One thing Trujillo’s research did find is that, among rural Americans who strongly identify with their rural roots, there is a ‘heightened distrust of experts and intellectuals’. Waldman and Schaller might think this is proof of their prejudice that the rural rubes reject science. But given the cartoonish view of rural America that these two supposed experts put forward in White Rural Rage, the country-dwellers’ scepticism is surely justified.

I can’t help but spy a sinister motive behind this demonisation of rural workers. Waldman and Schaller have the nerve to accuse the ordinary, hard-working people of middle America of being a ‘threat to democracy’. But when our elites say ‘democracy’, what they mean is the opposite. They’re talking about the ability of the powerful to rule without being interrupted by the pesky electorate. Voters, after all, can sometimes vote the ‘wrong’ way. In truth, it is these elites who are doing the most to chip away at America’s liberal, democratic principles.

Personally, I find Waldman and Schaller’s White Liberal Rage to be far more alarming than anything those fools are trying to warn us about.