Rural America’s new plague: Hicklibs and fail-libs

Rural America was once a refuge from radical leftists. Fewer amenities and job opportunities were a price some conservatives were willing to pay if it meant their traditional values and patriotism didn’t have to compete with progressivism.But those pastoral sanctuaries are being blotted out one by one thanks to two new phenomena: hicklibs and fail-libs. “As media and universities became more radical, their disciples moved into rural America through government-mandated institutions like schools and libraries,” says BlazeTV host Auron MacIntyre.“Thus the hicklib was born.”A hicklib, MacIntyre explains, is “usually a social outcast, a failson who needs a moral explanation for why he hates the community he never fit into.”“His resentment searches for a theory that will dignify his rage, and the progressive missionaries installed in his local institutions are happy to provide one,” he says.The message is one of moral superiority: America is evil; those who disagree are “racist, sexist, backwards religious fanatics, destroying the lives of minorities; and “white Christian culture” is the real evil in the world.“The hicklib's failures to fit in become proof of moral superiority,” says MacIntyre.Having found a solution to his inferiority complex, he sets out on a new mission.“The hicklib shows up at town council meetings in a Black Lives Matter shirt to denounce minority oppression in a community with no actual black people. That absence naturally becomes further proof of the town's intolerance,” says MacIntyre.“He loudly organizes Pride events attended by two other hicklibs. That little clique stages protests, distributes flyers, and imitates urban activist rituals. By practicing the sacraments of their faith, they hope to summon the spirit of the age to judge their reactionary little town.”The hicklib, MacIntyre argues, has become a “plague” for rural communities.But as plagues often do, the hicklib has evolved.“As the value of college degrees collapse, a new breed is emerging: the fail-lib,” says MacIntyre.Unlike the failure-to-launch hicklib, the fail-lib is outwardly successful.“The fail-lib worked hard in high school and gave progressive teachers every approved answer. She wrote her college entrance essay on the oppression of trans women of color in coal mining. On campus, she became an activist. She secured a degree in some woke humanities discipline and earned straight A's by repeating everything her communist professor told her,” MacIntyre illustrates.But despite her academic success, the fail-lib fails to land the “cushy corporate HR job” her expensive college degree promised her. Turns out, college degrees no longer come with the status they used to, and the “poor, oppressed immigrants” she’s long defended are now the preferred candidates.Instead of moving to a big, liberal city like she planned, the fail-lib is forced to dwell among the rural “townies” she disdains.She “was promised luxury and elite influence; now she serves the people she despises while searching for any opportunity to make their lives worse,” says MacIntyre, speculating that the rise of artificial intelligence will only “intensify this problem.”“The fail-lib might make less money than you; she may be less respected than you; she may even be despised by the townies she once mocked, but in her heart, she knows she's superior, and nothing could ever convince her otherwise.”To hear more, watch the video above.Want more from Auron MacIntyre?To enjoy more of this YouTuber and recovering journalist's commentary on culture and politics, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.