"a dwindling white nonurban America that is aflame with grievances and awash in self-pity as the country hurtles into the 21st century and leaves it behind"

I was brought up with them, amongst them. But there are a few holes in the definition. It needs to be brought up to date.

First, they are not all "white", in the classic Scots-Irish or Anglo-Saxon sense of the term. They now include the sons of immigrants who at one time were not considered "white" at all, the Italians and Mediterraneans, the Eastern Europeans, even the descendants of the great Irish immigrations of the 19th century. Even my own people are represented, the non-Mexican and non-Central American Hispanics who came here between the Fortyniners and Castro. These were all people who were once considered alien and dangerous, Catholic and Jew, too. Now they are cast in the uneasy role of a dwindling majority just when they thought they had "arrived". Actually, the most American of us all are the African Americans. Most of them came here before the Revolutionary War ended. They, and of course, the aboriginal peoples, certainly have every right to be here, if only by seniority.

Second, they are not non-urban either. At least, they are not rural. No one lives in "the Country" any more. Small town America, the Mayberries and Willoughbies of our imagination now house only a small percentage of the population. And next to no one lives "on the land" either. America is a suburban country, a vast endless Levittown desolation. We wear cowboy hats and boots and listen to country music, but we don't work on the ranch, or even on the farm; not with names like Taliaferro and Banicek and Washington. We work in retail sales and service industries, and if our kids went to college, they are event planners and real estate investment counselors and hospitality managers.

Who are the new Americans? Not the Mayflower Crowd, surely, those who came prior to the Revolution. There were only 4 million of them. During the last half of the 19th century came the great waves of immigrants that outnumbered them ten times over, from Eastern and Southern Europe, from China, and, of course, those who had already long occupied the vast lands we stole from Mexico.

No one inventories their ethnic background and family history when they choose a political affiliation, but neither are we immune to the currents of history and culture, nor can we claim we are not affected by the past. The Romans had their Etruscans, too. But by the time of Empire they were little more than a memory.