(It's hard for me to post things because I always feel like I'm not explaining things well enough, and open myself up to hostility. So this is very hard to write. Please be kind.) Just yesterday I...
Exemplary
(It's hard for me to post things because I always feel like I'm not explaining things well enough, and open myself up to hostility. So this is very hard to write. Please be kind.)
Just yesterday I watched a documentary called Hillbilly, which focuses on the struggles of Appalachia, with a focus on media representation. I currently live in Appalachia. It gives you a certain perspective on the feelings and struggles of people who have voted for Trump, who are generally "Republican". And I put that in quotes because if you get down to it, if you talk to people from around here, most have a strong foundational sense on class division. The Republican party has done an excellent job love-bombing these people and then exploiting them. The Democratic party has done an excellent job deriding these people, furthering stereotypes that they live and die by.
If you talk to people from around here, you start understanding that they constantly fight against shame. People from outside this area swing back and forth between pity and hate for the region. The dominant story is of poor and simple folk. My friends around here try so hard to hide their accents, because the moment they talk to anyone outside the region, they're met with condescension. Maybe, if you work hard and do well in school, you can get out. Parents and teachers will tell this to kids. This place is drowning in shame.
So when someone like Trump or a right-wing talking head goes on about how these people are actually great, how they built America, how they've been stomped on by everyone else, they are speaking to the self-loathing that a lot of them have. They are telling them things that people rarely tell them, especially not themselves.
The region has such a rich and important history. The coal miner unions are responsible for many of the labor rights we enjoy today, and they went to war for them. And yet, the mountains have been carved out by coal companies, whose riches have never went to the people who worked and died for them. Towns have been decimated by floods, waters have been poisoned... It makes sense why people here are distrustful of a government that has largely ignored them. It is not hard to see why these people largely voted "against their best interests".
I don't really know how to wrap up my thoughts here. But, personally, I've long been tired of the way Appalachia is talked about. I just wish people's reaction to red states be more nuanced. Instead of labeling everyone from around here as "undesirables", I wish people took the time to listen, and empathize. Just a little. People are people. I don't think writing off entire regions based on an election is in any way right or deserved.
I have not, but now I have it added to my reading list. This looks like the kind of thing I'd love to look more into. Thanks! For the record, I'm not originally from here. I came from a place that...
I have not, but now I have it added to my reading list. This looks like the kind of thing I'd love to look more into. Thanks!
For the record, I'm not originally from here. I came from a place that looks down on places like this, so when I moved, it was a bit of a culture shock. The area is complicated, but I've developed a love for the nature and many of the people. It's really the most misunderstood region in America by far (in my opinion).
I have a sort of similar experience, coming from Have It All cities of Vancouver and Toronto, to rural ex-fishing community in "nowhere" Atlantic Canada (as described by my city friends). My...
I have a sort of similar experience, coming from Have It All cities of Vancouver and Toronto, to rural ex-fishing community in "nowhere" Atlantic Canada (as described by my city friends). My neighbours are the types we used to make fun of, to wring our hands about and sigh "why can't they just go to university and learn to code" about. They're painted as welfare queens, as backwards looking boozers and lazy layabouts. Our oceans are fished clean and not a single cent stayed in this community: their lives have been hollowed out through generations of lies, abuse and exploitation the way your coal mines and our oceans have been.
I do believe those of us in the cities are going to see a version of this, very soon if not already. The ultra wealthy have started to generationally hold down and extract and hollow out our youth and indenture their salaries while slashing education health care and economic mobilities at the same time.
I hope city folks can empathize with rural folks a little - what you see happening to our youth due to globalization and AI revolution, and taken to its conclusion several hundred years down the line.
Ain't that always the way. I think every place has that one region (or several) that you can look at and mock and feel superior towards. The stereotypes might not be exactly the same, but they...
Ain't that always the way. I think every place has that one region (or several) that you can look at and mock and feel superior towards. The stereotypes might not be exactly the same, but they certainly rhyme.
A lot of what I'm seeing now is richer folk moving in because living is cheap. Prices are rising even more, and no one can afford it. Cash advances are on every corner. And these are the same people who mock the local culture relentlessly. The whole thing is... it leaves a sour taste. I wonder how much of the local culture will even be left years down the line.
This is sort of why, while I'm not necessarily for the U.S. electoral college, I understand why many want it. Land shouldn't vote, sure, but when the majority of the population is in the city and pass laws, will they think about how it might affect rural folk? When the people who decide the election are only city folk, will politicians even campaign here?
I'm hopeful that more lines of communication between these people will open up. I hope for a culture of stronger empathy and solidarity. And I hope people stop making fun of accents for once (it's not funny y'all).
Maybe that's one of the blessings behind the youngish flight back into rural places, displaced by housing unaffordability: it gives some city people like me new insight into these have not...
Maybe that's one of the blessings behind the youngish flight back into rural places, displaced by housing unaffordability: it gives some city people like me new insight into these have not communities, and more lines of communication open up like you said.
I grew up with a minority accent, was made fun of for not speaking English in elementary school. And then my group inadvertently became the culturally dominant group in our high school: I've been on both sides and I wasn't particularly virtuous in either cases....but as an older adult now I really appreciate those experiences.
Additionally, I've always been highly partial to "y'all" as an efficient, gender neutral second personal plural pronoun and I hope it becomes standardized.
Here's the thing: It's not the whole picture, and it doesn't absolve the Democrat's failings to meet the needs of rural America. But I grew up there. In the 90's, it was still considered...
Rural whites, he said, are “the most racist, xenophobic, anti-immigrant, anti-gay geo-demographic group in the country.” He called them, “the most conspiracist group,” “anti-democratic,” “white nationalist and white Christian nationalists.” On top of that, rural whites are also “most likely to excuse or justify violence as an acceptable alternative to peaceful public discourse.”
Here's the thing: It's not the whole picture, and it doesn't absolve the Democrat's failings to meet the needs of rural America.
But I grew up there. In the 90's, it was still considered reasonable to be hosting a KKK rally. I learned a wide variety of racist slurs that I'm thankful to have never heard again since leaving.
Virtually all economic downturns are blamed on Democrats even if it was Republican doing (see Obama being handed Bush's economy). This is paired with 'damn immigrants taking our jobs.' Rinse/repeat for Jews and Muslims. I've seen black men being harassed for committing the crime of 'walking down the sidewalk in a white area of town'.
And there's a lot more rural Americans posting with flags, bibles, and guns talking about needing to win 'the culture war.'
The religious lot, which are dominant, generally do not take kindly to atheists and LGBT folks.
That's not to say everyone in rural areas is like this, but in terms of 'dominant voter base,' it's 100% true.
Some of it is just the legacy worshipping of Reagan, which is pretty analogous to what Trump is. Just Trump is the post-Reagan, post-Gingrich, post-Bush2 Reagan.
