The Rural Rebel

This chapter focuses on the rural rebel, who has been labeled with disparaging terms such as “hick,” “hillbilly,” “redneck,” “white trash,” etc. Such monikers stood for, and in large part remain tied to, political conservatives and the traditions of their environment, and opposed to the notion of progress that the state demands. It is argued that such terms denigrate the environmental embeddedness of the poor they are used to describe. Rebels exist because all states have their problems, even democratic ones; because people are environmentally embedded, and they have never ceased to be; and because the democratic state is not all-encompassing in its representation.

The Rule of Numbers

This chapter suggests that there is something uncomfortable about democracy as we live in it today, where the majority is considered as the righteous ruler. Thus, if the majority wants electricity, and if providing that service requires a few people to give up their land or health, then the few should sacrifice for the whole. How did American democracy get to the point where standing up for one's personal rights became understood as an affront to the broader collective good? The short answer is that the democratic state's rendering of most things and people into numbers has created such a state of affairs, which is referred to the “rule of numbers.” People, ecology, or really anything can be added or subtracted, and all that matters in the end is what comes out of the equation.

Welcome to Burke County

This chapter describes the outcome of for-profit's rule in Burke County, Georgia. Burke County is what the US Department of Agriculture calls a persistent-poverty county, meaning that for the past thirty years, over 20 percent of the population has lived in poverty. The designation is not an easy one to get. Only 11.2 percent of counties nationally register as that poor, for that long. And most of such counties are rural. Poverty has been even worse lately in Burke County: 33.5 percent of the county lives in poverty. The region is part of what W. E. B. Du Bois called the Black Belt, for both its soil and people, where plantations once littered the landscape, providing the template for the later tenant-farm structure.

The Moral Economy’s Freedom

This chapter argues that in the presence of abundant minorities—of rurality, of poverty, of race, and of region—the corporate form has made a majoritarian feast of the people of Burke County. Letting the moral economy of democracy reign requires escaping the clutches of the state, which has failed the democratic ethos. Some turn to the forest to practice direct justice, others turn to God to transcend oppression. In either case, the state is something to be overcome, rather than a venue for reform. Hope for all can abound by allowing the moral economy of democracy to reign. Then, the best of intentions—a freedom to do—could inform the structure of society, and people would not need to constantly reposition themselves for defense against the latest attack.

The Transcendent People

This chapter suggests that in order to understand the full fallout of for-profit democracy, one must understand a simple truth relied on by those perpetually disinherited in the Burke County black community: God, not government, would deliver justice. Reckoning with the full fallout of majority tyranny in for-profit democracy requires rethinking the assumption that people showing up or standing up signals faith in the state they seek to reform. For some, showing up did not signal faith in the democratic state, a part of the corrupt system, but faith in God. In between absolute disenfranchisement and the promise of collectivity, the Burke County black Baptist churches can be found. There, pastors enter spaces of hopelessness to speak the word of God, knowing that their people often cannot stand behind them in a system broken by the majority's rule.

Freedom under the Gun

This chapter considers the implications of crime and gun ownership in Burke County, Georgia. Burke County's aggravated assault rate in 2011 was more than three times the national average: about 8 for every 1,000 people, versus 2.41 per 1,000 nationally. In 2010, its violent crime rate was more than twice the national average. These are not typical numbers for rural counties in America. For a county of 23,316, with only 28 people per square mile, the crime and violence in Burke County contradict widespread idyllic notions of the countryside and places identified as rural. Gun ownership is also high. One reason is because of white residents' proximity to black residents. There is a long tradition in the South of perpetrating violence against black people simply because white people perceived them as a threat, even when they were innocent. These prejudices are dramatized by crimes that may have no confirmed evidence of black-on-white assault, but still agitate prejudicial fears.

The Moral Economy of Democracy

This chapter argues that the private–public corporate combo created a fundamental challenge to people exerting their rights to private property according to their moral economy. The government's privileging of economic development and industrialization facilitated the rise of corporations as governmental authorities, but ones that failed to return profit to the public purse. To accommodate this process, the meaning of public use and public purpose changed dramatically. If the corporate expansion over public purpose and private profit stopped there, profit-seeking corporations might not be such a substantial affront to the moral economy of democracy. However, corporate powers have not stopped there. On top of awarding them public and profit rights, the judiciary recognizes corporations as people. Profit yet again played a key role in gaining corporations additional democratic rights. Profit made it seem as if the pursuit of more money was not only a human right, but the preeminent human right.

For-Profit Democracy

This chapter discusses for-profit democracy, in which the utilitarian rule of the most people and the greatest profit defines the government's purpose. It focuses on nuclear power as an outcome of for-profit democracy. Regulators merged energy as a necessary good with its status as necessity for profit. Without the private production of energy, people could scarcely live, nor could the nation maintain its economic productivity, so the logic goes. By virtue of such thinking, nuclear dominates any counterargument about risks or property costs, as does any other privately owned energy utility keeping the lights on. The United States has the most privatized nuclear power production regime in the world; the Tennessee Valley Authority constitutes the sole federally owned and operated nuclear power generating entity.