Any discussion of the arts and culture of the United States would result in a dish as rich and tasty as a Louisiana jambalaya. Stephen Foster, Anne Bradstreet, Frank Capra, Louis Armstrong, Mark Twain, Bob Dylan, Andrew Wyeth, and Ray Bradbury: That inventory hardly scratches the surface of the living and dead musicians, artists, writers, poets, and others who have shaped American culture at large.
Then, there is the definition of culture as the customs and beliefs of a particular people living in a particular place. In American culture are subsets of such people and places. Neither Boston nor Atlanta would name their football team the “Cowboys.” The experiences of an insurance salesman born and raised in Queens, New York City, will differ radically when compared to his counterpart in Boise, Idaho. Writers John Cheever and Flannery O’Connor were both mid-20th century authors, but the “Chekov of the suburbs” and the “Queen of Southern Gothic” were poles apart in the themes and styles of their fiction.
In her new book “Butler: The Untold Story of the Near Assassination of Donald Trump and the Fight for America’s Heartland,” Salena Zito offers readers valuable insights into the culture of place. Using her in-depth knowledge of Western Pennsylvania, and of small towns in general, she demonstrates how these heartland men and women don’t match the stereotypes so often coined by some politicians and members of the press in cities like Washington or Los Angeles.
Roots
Zito is a veteran reporter who is also a friend and supporter of Donald Trump. On July 13, 2024, she was seated four feet from the podium in Butler, Pennsylvania when an assassin’s shots rang out, slightly wounding the former president, killing one man and seriously wounding two others. Because of Zito’s access to Trump—he called her eight times the following day—“Butler” offers a fascinating insider’s look at the shooting and on Donald Trump in general.Tucked into this account, and not to be missed, are Zito’s observations on towns like Butler and the people who live there. A native of Western Pennsylvania, she has spent years reporting on the heartland mentioned in her title, deliberately avoiding interstate highways and driving her trusty Jeep on back roads looking for stories. She frequently reports on what some dismissively call flyover country—a place so neglected, or even denigrated, by politicians and many of her fellow journalists.
Her ties to Butler and the surrounding area run deep. She clarified:
“To say that our family is rooted to the dirt under our feet in western Pennsylvania is an understatement—two-hundred-plus years in the same three county region will do that to you. Then again, almost everyone who lives here has similar roots.”
These families, Zito points out, stay in the area because of their abiding love of place and the neighbors who live there. Whether they are, like Zito herself, rooted to that place by a long heritage or are newly-arrived, they feel at home. They also belong to that group, the working middle-class, so often ignored by those with money and power. She wrote:
“[They are] people who work with their hands, work the land, and even work in C-suites. Perhaps they could make more money elsewhere, but they decided to stay near their hometown because they were tied to the region and that had more value to them than money.”
Changes in the Heartland
Of course, all of these communities, both in Pennsylvania and across the United States, are influenced by national trends in culture. Zito visited Bethel Park, a middle-class suburb of Pittsburgh and home to the 20-year-old deceased assassin Thomas Crooks, who had lived with his parents. She spoke with Jerry, who lived a block away. He said:“We have gone from a neighborhood of front porches and kids playing in the streets to backyard decks, closed front doors, and people keeping to themselves. … We are too isolated—parents and kids have their heads down in phones and games. It is a step forward every day to losing our humanity when we don’t interact and see people as living beings.”
Social isolation is as real in the heartland as it is in America’s major cities.
From an interview with then vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance, Zito also hits on the plague of drugs that has afflicted so many of these communities over the last 40 years. As many people now know, Vance’s mother Beverly struggled with addiction to drugs and alcohol. Sober now for years, she sometimes accompanied Vance on the 2024 campaign trail, where they encountered others who had battled addiction themselves or had family members who did so.
As an example, Vance shared with Zito a moment that occurred at an A&W root beer stand in Big Rapids, Michigan. The very first person they met “wants to give my mom a hug, and it’s like, ‘You are such an inspiration, and a lot of us have struggled with addiction and the fact that you and your son kept at it, that is an inspiration.”
Then-Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) greets his mother, Beverly Vance, during the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on July 17, 2024. AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
Trust Is Key to Community
A major feature of heartland culture is accountability. While many mainstream news outlets have forfeited the trust of American readers, heartland citizens generally regard their local newspapers as trustworthy. The people living in Rockbridge County, Virginia, for example, count on accuracy in the articles that appear in the local paper, the News-Gazette. Publisher Matt Paxton told Zito:“We all have the experience of writing a story and then walking down the street and running into the person we just wrote about. And when you write a story, you keep that in the back of your mind. You want to be scrupulously fair and not just throwing arrows.”
As all small-town dwellers know, the same holds true for many others in the community: school board members and teachers, mayors, owners of small factories, and attorneys. These public figures know the people they serve and the problems they face, and are known in turn by them. In places like Waynesville, North Carolina; Front Royal, Virginia; and Moscow, Pennsylvania; they shop in the same stores and eat out in the same restaurants, and their kids play sports and attend school together.
A farm near Carmi, Ill., on Oct. 4, 2008. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Bursting the Bubble
It’s precisely this lack of trust which has led to the division separating heartland culture from big government and mainstream media. Moreover, some politicians and many in the media have all too often discounted or mocked those rural and small-town Americans for being ignorant or out of touch with the culture. They are blind to the fact that they themselves are out of step with the heartland. As Zito notes, many of today’s establishment live in a bubble, unable or unwilling to give credence to the beliefs and customs of most of their fellow Americans: “They often look at these men and woman as a cohort that needs to be reformed and reeducated.”Representative Mike Kelly is a Butler native who sat in the rally’s front row. Corey Comperatore, the firefighter who died during the shooting, was just behind him. Kelly spoke to Zito about this divide between America’s national institutions, including the press, and the great majority of Americans living outside that sphere of influence and power. Addressing their loss of faith in these institutions, Kelly said on their behalf,
“It isn’t resentment and it’s not anger; it really isn’t. It’s a message of, we have lost confidence in you, and you need to live up to your missions. You cannot put the genie back in the bottle. Nothing is going back to the way it was, in terms of confidence in what they do.”
They could begin that journey by reading “Butler.”
Politicians and reporters who wish to prove Kelly wrong by reversing this massive slide in trust need to follow Zito’s example. This entails leaving their offices, breaking out of the bubble in which they live and work, and familiarizing themselves with that mass of citizens described by Zito as those who “take pride in their work ethic, their family ties, and their faith.”
They could begin that journey by reading “Butler.”
’Butler: The Untold Story of the Near Assassination of Donald Trump and the Fight for America’s Heartland’
By Salena Zito
Center Street, July 8, 2025
Hardcover: 256 pages
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