Frankly, the Democrats would do well to just shut up about guns at the national level. It's too divisive of an issue, and plenty more good could be done by addressing things like accessible mental healthcare and support networks instead. They would win over a lot of single-issue voters with a lack of fuel for the 'taking your guns' rhetoric.
Hell, have them start talking about dismantling the ATF and all of a sudden rural Americans will start comprehending 'defund the police.'
Oh~ what is the American ATF (google: "Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives"?) And how does it relate to the defund the police? It's sad though, because when half of the country...
Oh~ what is the American ATF (google: "Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives"?) And how does it relate to the defund the police?
It's sad though, because when half of the country doesn't vote, it implies for every loudmouth supporter of either side, there's at least two quietly muttering non support and just not voting at all for either one.
I agree with you that the blame is placed on liberals regardless of what happens. The article also argues that there's a lack of good campaign being run by the liberals in rural states: they seem to just fly over them and choose to believe it's enough to get the urban centers to vote for them, and ignore the lost cause anyway. It's not just the bad media landscape -- if TV that reaches rural Americans is bad, then show up in person and shake their hands and give them hugs and kiss their babies. The article names three liberal candidates who are very successful in rural America because of the on the ground campaigns they're running. For all the evils of the Republican party, their on the ground reach as well as mobilization of local churches (shudder) to campaign for them has been highly successful. When will the liberals also deign to pretend to care about lowly rural voters as individuals instead of nameless conglomerate statistical "welfare recipient"?
Oh yes, I suppose a bit of additional explaination is required. They were formed during the Prohibition era to crack down on bootleggers, so they serve as another enforcer for the war on drugs. As...
Oh~ what is the American ATF (google: "Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives"?) And how does it relate to the defund the police?
Oh yes, I suppose a bit of additional explaination is required. They were formed during the Prohibition era to crack down on bootleggers, so they serve as another enforcer for the war on drugs. As well as cracking down on gun laws, however, a lot of their principles are useless beuracracy. Here's a good starting point. I will warn you that going too deep down the rabbithole will expose you to some serious right-wing nastiness, in part because of what I was saying above. But if you want to get 'the right' to grasp 'defund the police', the ATF will give better context than most policing organizations.
The nicest thing you can say about the ATF is that it's an unserious and unaccountable bureaucracy. Often it's explicitly contemptible, such as during the Fast-and-Furious gun-walking scandal, and its setting up mentally disabled youths to take the fall during gun-and-drug stings.
J.D. Tuccille discussing some of the many failures of the ATF.
I feel very frustrated by this article. The author is correct in saying that the people talking about rural rage are committing a category error. But that is par for the course. The author...
I feel very frustrated by this article.
The author is correct in saying that the people talking about rural rage are committing a category error. But that is par for the course. The author themself is committing a category error because the studies he talks about are category errors in and of themselves; they take disparate groups of people and attempt to make them the same through use of statistics.
I am tired of having to tell people that the problems in this country are not being caused by a nebulous “right” or “left”. Frankly I think people who bring that kind of narrative to a mass audience need to fuck off. No matter how well meaning they are, they are doing damage. They are sewing division and making things worse for everyone because we are being armed with these category errors which shield us from the incredibly basic responsibility of seeing people as people. About a week ago I broke a rule and responded to a comment by someone on Reddit and had a brief conversation with someone who absolutely could not break things down to anything less general than leftists and rightists, so in the end we couldn’t really communicate. That is the kind of mentality that these things cultivate, and it is evil.
I kind of wonder what the point of the article was after reading it because I still don’t exactly know what the author expects us to do with the problem of rural communities embracing fascist or racist politicians like Trump. I would agree with him that in general rural people have resentment rather than rage. But what is the point of realizing that if it doesn’t lead to solutions? They talk about the insularity of those communities; if they are unwilling to listen to outside voices, what are we to do? They say that they have no answers at the end other than trying to get us to understand eachother but that is only after including parts about how rural communities are a drain on the economy, are in the process of a slow self-destruction which will doubtlessly hurt the rest of the population, and are unwilling to listen to reason if it comes from outsiders. It sews the division it says we should remove!
I know this a simple typo, but like so many things in life, the best come by serendipity. As such, I have made it today a life goal to sew division as an antidote to those who sow division. It’s...
sewing division
I know this a simple typo, but like so many things in life, the best come by serendipity.
As such, I have made it today a life goal to sew division as an antidote to those who sow division.
It’s apropos this discussion, too, because it evokes a kind of rural adaptibility that’s in line with progressive ideal, mending instead of replacing.
Personally, I believe rural economies can and should be rescued. It would require policy against retail monopolies, in favor of smaller local industry, in favor of smaller farms. It would be...
Personally, I believe rural economies can and should be rescued. It would require policy against retail monopolies, in favor of smaller local industry, in favor of smaller farms. It would be simpler than rewriting the constitution to undo the electoral college.
For all the cost reductions of the Walmartification of the USA, it came at tremendous cost, even in urban communities. Fewer specialist retailers who have deep subject matter knowledge Small...
It would require policy against retail monopolies
For all the cost reductions of the Walmartification of the USA, it came at tremendous cost, even in urban communities.
Fewer specialist retailers who have deep subject matter knowledge
Small businesses tend to be less-bad for workers than the giant megacorp. There's a few local retailers that have defined pension plans still.
Their ability to negotiate against manufacturers means lower quality goods to meet arbitrary price points.
Lack of custom service. There's some smaller retail outlets near me... if there's something they can order for me they can often get it as cheap or cheaper than the equivalent product from Amazon.
International restraunt chains with multimillion dollar marketting budgets cripple the ability for local restraunts to compete, especially for tourist/passerbys. Far fewer people will chance a local diner when Red Robin is a block away. Especially if Red Robin optimized their Google ad spend.
It'd be well worth considering shattering the megacorp retail (including restraunts) to more regional estabilshments. Personally, especially for food, I've noticed quality drops when there's more than 6 or so locations.
Specialist retailers..... Oh man, I miss them so much. I remember browsing tiny stores in HK: it used to be that independent shop keeps would fly to (say) Japan and personally buy a few suitcases...
Specialist retailers.....
Oh man, I miss them so much.
I remember browsing tiny stores in HK: it used to be that independent shop keeps would fly to (say) Japan and personally buy a few suitcases of cute things or trendy things and then come back to sell them. We might be a season or two behind, but because goods are personally selected and meant to be sold quickly, they're very high quality and extremely eclectic. Two independent shop keeps going to Japan would bring back two very different sets of goods. That was for many many many types: fashion, accessories, model kits, stationary, crafts, games.... Trinkets galour. HK was also manufacturing a ton of different things for export at the time, which means a lot of these tiny shop keeps would know a guy who knows a guy, and happen upon batch of first run or demo or B quality goods meant for export, now available locally for pennies on the dollar.
