Anthrorusticaphobia is an extreme, irrational fear of rednecks. Yes, a real word for a real phobia. It’s a fear the United States, particularly its growing urban, coastal, well-heeled populations, needs to confront, a fear that I blame in significant part for what happened yesterday. I’m not a therapist, but I know the first step in confronting a fear is admitting you have one. The second is figuring out where those fears come from and what makes them extreme and irrational. The third is finding a treatment plan that includes “exposure therapy,” or coming to terms with those fears by actually changing your perception of, and interacting with, the cause of them.

Why assume people are smart? And why does that matter? It’s a starting point for just about everything else I do as a sociologist. I learned people are smart by spending over a decade of my life studying what they do and why they do it (and a lot longer than that interacting with them). What I mean is that people have reasons for doing what they’re doing that are as complicated and well thought out as the reasons you have for doing what you’re doing. Because I am a pragmatist, this wouldn’t matter if there wasn’t some benefit to assuming people are smart, so I offer three rules, things to gain from assuming that People are Smart, and not the opposite, based on all this.

Too stressed out, or bored. Too aggressive, or too afraid to stand up for yourself. Too unfocused, or overly fixated on one tiny detail. Too unorganized, or too inflexible to deal with change. Racing around to please everyone, or withdrawing into the self, unwilling to risk trusting another. I’ve been all these at times, and still am to degrees; I doubt I’m alone, though it’s not something I’m proud of. Around the New Year is often a time to reflect on such things. I am thinking about how to address these things constructively via ancient Greek philosophy, particularly Plato.

In the fall of 2020, I finally got the chance to teach a course on Religion and Politics from a sociological perspective. Here’s a bit about how and why. Edited and updated.