United States Politics Thread 46

[Man in Space]

Those slides make me less sympathetic towards country people -- if they are correct, then country people are a bunch of hateful, spiteful, self-destructive sorts who would hurt themselves just to stick it to those awful city people.

A lot of the complaints come down to saying that, from the perspective of country people, city people are kinda weird. Well, so what? Since when is being kinda weird some kind of major crime, or a legitimate reason to hate someone?

How did you manage to get this so completely backwards? The (more numerous) city people approach things like everything is the city and ignore/don’t realize that rural people don’t live and work in different circumstances and look down on the country population for its differences.

[Raphael]

How did you manage to get this so completely backwards? The (more numerous) city people approach things like everything is the city and ignore/don’t realize that rural people don’t live and work in different circumstances and look down on the country population for its differences.

Yeah, I get that that's the point the slides are trying to make. Thing is, it is simply not true. I don't look down on anyone for being different from me. I just resent people who look down on me (or worse) because I'm different from them.

[Ares Land]

As for the economic stuff, yeah, that's true, but it's neither anyone's fault, nor can anyone do anything about it. It's part of the nature of things that in a large, complex economy, wealth is created by a lot of complicated processes that are more likely to happen in cities than in the countryside, because they involve interaction between a lot of people. Therefore, rural areas are usually poor, unless they are either close enough to the nearest city to be well-integrated into the city's economy, or lavishly subsidized out of taxes paid by city people and city businesses, or temporarily lucky with the one or other local export.

Donald Trump can't change that, and neither could Kamala Harris. Or you, or me.

I can't agree with that. The US are a rich country, in fact the top economy on this planet. There's really no reason why rural areas should be poor nor any reason to think that it couldn't be fixed.

The point of the article isn't really that 'city folks are bad'; what it gets at is that country folks don't trust people living in the cities; if city people tell them Trump is bad, they may be inclined to trust the opposite. (I don't know how far I believe that conclusion -- I don't know the US that well anyway, and the rural parts not at all)

Demand for correct explanations of Democratic losses that do not in any way implicate the policy preferences of influential parts of the Democratic coalition vastly outstrips supply. If you want an explanation of the rise of Trumpism, you can start by reading the random salaryman who became COVID vaccine data czar by accident, who is probably not an enthusiastic supporter of Trump but who shares with that camp an unwillingness to overlook things the blue team declines to see itself as doing in a relevant sense but factually did. If you don't want to read the whole thing, you can start with the section about redlining.

I'm not sure I understand your point. People will abuse the system during the shortage, that's kind of a given -- though that articles confirms my impression that the US did kind of worse than other Western countries. But, I mean, it's not like the Republicans demonstrated a particularly efficient response to the COVID crisis, no?
I understand there's only so much that can be done at the federal level in the US and that the president and administration can be relatively powerless, but I don't get the idea the Trump administration handled this particularly well either?

Trump got elected by default because millions who voted for Biden apparently just stayed home.

The whole post was interesting but I'll seize on this one bit. What's noteworthy, to me at least, is that lots of Democratic voters turned out to be apparently not that bothered by Trump. That's... surprising, to put it mildly.
Is it a trust issue again?

[Travis B.]

How did you manage to get this so completely backwards? The (more numerous) city people approach things like everything is the city and ignore/don’t realize that rural people don’t live and work in different circumstances and look down on the country population for its differences.

Yeah, I get that that's the point the slides are trying to make. Thing is, it is simply not true. I don't look down on anyone for being different from me. I just resent people who look down on me (or worse) because I'm different from them.

Same here. I am a city person, and the only problem I have with country people is the fact that many country people seem to hate people different from themselves, something that those slides do nothing to dispel (and if anything reinforce).

[Ares Land]

Thinking back on all this... I think it's fair to try to understand the defeat, and to figure out what motivates Trump voters. I certainly try to myself!

But I think a certain amount of 'what the fuck is wrong with you people?' is understandable too, and probably being a bit tough towards far right voters would probably be a lot more efficient in the long run.

At some point we do have to recognize there is a lot of racism and misogyny on the other side. We can debate endlessly on whether this is really racism or really misogyny or maybe a cry for help, but I have a feeling that at some point it still needs to be said that these things are not okay.

And this may apply to folks who didn't vote at all, either. At some point it does mean letting racism slide.

[Travis B.]

