Many of these articles point to the a white working class populace unsettled over demographic changes (read: an increasing non-white immigrant population).
Wasn't there such unease even when immigration was almost entirely "white"? The Irish weren't white for a while, neither were the swarthy italians, poles, jews etc.
How is it different this time around?
Why rural Americans are so pissed off
21–30 of 48 posts
Re: Why rural Americans are so pissed off
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
The examples you list in your second paragraph start with real problems that rural people experience for themselves and then move towards what are essentially conspiracy theories about national politics. There's a break with reality somewhere in there, and it's causing huge problems for them and for everyone who shares the country with them.
Completely agree, and I think the answer is desperation . Their upbringing is their own downfall. I'll throw my own (rural born and raised baby-boomer) mother under the bus here - she will rant and rave about the "immigrants on welfare" and exclaim "they better not take away my social security!" in the same sentence, not understanding that both are fundamentally socialist entitlement programs. I saw someone else in a…
>> mother under the bus here - she will rant and rave about the "immigrants on welfare" and exclaim "they better not take away my social security!" Meanwhile, back at the ranch... Either she or her significant other likely paid 7-10% of their income into social security and medicare...
Re: Why rural Americans are so pissed off
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
How can a small town become more entrepeneurial, competitively against a city, or without becoming a city? The past 300 years shows that rural is simply not economically highly-productive.
Tell that to the food you eat. Rural is where every ounce of food comes from. There have been huge efficiencies in farming over the past 100 years that have fed the growth of cities. But we should never forget that without rural areas, cities would quickly crumble. The reverse is not true.
In the future food will be grown closer to the city in verticle farms. When that happens what will these folks do?
Re: Why rural Americans are so pissed off
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Completely agree, and I think the answer is desperation . Their upbringing is their own downfall. I'll throw my own (rural born and raised baby-boomer) mother under the bus here - she will rant and rave about the "immigrants on welfare" and exclaim "they better not take away my social security!" in the same sentence, not understanding that both are fundamentally socialist entitlement programs. I saw someone else in a…
>> mother under the bus here - she will rant and rave about the "immigrants on welfare" and exclaim "they better not take away my social security!" Meanwhile, back at the ranch... Either she or her significant other likely paid 7-10% of their income into social security and medicare...
Sure -- but plenty of people also paid their taxes and at then at some point in life found themselves in a disadvantaged position where they needed some kind of social assistance. I think you are absolutely spot on though with your implication that many in rural America (and probably urban too...) view many things through the lens of fairness and hard work.
Re: Why rural Americans are so pissed off
#25My politics are on the left wing of the political spectrum, but as I sit here in my home in rural America (pop 30,000, farm based economy, nearest city of 250,000, 1 hour drive away) it would seem to me that people are mad because: -There are very few high paying jobs -There is limited access to medical care -Local government ineptitude has a very real daily impact -Small tax base means surprisingly high taxes, but r…
How can a small town become more entrepeneurial, competitively against a city, or without becoming a city? The past 300 years shows that rural is simply not economically highly-productive.
I'm not sure I completely agree. There are economic advantages to being in a city. Lots of friction is reduced when you have easy access to resources, like talented personnel and capital. That said - on a place like Hacker News we talk openly about being able to work from Chiang May (for example) but we don't point out that it would be just as easy to work from somewhere in rural America. If you can build a software company in Portland or Seattle, what's actually stopping you from doing the same in Kansas or Iowa?
Re: Why rural Americans are so pissed off
#26tl;dr; - As a former rural American now living in Chicago I rant about a couple of reasons I think the author being interviewed is wrong.
I think this interview, and inferring from the interview, the book in question have largely glossed over a number of issues, these are just to name a few:
1. Not all rural people are ultra-conservative bible-thumping hicks. Sure, some are, but they're usually a highly vocal minority. Most rural folk just want to be left alone to go about their day. I grew up in rural Montana and now live in Chicago, and I'm an atheist, fiscally conservative, social libertarian (I don't care what you do in your personal life as long as it's between consenting adults and it doesn't infringe on my rights). I'd go back in a heartbeat if I could make a decent living there and if not having step-kids and joint-custody in Chicago.
2. Rural people tend to be largely self-sufficient and transitively, largely independent. They don't dependent on the government for day-to-day things. Sure, they may depend upon the government for roads, but truly rural (and I'm sorry, a town of 25,000 is not rural - that's a regional city) don't depend on government for water or sewer. They'll have either their own or a community well and septic systems. Police & Fire services? You're probably fucked if you need them. Response times may be an hour or more. Same for EMT services. Hell, depending on the time of year, emergency services may not be able to get to your home - you may have to meet them part way. I've certainly seen that first hand growing up - an elderly neighbor had to get her husband, who was suffering a heart attack, into their SUV and meet the ambulance at the nearest paved road as it couldn't get to their house.
