Heartland

Jeremy brings up an interesting point in the comments to the previous post.

He claims that Atlanta is not part of the heartland. Which might lead you to ask what, then, is the heartland?

For some, it's simply the area of the United States between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains--largely the area of the Louisiana Purchase (plus a lot of land stolen from Mexico). If that's what Jeremy's talking about, then he's right. Atlanta is not part of the heartland.

However, it seems to me that "heartland," as the term is commonly used in political discourse these days, is basically shorthand for "not New York, LA, Boston, DC, Vegas, Chicago, or any other place where them fruity types sip lattes and go see gay cowboy movies while plotting how surrendering America to the terrorists/Communists/[insert authoritarian group here] will advance the liberal/homosexual/feminist/atheist agenda(s) while aborting as many babies as humanly possible."

I could be wrong.

However, I'm sure that there are plenty of people who think that Atlanta is an integral part of the heartland. "Heartland," to be more succinct than I was just now, is a rhetorical device that sets up a false dichotomy: decadent coasts, wholesome interior. Of course, the interior, according to devotees of this bullshit duality, is where you find "real" America--the workers, the farmers, the white folks (scratch a modern Republican, find a racist), the people who Make America Work. The coasts are where you find cities, decay, welfare cases, the people who are a Drag On Society.

Naturally, as noted, this is all bullshit. Here's a list of which states Make America Work and which are a Drag On Society. That is, it's a list of federal spending per dollar of taxes paid in.

State	Federal Spending per $ of Taxes Paid
New Mexico	$2.00
Alaska	$1.87
West VA	$1.83
Mississippi	$1.77
North Dakota	$1.73
Alabama	$1.71
Virginia	$1.66
Hawaii	$1.60
Montana	$1.58
South Dakota	$1.49
Oklahoma	$1.48
Arkansas	$1.47
Louisiana	$1.45
Kentucky	$1.45
Maryland	$1.44
Maine	$1.40
S. Carolina	$1.38
Tennessee	$1.30
Arizona	$1.30
Missouri	$1.29
Idaho	$1.28
Utah	$1.14
Kansas	$1.12
Vermont	$1.12
Iowa	$1.11
Wyoming	$1.11
N. Carolina	$1.10
Nebraska	$1.07
Pennsylvania	$1.06
Florida	$1.02
Rhode Island	$1.02
Ohio	$1.01
Indiana	$0.97
Oregon	$0.97
Georgia	$0.96
Texas	$0.94
Washington	$0.88
Michigan	$0.85
Wisconsin	$0.82
Delaware	$0.79
Colorado	$0.79
New York	$0.79
California	$0.79
Massachusetts	$0.77
Nevada	$0.73
Illinois	$0.73
Minnesota	$0.69
New Hamp.	$0.67
Connecticut	$0.66
New Jersey	$0.55

Yeah. Massachusetts--those layabouts! How dare they pay more in than they receive in federal outlays! So the upper Midwest, Mid-Atlantic, Pacific Coast, half of New England, and assorted other states (including Georgia) are doing the heavy lifting, while, say, South Dakota benefits from the largesse of these allegedly decadent liberal enclaves (to borrow a phrase from noted tool Andrew Sullivan).

Anyway, this is a large digression from the original question, and I'd like some input from you guys. What do you think the heartland is, if it even exists? And do you think that my characterization of the rhetorical use of the term is anywhere close to correct?