Now we have anchor stores selling the exact same T Shirt across the whole continent. We have way too many XXXXL shirts in a demographic where people are tiny. Or the reverse. Or niche ethnic fruits shipped all the way to where I am on the Atlantic coast well past their prime dates.
I miss browsing an entire mall of tiny stores all selling the same "type" of thing but every store has something different to sell. Like, a mall full of bootleg movies and games, mall full of toys, mall full of model kits, mall full of hair clips and accessories....etc.... fabric street, bird street, fish street, button street, hand tool street, cookware steet and surely so many others I never even knew about.
Even in North America, stores like my local imperial hobbies are clearly on the decline, going from a place we can browse for hours to a place we call to place an order for pick up, if that. It's very sad....
One of the things that delights me about living in a small town in a place with long winters is that there are still some independent shops. They're struggling along, but there are three comics...
One of the things that delights me about living in a small town in a place with long winters is that there are still some independent shops. They're struggling along, but there are three comics and gaming stores, a couple of excellent independent bookstores, multiple knitting and sewing suppliers, a model train and aircraft store, auto parts for the serious DIY or antique restorer, and several delightfully eclectic hardware/farm supply places. Yes, there are big box stores, but they haven't completely starved the diversity of the retail ecosystem.
That sounds wonderful :) I hope smaller towns like that survive and even better, make a come back Edit: btw in English these days calling something precious can be taken to be mean and sarcastic...
That sounds precious wonderful :) I hope smaller towns like that survive and even better, make a come back
Edit: btw in English these days calling something precious can be taken to be mean and sarcastic right? Sorry I meant that it's rare and valuable and should be guarded and protected
Idiomatically, "precious" can mean valuable and treasured. Or it can be intoned snidely to suggest that something is overly contrived to be charming and delicate. I think your use of "precious"...
Idiomatically, "precious" can mean valuable and treasured. Or it can be intoned snidely to suggest that something is overly contrived to be charming and delicate. I think your use of "precious" was fine in context.
I would agree with you generally but it’s something that has to be done on a case-by-case basis. If a rural community is insular like the article mentioned they will have to either fix it...
I would agree with you generally but it’s something that has to be done on a case-by-case basis. If a rural community is insular like the article mentioned they will have to either fix it themselves or accept outside help.
But I also think it’s important to think of these places being communities and not economies. There is no such thing as an economy; it is neither people nor things. An economy doesn’t have a will nor anything resembling life, but a community does. A community can set a bar for what it considers to be successful, and more important to this topic is the creator and executor of its economy.
I understand. It took me a minute after reading your response to respond because I realized I had ended up in a very emotional place without realizing it. It’s hard to avoid going there.
I understand. It took me a minute after reading your response to respond because I realized I had ended up in a very emotional place without realizing it. It’s hard to avoid going there.
I'm curious to hear what you think the problem is. (not being sarcastic, just genuinely curious). I can think of several core problems (zealotry, religiosity, ignorance, purposeful propaganda),...
I am tired of having to tell people that the problems in this country are not being caused by a nebulous “right” or “left
I'm curious to hear what you think the problem is. (not being sarcastic, just genuinely curious). I can think of several core problems (zealotry, religiosity, ignorance, purposeful propaganda), but I just have a hard time "both sidesing" the extremist ideology from the right.
Power, I suppose, is the real problem. Those in power seek to increase power, whether that's power over the whole country to orchestrate wars to enrich themselves and their allies or power over...
Power, I suppose, is the real problem. Those in power seek to increase power, whether that's power over the whole country to orchestrate wars to enrich themselves and their allies or power over minorities who happen to be driving through town.
We can't say "it's all the right wing's fault" in America when the left still signs weapons deals with genocidal warlords. We then say "Well, left in America is right anywhere else!" which only serves to further the left vs right narrative, as if freed from the trappings of their rabid nationalist colleagues we'd be living in a utopia.
I believe that right wing people may have a good point or two buried in all the hate and misinformation. I'm not a paragon of virtue myself after all. There are no excuses for supporting the American right wing movement, don't get me wrong, they're definitely the worst of the evils. We're not immune to propaganda though.
I think the point is that painting one in five Americans as being full of hate is not only inaccurate, but does not help anyone including us liberal people.....and falls right into the rage...
I think the point is that painting one in five Americans as being full of hate is not only inaccurate, but does not help anyone including us liberal people.....and falls right into the rage peddler's propaganda.
There's definitely money being made by painting "those people" as being evil or akin to it because they're idiotic enough to be accessory to evil. On both sides: it's what I hear from the right wing extremist side about the left as well.
Liberals are losing voters, including young voters, because they're increasingly naked in their greedy partnership with the one percent and for profits and war, dismissing the economic struggles of the youth and our collective worries about the widening disparity accelerated by AI.
This narrative that "it's their fault" will be very convenient if they lose, or if they win by a slim margin: we don't have to improve or change anything, they're just evil and full of irrational hate. "They hate us cuz they ain't us".
What Biden said to the coal miners, just learn to code, is eventually what they're going to say to us: just learn to invest. Let them eat cake.
I hope we can all pay attention to the exact same propaganda being sold to both left and right. It's never been hateful bible thumping bigots vs depraved pedophiles. Don't believe either version.
I am in no means excusing that kind of ideology. I’m just trying to say that there is no one size fits all answer. Attempts to simplify things to make one is a major problem in and of itself which...
I am in no means excusing that kind of ideology. I’m just trying to say that there is no one size fits all answer. Attempts to simplify things to make one is a major problem in and of itself which compounds those problems. The public stage is an illusion that is shared among multitudes, but the more people who share in it the less real it is. There is just too much variance in the experiences and viewpoints of the people.
I think also that a lot of societal and personal problems come from ignoring small space environments (social, economic, educational, religious, etc. ). This has public effects, yes, but it also affects individuals, which is why we see endemic health crises, like mental health disorders, diabetes, and obesity. People like to see the big picture, and a number of small ones, but rarely the ones in between. But I may be going into too much of a tangent at this point.
Right. Would liberals like to be described as full of rage on th topic of rural Americans? Do liberals feel rage against the economically oppressed? They probably don't. They probably feel that...
it’s an outpouring of frustration with rural America that might feel cathartic for liberals, but will only serve to further marginalize and demonize a segment of the American population that already feels forgotten and dismissed by the experts and elites.
Right. Would liberals like to be described as full of rage on th topic of rural Americans? Do liberals feel rage against the economically oppressed? They probably don't. They probably feel that "frustration" is more accurate. The article author argues that his research on rural frustrations are being misused to prove there is rural rage, and that that is dangerous for all of us, even outside of America.
rage and resentment are not interchangeable terms. Rage implies irrationality, anger that is unjustified and out of proportion. You can’t talk to someone who is enraged. Resentment is rational, a reaction based on some sort of negative experience. You may not agree that someone has been treated unfairly, but there is room to empathize.
