens to become a retread of this divide. Who you believe, may well depend on where you live.