3. Rural people perceive urban areas as getting preferential treatment for government services, especially for natural disasters and infrastructure improvement. Yeah, a bridge in say the Twin Cities of Minneapolis (and this is not even local) might only serve a portion of only 3.3M local residents, but when that fails, a lot of cross country trucking routes fail, need to be rerouted. But, what about a closure of I-90 between Spokane, WA and Missoula, MT? A lot of freight and post travels that route. First hand, my parents lost their rural home in a wild fire this past (2017) fire season. Why? Not from the natural lightning-caused fire, but because the Federal Forest Service set a back burn at the worst possible time of day (afternoon) and then let it run rampant while my parents' house and a neighbor's house burned to the ground. And from other neighbors that didn't evacuate, the fire personnel just stood there and watched. This after having cut a fire break and running water pipes miles over the hill side to protect against such a circumstance. Fast forward to the wildfires outside of LA, and they pull out all of the stops there, while basically committing arson on my parents and their neighbor. So far, no criminal charges or government settlement, but there certainly ought to be. So, yeah, sometimes the Fed comes in and literally burns your house to the ground and you have no recourse.
4. Rural people just plain don't like being told what to do from people thousands of miles away. The DC politicians largely don't know what it takes to live a rural live and likely never have lived a rural life. They may have made a token visit to a rural resort, but have no idea what it is like to live where the nearest "town" to which you live has a population of 1 and is your grocery store, gas station and post office (and probably a few other things).
Sorry, this turned into a long-winded rant; I did not mean it to. I think the author being interviewed had preconceived conclusions and did his interviews to support those conclusions without actually digging into the meat of the problem.
Re: Why rural Americans are so pissed off
#27Such nonsense. What would Vox know about rural America?
Rural Americans are mad about being called 'flyover states', about being called racists (really for voting against Democrats) and for being portrayed as backwards.
Rural Americans are great people, the same as urban Americans. If you can't see the good in other people, the problem isn't with them.
Re: Why rural Americans are so pissed off
#28This guy found a handful of the dumbest people in America and concluded people in rural areas are morally degraded and their problems are their own fault. The arrogance of dismissing their contempt for the government is overwhelming. Just because they don't express their hatred of the elite class of people who rule them in just the right way doesn't somehow add up to their anger being misguided. They're using "the go…
I think a bigger problem is the unholy conflation of fiscal and social conservatism, by the interviewer, possibly by the author, and quite likely by the people being studied themselves. It is one thing to support fiscal conservatism. The very nature of these towns lends itself to the ideology, and it has its merits - cf. tech leaders who supported Trump. It is quite another to have "outdated" (for lack of a better wo…
> It is quite another to have "outdated" (for lack of a better word) moral beliefs
There are plenty of better words. "Unfashionable" works.
> anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-
I find it interesting that the left think of the right as the "anti" crowd, while the right think the same of the left.
> to _know_ that the majority of the country does not agree, and still somehow _expect_ that these views to be enforced in their little part of the world. It's a kind of selfishness that is not unique to small towns or their people by any means, but it is there.
First, the assumption that social conservatives are a clear minority and reside in a "small part of the world" doesn't really hold up. Second, minority or not, since when is a political group advancing their own interests "selfish"?
Re: Why rural Americans are so pissed off
#29Many of these articles point to the a white working class populace unsettled over demographic changes (read: an increasing non-white immigrant population). Wasn't there such unease even when immigration was almost entirely "white"? The Irish weren't white for a while, neither were the swarthy italians, poles, jews etc. How is it different this time around?
If you actually listen to conservatives, we are continuously, clearly saying that we care about _illegal_ immigration. We want to vet who we allow into our home.
Re: Why rural Americans are so pissed off
#30My politics are on the left wing of the political spectrum, but as I sit here in my home in rural America (pop 30,000, farm based economy, nearest city of 250,000, 1 hour drive away) it would seem to me that people are mad because: -There are very few high paying jobs -There is limited access to medical care -Local government ineptitude has a very real daily impact -Small tax base means surprisingly high taxes, but r…
> There are very few high paying jobs
> There is limited access to medical care
> Local government ineptitude has a very real daily impact
> Small tax base means surprisingly high taxes, but real struggle to maintain infrastructure (especially schools)
Sounds like poor white and poor black Americans face fairly similar issues.
> “Traditional” upbringing, often religious based, that breed skepticism toward anything “foreign” - which means everything from non-white people to AirBnB.
The xenophobia of rural whites is vastly oversold. I've never heard of anyone around here afraid of AirBnB. The level of racism I've seen in white communities is on par with the level I've seen in black communities. Which is to say that there's an undercurrent, but not a hysteria.
> A fear that Washington DC really is a threat to their freedoms.
Do urban Americans really not feel this way? It certainly seemed otherwise during the summer of surveillance.
> For example, there is a view that gun laws aren’t really about guns, so much as a perception of a slippery slope toward totalitarianism.
It's not that gun laws aren't about guns. It's that the rights of citizens to defend themselves against a tyrannical government _should one arise_ is important enough to be included in our Bill of Rights. I still don't understand how those who believe that our current president is a totalitarian monster can't sympathize.