"The Lives of Others" is an interesting German film about several aspects of East German society before the Fall of the Berlin Wall. The plot line involves a writer who exposes the hidden suicide epidemic (which we can interpret as a signal of the failure of the communist authoritarian system), and is targeted by the STASI in response.

The author of this piece is writing something similar, but doesn't really grasp what aspects of the American system created the economic dystopia of 'flyover country' - but it began in the late 1970s, expanded through the 1980s, hit its stride in the 1990s and achieved total dominion in the 2000's, and it's called neoliberal economic policy - i.e. the elimination of nation-state controls on capital flows, the removal of well-paid manufacturing jobs to Mexico, China, Indonesia, India, the import of cheap labor to fill jobs in agriculture and construction that couldn't be outsourced (using tactics like dumping US agribusiness output in Mexico to drive small farmers into poverty).

I mean, there's a reason we have something called 'The Rust Belt' stretching across mid-America, there's a reason the streets are filled with homeless encampments, and it's not because of moral breakdown or class-vs-identity politics, it's because of the trade and economic policies implemented by financial oligarchs and their paid-off politicians.