I believe the entire point of the article isn't to put forward a new model of democracy or trying to solve poverty or to make sure Trump doesn't get elected: it's simply a book tear down of these "rage peddlers": you will hear this book being talked about in liberal circles -- don't buy into it, it's full of bad science and bad journalism.
The second half is well worth reading on its own even if you have no interest in the rage peddler's book, starting with "Here’s some of what the research, properly understood, does tell us about rural America."
My research suggests that their perceived resistance to certain policies, and especially a political party that advocates for a multitude of governmental correctives, is a complex reaction stemming from years of economic transition, dislocation and yes, harm from policies they were told would help.
The next segment is a warning to Rage Buy-Inners, that buying in to this myth is going to cost them the election, and the one after that. "Broadband and bridges matter": the liberals are already doing more for rural Americans in terms of policies, but they need to actually campaign effectively in rural places and take credit for these policies and engage with the rural population on the ground.
I suspect that is exactly where liberals falter: the spend and spend and spend and think that rural voters now owe them their allegiance. People know when they're being looked down upon. People know they are being talked about as a basket of deplorables, as racist rage filled idiots and superstitious morons, just flyover states with nothing to show and no worthwhile contribution to the economic gods, cheap land not even good enough to invest in or else next target for gentrification to turn finally respectable.
This is why people dont want to vote for liberals: think about the Hilary brand of smugness: how many of us were holding our noses in resignation instead of actually energized by having her as a leader?
The liberals are going to lose because Americans can smell the stench of smug bullshit. They're asking voters to choose between smug rich crypt keeper or loud mouth selfish asshole: the most popular option gets elected time and time and time again: Neither by staying home.
America will lose democracy to militant / religious / extremist / non-democratic take over unless it starts putting forward candidates who actually love human beings and love even rural American deplorables. It's both telling and heart breaking that the liberal elites continue to sideline Bernie Sanders in favor of one of their own.
The author actually gives a clear prescription for what a successful liberal candidate needs to do. My favorite among the many examples:
It would speak directly to the challenge posed by artificial intelligence and technological progress that, once again, will likely concentrate benefits among those who have already benefited and leave rural communities behind. It will see the moral costs as well as the economic costs of those developments — the end to heritage industries, the pollution of the land, the erasure of rural dignity — and recognize how demoralizing it is to be told that they should just learn to code “ for God’s sake.”
Speaking as a rural American, I can say this: Anyone running in primaries for both parties that I actually liked has never once in my entire life come out the frontrunner in any election. I look...
Speaking as a rural American, I can say this: Anyone running in primaries for both parties that I actually liked has never once in my entire life come out the frontrunner in any election. I look at the primary process as a method of screening out the kind of people you talk about, not as a process of finding the best candidates. I see no purpose in following or participating in it anymore. The game is rigged to select the insiders and only the insiders from the get go, especially at the presidential level. They are a poisonous joke that is never to be trusted or believed. They'll get no money, or even words from me ever again. If it were up to me I'd delete the entire concept of a 'party' from the system in favor of voting for individuals, rather than Amway with a track team.
I'll just sit here and worry exclusively about myself, because that is all our government allows us to do and all I have the time to do thanks to them. Once an actual third party rises up I'll vote them in by default out of pure spite without a thought for policy, just to punish and harm the other two for their decades of idiotic failures and bald-faced lies. I feel like I owe them that much - to do the little I can to help them both become minority parties, or better yet, no party at all. The Red vs Blue crap is not a democracy. It's a farce any child can see straight through.
I couldn't even care less why it's like this, that's how far past apathy I am on politics now.
Speaking as a "rootless cosmopolitan" born in and voluntarily returned to rural America, this article nibbles at the problem of media representation. When everyone's images of rural people come...
Speaking as a "rootless cosmopolitan" born in and voluntarily returned to rural America, this article nibbles at the problem of media representation. When everyone's images of rural people come from a small (and growing smaller) number of channels, of course gross generalizations and policy errors will prevail.
The people I know and have met are struggling because the small industries in their towns have been destroyed by high-capital automation and unfair free trade. Their farms are barely viable, likewise due to competition from consolidated industrial monocrop agriculture and unfair imports. [When I say "unfair", I mean imports from countries with race-to-the-bottom near-slavery labor conditions, lack of pollution controls, and undisclosed export subsidies.]
Rural hospitals have unsupportable costs because Medicare/Medicaid reimbursements alone aren't sufficient to support the infrastructure and labor costs of modern medicine. They're being bought up and exploited by "non-profit" corporations that understaff and close facilities to support bloated administrative salaries. Specialists won't settle in rural communities that don't provide lifestyle amenities or a big enough patient population to pay off school loans.
Rural communities generally don't have the density to allow public mass transit. They don't have the median income level, environmental conditions, or power grids to allow wholesale replacement of ICE vehicles with EVs.
Rural schools lack the per-student funding sources from property taxes to provide enough highly skilled teachers, STEM facilities, and bus drivers. Consolidated schools often mean an hour or more a day of travel time for students. University education for kids automatically entails multi-hour distance from family, and most of those kids won't return because they can't pay off loans with rural pay scales.
Both U.S. political parties gave in to the blind forces of market liberalism without any attention to those left behind. As the article suggests, deindustrialization affected urban and rural workers alike, without adequate economic support. And the conservatism of family ties, rootedness to place, land as livelihood (including all the fish and game), religion-as-community, and self-reliance resonates hard with country voters.
I'm involved with the local county Democrats, and their economic concerns are largely indistinguishable from the concerns I've heard from Trump Republicans. But rural Democrats haven't lost faith that policy and governance matter, and Republicans have.
I was one of the classmates of the students who left town to study at uni. I gained a hugely negative view of rural Americans from listening to the stories my friends would tell of their...
University education for kids automatically entails multi-hour distance from family, and most of those kids won't return because they can't pay off loans with rural pay scales.
I was one of the classmates of the students who left town to study at uni. I gained a hugely negative view of rural Americans from listening to the stories my friends would tell of their hometowns. While there are those who would like to return but don't due to subpar pay, there's also a large contingent whose attitude is "so long, losers!" on their way out.
Medicare/Medicaid reimbursements alone aren't sufficient to support the infrastructure and labor costs of modern medicine
Is this a case of payments not keeping pace with inflation or that they have kept up with inflation but lag the increase in medical costs, which outpace inflation?
I'm not going to deny that most of the kids leaving rural villages and towns for college are fleeing without looking back. These communities can be dull, parochial, conformist, and...