How did you manage to get this so completely backwards? The (more numerous) city people approach things like everything is the city and ignore/don’t realize that rural people don’t live and work in different circumstances and look down on the country population for its differences.

Yeah, I get that that's the point the slides are trying to make. Thing is, it is simply not true. I don't look down on anyone for being different from me. I just resent people who look down on me (or worse) because I'm different from them.

Same here. I am a city person, and the only problem I have with country people is the fact that many country people seem to hate people different from themselves, something that those slides do nothing to dispel (and if anything reinforce).

Furthermore, those slides make it harder to sympathize, because I was more sympathetic, thinking people hadn't benefited enough from the up-turn and were simply trying to punish the current administration for such regardless of the actual realities, but those slides essentially say that country people hate city people for not being like them and want to punish them for being different and want to destroy the established order even if the outcome is worse than it by deliberately voting for someone they know is bad.

[Man in Space]

Yeah, I get that that's the point the slides are trying to make. Thing is, it is simply not true. I don't look down on anyone for being different from me. I just resent people who look down on me (or worse) because I'm different from them.

WHICH IS EXACTLY HOW THE RURAL POPULACE FEELS THE URBAN POPULACE SEES THEM.

Same here. I am a city person, and the only problem I have with country people is the fact that many country people seem to hate people different from themselves, something that those slides do nothing to dispel (and if anything reinforce).

Did the two of you miss the slides where it talks about how the country folk are punch lines in the popular media (which is dominated by cities) and how the big cities are the places that get focused on in times of disaster?

[Travis B.]

Same here. I am a city person, and the only problem I have with country people is the fact that many country people seem to hate people different from themselves, something that those slides do nothing to dispel (and if anything reinforce).

Did the two of you miss the slides where it talks about how the country folk are punch lines in the popular media (which is dominated by cities) and how the big cities are the places that get focused on in times of disaster?

I am not the "popular media" and don't consider it right to be hated as a city person because of it, and frankly I don't see this in the "popular media" myself. Likewise, I haven't seen that much more focus on cities rather than the country in times of disaster (e.g. with how Hurricane Helene hit western NC).

Edit: yes, there was more focus on New Orleans with Katrina, but thousands rather than hundreds died there.

[Raphael]

Did the two of you miss the slides where it talks about how the country folk are punch lines in the popular media (which is dominated by cities) and how the big cities are the places that get focused on in times of disaster?

As I mentioned, those slides are contradicted by the very first couple of slides, which mention three highly popular, expensively produced, wildly commercially successful movies that portray country people as Good and city people as Bad.

[Travis B.]

Did the two of you miss the slides where it talks about how the country folk are punch lines in the popular media (which is dominated by cities) and how the big cities are the places that get focused on in times of disaster?

As I mentioned, those slides are contradicted by the very first couple of slides, which mention three highly popular, expensively produced, wildly commercially successful movies that portray country people as Good and city people as Bad.

And there is so much extremely popular music which portrays the country as Good.

[Man in Space]

Did the two of you miss the slides where it talks about how the country folk are punch lines in the popular media (which is dominated by cities) and how the big cities are the places that get focused on in times of disaster?

As I mentioned, those slides are contradicted by the very first couple of slides, which mention three highly popular, expensively produced, wildly commercially successful movies that portray country people as Good and city people as Bad.

There is no contradiction. Everyone knows about how Robin Hood stole from the rich and gave to the poor. It doesn’t mean that the poor were not looked down upon.

[Man in Space]

Edit: yes, there was more focus on New Orleans with Katrina, but thousands rather than hundreds died there.

Thank you for beautifully demonstrating the point.

[Travis B.]

Edit: yes, there was more focus on New Orleans with Katrina, but thousands rather than hundreds died there.

Thank you for beautifully demonstrating the point.

Umm, an order of magnitude more people died, so it is natural that they'd get more attention.

[Man in Space]

Edit: yes, there was more focus on New Orleans with Katrina, but thousands rather than hundreds died there.

Thank you for beautifully demonstrating the point.

Umm, an order of magnitude more people died, so it is natural that they'd get more attention.

Which does not change the fact that New Orleans was majorly represented while smaller communities weren’t.

