The topic is timley in that is offers a different view of the isolation of the rural counties in America.  He is responding to a Washington post article on maple syrup makers in Virgiina in which the Post’s David Fahrenthold describes  Seltzer’s home county of Highland  as cursed with isolation.

But Seltzer counters with some interesting observations:

In what sense, if any, is rural America isolated and empty? And what difference does it make?

We seem to be about as plugged in as other Americans with television, high-speed Internet and cell phones. We are subject to the same laws, taxes, gasoline prices, global warming, interest rates, stock markets, foreign-policy adventures and telemarketers.

As we’ve shared, the above may be true with the exception of high-speed Internet .

It takes us less time than city folks to do many routine things like see a doctor, but more to be greeted at Wal-Mart or eat Thai, both of which are an hour’s drive away.

Like many communities, we are isolated from blue-collar manufacturing and high-income, white-collar jobs. We are also largely isolated from gangs, drugs and sirens. A couple of kids were arrested for shooting cows…with paintballs.

Seltzer continues with these points:

To casually characterize us as isolated and empty is, I think, implied code for saying we don’t quite measure up because rural is different.

The increasing number of urban people moving to the countryside quickly understand that they have not entered a vacuum. Their neighbors are people—not quaint relics, not noble rustics. Like everyone else, we are individuals with good points, bad points, and all points in between.

When off-hand descriptions marginalize the 50 million who live in rural America,
harm is done. We become the outback other, zoo specimens that are interesting to observe but dangerous in the wild.

Most Americans now live in metropolitan areas. That’s the norm. Because we’re here, not there, it’s easy to consider us a little abnormal.

In the first 11 months of this recession, the most dramatic decreases in employment have taken place in urban counties. Rural counties, however, still have higher rates of unemployment.

Murphy and Bishop looked at the federal data

First we did two comparisons. First, we compared employment — the number of people working — in rural, urban and exurban counties, finding that cities suffered a disproportionate decline in jobs during the first year of the recession. Second, we counted unemployment — the number of people looking for jobs. Again, urban areas had a larger increase in people looking for work than did rural counties.

Recession Strikes Cities Harder Than Rural Communities — So Far | Daily Yonder | Keep It Rural.