I'm not going to deny that most of the kids leaving rural villages and towns for college are fleeing without looking back. These communities can be dull, parochial, conformist, and backwards-looking, and that's not counting the ones with toxic religiosity. It can be beyond awful if you're freethinking, let alone LGBTQ+ (extreme downer warning). But some of us did have loving families, close friendships, and feeling for the land and environment that draw us back. I love visiting cities, but the constant noise, crowding, traffic, and pollution are unliveable for me.
The rural hospital cost situation is complicated. The biggest problem is general poverty and aging populations. The share of private pay patients is too low to make up for inadequate public reimbursements (50 - 80% of actual costs, depending on service) and uninsured patients. I'm not a medical finance expert, but my understanding from speaking with finance people is that you need a minimum of 60% private pay patients to break even. The same issue can affect urban hospitals, depending on their catchment areas.
I can't say how much of the current public payment differential is due to inflation, inefficiencies of scale (larger healthcare systems have more negotiating power over drug and supply costs, and higher patient volume), administrative bloat, or other factors. I do know that rural hospitals have a problem with transferring convalescent patients out of expensive, but poorly reimbursed hospital beds due to a shortage of nursing care facility beds.
Rural hospitals also have higher costs due to longer supply chains, location premiums paid for physicians, nursing, and ancillary staff (travel nurses, medical technicians, IT professionals or contractors, etc.), and long distance ambulance and air transport services.
The general feel of the article reminds me of the You made me a Nazi! cartoon and this clip from Blazing Saddles. I've also noticed this bit (emphasis mine) But the author links to another article...
The general feel of the article reminds me of the You made me a Nazi! cartoon and this clip from Blazing Saddles.
I've also noticed this bit (emphasis mine)
On specific issues, this politics would acknowledge that rural and nonrural Trump voters see issues through different lenses, even if, come Election Day, they are voting the same way; you have to talk to them differently. On immigration, it would mean accepting the fact that, in some communities, particularly those with financial challenges, concerns about the social burden of immigration is not always an expression of hate.
But the author links to another article to support this claim. Guess I have to quote that, too.
Schaller and Waldman note, for example, that rural whites are more likely than urban and suburban Americans to see immigrants as a “burden on our country”. Yet the authors never consider if these respondents might have facts in their favour. According to the latest Survey of Income and Program Participation by the US Census, more than half of immigrant-headed households use at least one public welfare programme, compared with 39 per cent for native-born households. It is true that immigrants fare somewhat better when scholars study individual, rather than household, welfare use. But the point is that fears over immigration’s social burdens are neither obviously wrong nor necessarily hateful.
So the authors says that those not-college-educated people-of-the land folksy folks who vote Trump because the intellectuals are being mean to them, suddenly their concern about non-white people are based on statistics. It's just science, and not racist at all. And therefore (this is what the author is hinting) we should do something against the immigrants to win the folksy folks over.
The majority of Danish political parties have gone this route, trying to cater to the voters concern about non-white people. And sure, it may win some voters over, but I think that the right are simply better at being racist.
(Of course, the author doesn't actuallly say we should do something against the immigrants, he just say that the rural peoples concern about non-white people are not really racist and we should "accepting the fact" ... so he's not saying it, but he's also not not saying it. I know it is a very short paragraph I'm replying to, but the idea of trying to appeal to a target groups concern about non-white people, without mentioning how, exactly, we should do that, to me it sounds like he's being intentially vague.)
We have a major problem with non-Western immigration from certain countries. Acknowledging the irrefutable facts isn't racist, and characterising those who do so is exactly why voting patterns...
The majority of Danish political parties have gone this route, trying to cater to the voters concern about non-white people. And sure, it may win some voters over, but I think that the right are simply better at being racist.
We have a major problem with non-Western immigration from certain countries. Acknowledging the irrefutable facts isn't racist, and characterising those who do so is exactly why voting patterns shifted. Sweden did the same to an even more egregious degree and their left wing party, which enjoyed rule for the greater part of a century, was recently voted out. There is room for reasonable discussion about immigration without castigating each other.
(It's hard for me to post things because I always feel like I'm not explaining things well enough, and open myself up to hostility. So this is very hard to write. Please be kind.)
Just yesterday I watched a documentary called Hillbilly, which focuses on the struggles of Appalachia, with a focus on media representation. I currently live in Appalachia. It gives you a certain perspective on the feelings and struggles of people who have voted for Trump, who are generally "Republican". And I put that in quotes because if you get down to it, if you talk to people from around here, most have a strong foundational sense on class division. The Republican party has done an excellent job love-bombing these people and then exploiting them. The Democratic party has done an excellent job deriding these people, furthering stereotypes that they live and die by.
If you talk to people from around here, you start understanding that they constantly fight against shame. People from outside this area swing back and forth between pity and hate for the region. The dominant story is of poor and simple folk. My friends around here try so hard to hide their accents, because the moment they talk to anyone outside the region, they're met with condescension. Maybe, if you work hard and do well in school, you can get out. Parents and teachers will tell this to kids. This place is drowning in shame.
So when someone like Trump or a right-wing talking head goes on about how these people are actually great, how they built America, how they've been stomped on by everyone else, they are speaking to the self-loathing that a lot of them have. They are telling them things that people rarely tell them, especially not themselves.
The region has such a rich and important history. The coal miner unions are responsible for many of the labor rights we enjoy today, and they went to war for them. And yet, the mountains have been carved out by coal companies, whose riches have never went to the people who worked and died for them. Towns have been decimated by floods, waters have been poisoned... It makes sense why people here are distrustful of a government that has largely ignored them. It is not hard to see why these people largely voted "against their best interests".
I don't really know how to wrap up my thoughts here. But, personally, I've long been tired of the way Appalachia is talked about. I just wish people's reaction to red states be more nuanced. Instead of labeling everyone from around here as "undesirables", I wish people took the time to listen, and empathize. Just a little. People are people. I don't think writing off entire regions based on an election is in any way right or deserved.
Thank you.
Have you read Dignity by Chris Arnade?
This is exactly the perspective I want to highlight.
I have not, but now I have it added to my reading list. This looks like the kind of thing I'd love to look more into. Thanks!
For the record, I'm not originally from here. I came from a place that looks down on places like this, so when I moved, it was a bit of a culture shock. The area is complicated, but I've developed a love for the nature and many of the people. It's really the most misunderstood region in America by far (in my opinion).
I have a sort of similar experience, coming from Have It All cities of Vancouver and Toronto, to rural ex-fishing community in "nowhere" Atlantic Canada (as described by my city friends). My neighbours are the types we used to make fun of, to wring our hands about and sigh "why can't they just go to university and learn to code" about. They're painted as welfare queens, as backwards looking boozers and lazy layabouts. Our oceans are fished clean and not a single cent stayed in this community: their lives have been hollowed out through generations of lies, abuse and exploitation the way your coal mines and our oceans have been.