[Nortaneous]

Demand for correct explanations of Democratic losses that do not in any way implicate the policy preferences of influential parts of the Democratic coalition vastly outstrips supply. If you want an explanation of the rise of Trumpism, you can start by reading the random salaryman who became COVID vaccine data czar by accident, who is probably not an enthusiastic supporter of Trump but who shares with that camp an unwillingness to overlook things the blue team declines to see itself as doing in a relevant sense but factually did. If you don't want to read the whole thing, you can start with the section about redlining.

I'm not sure I understand your point. People will abuse the system during the shortage, that's kind of a given -- though that articles confirms my impression that the US did kind of worse than other Western countries. But, I mean, it's not like the Republicans demonstrated a particularly efficient response to the COVID crisis, no?

Many would consider instituting explicit racial preferences in the provision of healthcare to be an abuse. Republican-led states demonstrated an unwillingness to institute explicit racial preferences in the provision of healthcare that the Democratic state of Vermont did not, and an unwillingness to institute redlining as a proxy for preferences that many would presume it prima facie impermissible and un-American to explicitly institute that the Democratic state of California did not.

Many people do not trust the Democratic Party not to do certain things that they would very much prefer for the state not to do. Another example from COVID is Cuomo's decision to force nursing homes to admit patients with a disease that is often fatal to the age bracket that nursing homes serve, which many Republicans believe, and some have stated publicly, is a policy with a quantifiable and avoidable death toll in the thousands. But the fact that it is often not obvious to those in the Democratic coalition that redlining will not be tolerated – which is a principle that every salaryman in America has had to internalize as a condition of employment – is not causally unconnected to the decision of the voting public to put the Democratic Party in time-out for a generation.

The Harris campaign was aware of this and did their best to signal that they (here meaning the Harris campaign, not the Democratic Party as a whole) wouldn't do it again, but trust is easy to lose and hard to gain. For the Democratic Party to get out of time-out, it will have to credibly demonstrate that it no longer believes that instituting explicit racial preferences in the provision of healthcare is acceptable conduct. If it helps, think of it like the time Ron DeSantis put a Sonnenrad in a campaign advertisement – notice that he is no longer a bright young thing with a promising future in electoral politics. Certain things are broadly considered unacceptable outside esoteric political bubbles even if they have been normalized within them.

[Travis B.]

The thing is that Republicans push the idea that people are "equal" when they really are not, and that there is no need or that it is actually immoral to redress the actual inequality that Republicans deny. What you call "redlining" (which is a mockery of what redlining actually was) is simply directing attention to population groups that need more help than other groups to compensate for the actual underlying inequality between them.

[Travis B.]

Thank you for beautifully demonstrating the point.

Umm, an order of magnitude more people died, so it is natural that they'd get more attention.

Which does not change the fact that New Orleans was majorly represented while smaller communities weren’t.

But those slides seem to push the view that it was some conspiracy against country folk rather than that it was simply reflective of the fact that far more people died in New Orleans.

[Ahzoh]

Same here. I am a city person, and the only problem I have with country people is the fact that many country people seem to hate people different from themselves, something that those slides do nothing to dispel (and if anything reinforce).

Did the two of you miss the slides where it talks about how the country folk are punch lines in the popular media (which is dominated by cities) and how the big cities are the places that get focused on in times of disaster?

Maybe they should grow a thicker skin and take a joke, you know, that advice they tell wokies to take?

It's not like their own media doesn't absolutely clown on urbans in turn.

Also cities are often focused on because they have higher population density and higher economic activity, so of course any devastation to that is going to be more focused on and I'm pretty sure the rurals are already intuitively aware of this.

This just sounds like rurals trying to come up with post hoc excuses for voting for the obviously bad choice (for them and everyone else).

In fact, that's all I hear from everyone who either didn't vote or voted against Harris. They're just looking for reasons, any reasons, to justify what they were already going to do from the beginning. Just post hoc rationalization.

[Ahzoh]

https://www.wired.com/story/trump-elect ... wtab-en-us

Think his will actually happen or be feasible? (also, fuck paywalls)

[Travis B.]

Just for the record, I've never heard anyone I know IRL (and these are all city people) say anything negative about country people as such. I have heard plenty of negative comments about conservativism, red states, evangelicalism, and even country music, but I have never heard anyone I know IRL attack or make fun of country people for being country people. So whatever idea some have that city people hate them does not seem to reflect the reality of the actual city people I know personally. Yes, people do resent being hated for being different from country people, and the people I know overall strongly dislike conservatism, but that is different from allegedly hating country people for being country people.