I do believe those of us in the cities are going to see a version of this, very soon if not already. The ultra wealthy have started to generationally hold down and extract and hollow out our youth and indenture their salaries while slashing education health care and economic mobilities at the same time.
I hope city folks can empathize with rural folks a little - what you see happening to our youth due to globalization and AI revolution, and taken to its conclusion several hundred years down the line.
Ain't that always the way. I think every place has that one region (or several) that you can look at and mock and feel superior towards. The stereotypes might not be exactly the same, but they certainly rhyme.
A lot of what I'm seeing now is richer folk moving in because living is cheap. Prices are rising even more, and no one can afford it. Cash advances are on every corner. And these are the same people who mock the local culture relentlessly. The whole thing is... it leaves a sour taste. I wonder how much of the local culture will even be left years down the line.
This is sort of why, while I'm not necessarily for the U.S. electoral college, I understand why many want it. Land shouldn't vote, sure, but when the majority of the population is in the city and pass laws, will they think about how it might affect rural folk? When the people who decide the election are only city folk, will politicians even campaign here?
I'm hopeful that more lines of communication between these people will open up. I hope for a culture of stronger empathy and solidarity. And I hope people stop making fun of accents for once (it's not funny y'all).
Maybe that's one of the blessings behind the youngish flight back into rural places, displaced by housing unaffordability: it gives some city people like me new insight into these have not communities, and more lines of communication open up like you said.
I grew up with a minority accent, was made fun of for not speaking English in elementary school. And then my group inadvertently became the culturally dominant group in our high school: I've been on both sides and I wasn't particularly virtuous in either cases....but as an older adult now I really appreciate those experiences.
Additionally, I've always been highly partial to "y'all" as an efficient, gender neutral second personal plural pronoun and I hope it becomes standardized.
Here's the thing: It's not the whole picture, and it doesn't absolve the Democrat's failings to meet the needs of rural America.
But I grew up there. In the 90's, it was still considered reasonable to be hosting a KKK rally. I learned a wide variety of racist slurs that I'm thankful to have never heard again since leaving.
Virtually all economic downturns are blamed on Democrats even if it was Republican doing (see Obama being handed Bush's economy). This is paired with 'damn immigrants taking our jobs.' Rinse/repeat for Jews and Muslims. I've seen black men being harassed for committing the crime of 'walking down the sidewalk in a white area of town'.
And there's a lot more rural Americans posting with flags, bibles, and guns talking about needing to win 'the culture war.'
The religious lot, which are dominant, generally do not take kindly to atheists and LGBT folks.
That's not to say everyone in rural areas is like this, but in terms of 'dominant voter base,' it's 100% true.
Some of it is just the legacy worshipping of Reagan, which is pretty analogous to what Trump is. Just Trump is the post-Reagan, post-Gingrich, post-Bush2 Reagan.
Frankly, the Democrats would do well to just shut up about guns at the national level. It's too divisive of an issue, and plenty more good could be done by addressing things like accessible mental healthcare and support networks instead. They would win over a lot of single-issue voters with a lack of fuel for the 'taking your guns' rhetoric.
Hell, have them start talking about dismantling the ATF and all of a sudden rural Americans will start comprehending 'defund the police.'
Oh~ what is the American ATF (google: "Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives"?) And how does it relate to the defund the police?
It's sad though, because when half of the country doesn't vote, it implies for every loudmouth supporter of either side, there's at least two quietly muttering non support and just not voting at all for either one.
I agree with you that the blame is placed on liberals regardless of what happens. The article also argues that there's a lack of good campaign being run by the liberals in rural states: they seem to just fly over them and choose to believe it's enough to get the urban centers to vote for them, and ignore the lost cause anyway. It's not just the bad media landscape -- if TV that reaches rural Americans is bad, then show up in person and shake their hands and give them hugs and kiss their babies. The article names three liberal candidates who are very successful in rural America because of the on the ground campaigns they're running. For all the evils of the Republican party, their on the ground reach as well as mobilization of local churches (shudder) to campaign for them has been highly successful. When will the liberals also deign to pretend to care about lowly rural voters as individuals instead of nameless conglomerate statistical "welfare recipient"?
Oh yes, I suppose a bit of additional explaination is required. They were formed during the Prohibition era to crack down on bootleggers, so they serve as another enforcer for the war on drugs. As well as cracking down on gun laws, however, a lot of their principles are useless beuracracy. Here's a good starting point. I will warn you that going too deep down the rabbithole will expose you to some serious right-wing nastiness, in part because of what I was saying above. But if you want to get 'the right' to grasp 'defund the police', the ATF will give better context than most policing organizations.
J.D. Tuccille discussing some of the many failures of the ATF.
I feel very frustrated by this article.
The author is correct in saying that the people talking about rural rage are committing a category error. But that is par for the course. The author themself is committing a category error because the studies he talks about are category errors in and of themselves; they take disparate groups of people and attempt to make them the same through use of statistics.
I am tired of having to tell people that the problems in this country are not being caused by a nebulous “right” or “left”. Frankly I think people who bring that kind of narrative to a mass audience need to fuck off. No matter how well meaning they are, they are doing damage. They are sewing division and making things worse for everyone because we are being armed with these category errors which shield us from the incredibly basic responsibility of seeing people as people. About a week ago I broke a rule and responded to a comment by someone on Reddit and had a brief conversation with someone who absolutely could not break things down to anything less general than leftists and rightists, so in the end we couldn’t really communicate. That is the kind of mentality that these things cultivate, and it is evil.
I kind of wonder what the point of the article was after reading it because I still don’t exactly know what the author expects us to do with the problem of rural communities embracing fascist or racist politicians like Trump. I would agree with him that in general rural people have resentment rather than rage. But what is the point of realizing that if it doesn’t lead to solutions? They talk about the insularity of those communities; if they are unwilling to listen to outside voices, what are we to do? They say that they have no answers at the end other than trying to get us to understand eachother but that is only after including parts about how rural communities are a drain on the economy, are in the process of a slow self-destruction which will doubtlessly hurt the rest of the population, and are unwilling to listen to reason if it comes from outsiders. It sews the division it says we should remove!
I know this a simple typo, but like so many things in life, the best come by serendipity.
As such, I have made it today a life goal to sew division as an antidote to those who sow division.
It’s apropos this discussion, too, because it evokes a kind of rural adaptibility that’s in line with progressive ideal, mending instead of replacing.
Personally, I believe rural economies can and should be rescued. It would require policy against retail monopolies, in favor of smaller local industry, in favor of smaller farms. It would be simpler than rewriting the constitution to undo the electoral college.
For all the cost reductions of the Walmartification of the USA, it came at tremendous cost, even in urban communities.
It'd be well worth considering shattering the megacorp retail (including restraunts) to more regional estabilshments. Personally, especially for food, I've noticed quality drops when there's more than 6 or so locations.
Specialist retailers.....
Oh man, I miss them so much.
I remember browsing tiny stores in HK: it used to be that independent shop keeps would fly to (say) Japan and personally buy a few suitcases of cute things or trendy things and then come back to sell them. We might be a season or two behind, but because goods are personally selected and meant to be sold quickly, they're very high quality and extremely eclectic. Two independent shop keeps going to Japan would bring back two very different sets of goods. That was for many many many types: fashion, accessories, model kits, stationary, crafts, games.... Trinkets galour. HK was also manufacturing a ton of different things for export at the time, which means a lot of these tiny shop keeps would know a guy who knows a guy, and happen upon batch of first run or demo or B quality goods meant for export, now available locally for pennies on the dollar.
Now we have anchor stores selling the exact same T Shirt across the whole continent. We have way too many XXXXL shirts in a demographic where people are tiny. Or the reverse. Or niche ethnic fruits shipped all the way to where I am on the Atlantic coast well past their prime dates.
I miss browsing an entire mall of tiny stores all selling the same "type" of thing but every store has something different to sell. Like, a mall full of bootleg movies and games, mall full of toys, mall full of model kits, mall full of hair clips and accessories....etc.... fabric street, bird street, fish street, button street, hand tool street, cookware steet and surely so many others I never even knew about.
Even in North America, stores like my local imperial hobbies are clearly on the decline, going from a place we can browse for hours to a place we call to place an order for pick up, if that. It's very sad....
One of the things that delights me about living in a small town in a place with long winters is that there are still some independent shops. They're struggling along, but there are three comics and gaming stores, a couple of excellent independent bookstores, multiple knitting and sewing suppliers, a model train and aircraft store, auto parts for the serious DIY or antique restorer, and several delightfully eclectic hardware/farm supply places. Yes, there are big box stores, but they haven't completely starved the diversity of the retail ecosystem.
That sounds
preciouswonderful :) I hope smaller towns like that survive and even better, make a come backEdit: btw in English these days calling something precious can be taken to be mean and sarcastic right? Sorry I meant that it's rare and valuable and should be guarded and protected
Idiomatically, "precious" can mean valuable and treasured. Or it can be intoned snidely to suggest that something is overly contrived to be charming and delicate. I think your use of "precious" was fine in context.
I would agree with you generally but it’s something that has to be done on a case-by-case basis. If a rural community is insular like the article mentioned they will have to either fix it themselves or accept outside help.
But I also think it’s important to think of these places being communities and not economies. There is no such thing as an economy; it is neither people nor things. An economy doesn’t have a will nor anything resembling life, but a community does. A community can set a bar for what it considers to be successful, and more important to this topic is the creator and executor of its economy.
I need to step back for now. Thanks for the feedback.
I understand. It took me a minute after reading your response to respond because I realized I had ended up in a very emotional place without realizing it. It’s hard to avoid going there.
I'm curious to hear what you think the problem is. (not being sarcastic, just genuinely curious). I can think of several core problems (zealotry, religiosity, ignorance, purposeful propaganda), but I just have a hard time "both sidesing" the extremist ideology from the right.
Power, I suppose, is the real problem. Those in power seek to increase power, whether that's power over the whole country to orchestrate wars to enrich themselves and their allies or power over minorities who happen to be driving through town.
We can't say "it's all the right wing's fault" in America when the left still signs weapons deals with genocidal warlords. We then say "Well, left in America is right anywhere else!" which only serves to further the left vs right narrative, as if freed from the trappings of their rabid nationalist colleagues we'd be living in a utopia.
I believe that right wing people may have a good point or two buried in all the hate and misinformation. I'm not a paragon of virtue myself after all. There are no excuses for supporting the American right wing movement, don't get me wrong, they're definitely the worst of the evils. We're not immune to propaganda though.
I think the point is that painting one in five Americans as being full of hate is not only inaccurate, but does not help anyone including us liberal people.....and falls right into the rage peddler's propaganda.
There's definitely money being made by painting "those people" as being evil or akin to it because they're idiotic enough to be accessory to evil. On both sides: it's what I hear from the right wing extremist side about the left as well.
Liberals are losing voters, including young voters, because they're increasingly naked in their greedy partnership with the one percent and for profits and war, dismissing the economic struggles of the youth and our collective worries about the widening disparity accelerated by AI.
This narrative that "it's their fault" will be very convenient if they lose, or if they win by a slim margin: we don't have to improve or change anything, they're just evil and full of irrational hate. "They hate us cuz they ain't us".
What Biden said to the coal miners, just learn to code, is eventually what they're going to say to us: just learn to invest. Let them eat cake.
I hope we can all pay attention to the exact same propaganda being sold to both left and right. It's never been hateful bible thumping bigots vs depraved pedophiles. Don't believe either version.
I am in no means excusing that kind of ideology. I’m just trying to say that there is no one size fits all answer. Attempts to simplify things to make one is a major problem in and of itself which compounds those problems. The public stage is an illusion that is shared among multitudes, but the more people who share in it the less real it is. There is just too much variance in the experiences and viewpoints of the people.
I think also that a lot of societal and personal problems come from ignoring small space environments (social, economic, educational, religious, etc. ). This has public effects, yes, but it also affects individuals, which is why we see endemic health crises, like mental health disorders, diabetes, and obesity. People like to see the big picture, and a number of small ones, but rarely the ones in between. But I may be going into too much of a tangent at this point.
Right. Would liberals like to be described as full of rage on th topic of rural Americans? Do liberals feel rage against the economically oppressed? They probably don't. They probably feel that "frustration" is more accurate. The article author argues that his research on rural frustrations are being misused to prove there is rural rage, and that that is dangerous for all of us, even outside of America.
I believe the entire point of the article isn't to put forward a new model of democracy or trying to solve poverty or to make sure Trump doesn't get elected: it's simply a book tear down of these "rage peddlers": you will hear this book being talked about in liberal circles -- don't buy into it, it's full of bad science and bad journalism.
The second half is well worth reading on its own even if you have no interest in the rage peddler's book, starting with "Here’s some of what the research, properly understood, does tell us about rural America."
The next segment is a warning to Rage Buy-Inners, that buying in to this myth is going to cost them the election, and the one after that. "Broadband and bridges matter": the liberals are already doing more for rural Americans in terms of policies, but they need to actually campaign effectively in rural places and take credit for these policies and engage with the rural population on the ground.
I suspect that is exactly where liberals falter: the spend and spend and spend and think that rural voters now owe them their allegiance. People know when they're being looked down upon. People know they are being talked about as a basket of deplorables, as racist rage filled idiots and superstitious morons, just flyover states with nothing to show and no worthwhile contribution to the economic gods, cheap land not even good enough to invest in or else next target for gentrification to turn finally respectable.
This is why people dont want to vote for liberals: think about the Hilary brand of smugness: how many of us were holding our noses in resignation instead of actually energized by having her as a leader?
The liberals are going to lose because Americans can smell the stench of smug bullshit. They're asking voters to choose between smug rich crypt keeper or loud mouth selfish asshole: the most popular option gets elected time and time and time again: Neither by staying home.
America will lose democracy to militant / religious / extremist / non-democratic take over unless it starts putting forward candidates who actually love human beings and love even rural American deplorables. It's both telling and heart breaking that the liberal elites continue to sideline Bernie Sanders in favor of one of their own.
The author actually gives a clear prescription for what a successful liberal candidate needs to do. My favorite among the many examples:
Speaking as a rural American, I can say this: Anyone running in primaries for both parties that I actually liked has never once in my entire life come out the frontrunner in any election. I look at the primary process as a method of screening out the kind of people you talk about, not as a process of finding the best candidates. I see no purpose in following or participating in it anymore. The game is rigged to select the insiders and only the insiders from the get go, especially at the presidential level. They are a poisonous joke that is never to be trusted or believed. They'll get no money, or even words from me ever again. If it were up to me I'd delete the entire concept of a 'party' from the system in favor of voting for individuals, rather than Amway with a track team.
I'll just sit here and worry exclusively about myself, because that is all our government allows us to do and all I have the time to do thanks to them. Once an actual third party rises up I'll vote them in by default out of pure spite without a thought for policy, just to punish and harm the other two for their decades of idiotic failures and bald-faced lies. I feel like I owe them that much - to do the little I can to help them both become minority parties, or better yet, no party at all. The Red vs Blue crap is not a democracy. It's a farce any child can see straight through.
I couldn't even care less why it's like this, that's how far past apathy I am on politics now.
Speaking as a "rootless cosmopolitan" born in and voluntarily returned to rural America, this article nibbles at the problem of media representation. When everyone's images of rural people come from a small (and growing smaller) number of channels, of course gross generalizations and policy errors will prevail.
The people I know and have met are struggling because the small industries in their towns have been destroyed by high-capital automation and unfair free trade. Their farms are barely viable, likewise due to competition from consolidated industrial monocrop agriculture and unfair imports. [When I say "unfair", I mean imports from countries with race-to-the-bottom near-slavery labor conditions, lack of pollution controls, and undisclosed export subsidies.]
Rural hospitals have unsupportable costs because Medicare/Medicaid reimbursements alone aren't sufficient to support the infrastructure and labor costs of modern medicine. They're being bought up and exploited by "non-profit" corporations that understaff and close facilities to support bloated administrative salaries. Specialists won't settle in rural communities that don't provide lifestyle amenities or a big enough patient population to pay off school loans.
Rural communities generally don't have the density to allow public mass transit. They don't have the median income level, environmental conditions, or power grids to allow wholesale replacement of ICE vehicles with EVs.
Rural schools lack the per-student funding sources from property taxes to provide enough highly skilled teachers, STEM facilities, and bus drivers. Consolidated schools often mean an hour or more a day of travel time for students. University education for kids automatically entails multi-hour distance from family, and most of those kids won't return because they can't pay off loans with rural pay scales.
Both U.S. political parties gave in to the blind forces of market liberalism without any attention to those left behind. As the article suggests, deindustrialization affected urban and rural workers alike, without adequate economic support. And the conservatism of family ties, rootedness to place, land as livelihood (including all the fish and game), religion-as-community, and self-reliance resonates hard with country voters.
I'm involved with the local county Democrats, and their economic concerns are largely indistinguishable from the concerns I've heard from Trump Republicans. But rural Democrats haven't lost faith that policy and governance matter, and Republicans have.
I was one of the classmates of the students who left town to study at uni. I gained a hugely negative view of rural Americans from listening to the stories my friends would tell of their hometowns. While there are those who would like to return but don't due to subpar pay, there's also a large contingent whose attitude is "so long, losers!" on their way out.
Is this a case of payments not keeping pace with inflation or that they have kept up with inflation but lag the increase in medical costs, which outpace inflation?
I'm not going to deny that most of the kids leaving rural villages and towns for college are fleeing without looking back. These communities can be dull, parochial, conformist, and backwards-looking, and that's not counting the ones with toxic religiosity. It can be beyond awful if you're freethinking, let alone LGBTQ+ (extreme downer warning). But some of us did have loving families, close friendships, and feeling for the land and environment that draw us back. I love visiting cities, but the constant noise, crowding, traffic, and pollution are unliveable for me.
The rural hospital cost situation is complicated. The biggest problem is general poverty and aging populations. The share of private pay patients is too low to make up for inadequate public reimbursements (50 - 80% of actual costs, depending on service) and uninsured patients. I'm not a medical finance expert, but my understanding from speaking with finance people is that you need a minimum of 60% private pay patients to break even. The same issue can affect urban hospitals, depending on their catchment areas.
I can't say how much of the current public payment differential is due to inflation, inefficiencies of scale (larger healthcare systems have more negotiating power over drug and supply costs, and higher patient volume), administrative bloat, or other factors. I do know that rural hospitals have a problem with transferring convalescent patients out of expensive, but poorly reimbursed hospital beds due to a shortage of nursing care facility beds.
Rural hospitals also have higher costs due to longer supply chains, location premiums paid for physicians, nursing, and ancillary staff (travel nurses, medical technicians, IT professionals or contractors, etc.), and long distance ambulance and air transport services.
The general feel of the article reminds me of the You made me a Nazi! cartoon and this clip from Blazing Saddles.
I've also noticed this bit (emphasis mine)
But the author links to another article to support this claim. Guess I have to quote that, too.
So the authors says that those not-college-educated people-of-the land folksy folks who vote Trump because the intellectuals are being mean to them, suddenly their concern about non-white people are based on statistics. It's just science, and not racist at all. And therefore (this is what the author is hinting) we should do something against the immigrants to win the folksy folks over.
The majority of Danish political parties have gone this route, trying to cater to the voters concern about non-white people. And sure, it may win some voters over, but I think that the right are simply better at being racist.
(Of course, the author doesn't actuallly say we should do something against the immigrants, he just say that the rural peoples concern about non-white people are not really racist and we should "accepting the fact" ... so he's not saying it, but he's also not not saying it. I know it is a very short paragraph I'm replying to, but the idea of trying to appeal to a target groups concern about non-white people, without mentioning how, exactly, we should do that, to me it sounds like he's being intentially vague.)
We have a major problem with non-Western immigration from certain countries. Acknowledging the irrefutable facts isn't racist, and characterising those who do so is exactly why voting patterns shifted. Sweden did the same to an even more egregious degree and their left wing party, which enjoyed rule for the greater part of a century, was recently voted out. There is room for reasonable discussion about immigration without castigating each other.