Promoting collective punishment for electoral choices in the form of pushing for the collapse of health care systems in hopes it will kill Republican voters is a disgusting position to hold, morally speaking, AND plenty of people it kills won’t be republicans.

Ok well the only other choice here is that we defund urban areas to keep the rural areas afloat. Someone is getting fucked, it should be the areas that voted for it. Politics involves consequences, sorry you’re new to it

The thing is, wishing death upon authoritarian Trumpist morons is the correct moral position

then you'd have one less group of people to shit on, you eliteist fuck

You are a ghoul who should stop talking about my fucking state

Like you are going to go kill them all or something? Seems like this plan might backfire

Urban Michigan native here: I’d be the first to sacrifice my (former) rural neighbors to make Michigan perma-blue.

Good luck on getting the supply chain working after that. The manufacturing and resource extraction needed to build your cities would be gone. The places urbanites vacation would be ghost towns due to the locals not being able to live there year round. You're an idiot if you genuinely believe this.

Where you from, Leo? Alienating rural white people is why Democrats keep faceplanting. The GOP bosses hate country ppl too, but they know better than to say that under their own names. So they use "commie" aliases online to stir up trouble. 🧐

From what I've heard of material conditions in MI it should just be a matter of time

smarmy liberal scumfuck. "let everyone in a red state die!! kill the white trash!! voter suppression huh what's that"

your plan is to identify and eliminate the hated Other that's responsible for corrupting the purity of the republic that is the opposite of anti fascism

Do you think only white Trump voters exist in rural places? I don't think you can be serious about this, but if you were, how many of our avoidable deaths would you mete out to get back at Trump voters?

how is this our fault? why are we just expected to take it? this is what rural whites want and they consistently vote for it. argue with them. at some point, they gotta touch the stove. and it’s hot.

Iunno democrats telling rural whites you want them to lose their jobs, lose their homes, and die seems like it is indeed democrats' fault those same people don't vote democratic.

good thing they’ve done the opposite of that. wow. its really worked.

"Hillary Clinton wrote that her biggest regret was to say she would put coal miners out of business" www.businessinsider.com/hillary-clin...

Now, you can say that she misspoke and/or that it was a soundbite taken out of context, but 1) never give them a soundbite that horrendous, & 2) there are people in this thread saying rural residents should have their jobs, homes, & lives taken away for being rural residents, even if they voted blue

you are having a different conversation

Not our fault. You don't want to rescue children, Dem voters, etc, from avoidable deaths? That makes you a monster in my book.

the blame lies squarely on the monsters who vote for it. maybe they’ll learn.

Or maybe they will be easily manipulated into blaming the wrong people and we'll just 100% become the next nazi germany

they already do that lmao

Ok great so let's punish the dems and innocents such as kids in their communities and push them even further off the edge

You and I agree, and I really think the other side is such an inhumane and stupid position that only a bot could hold it. Like, let's shoot Dem kids in rural areas in the head to show MAGA what's what.

I think constantly bailing out the people who vote against their own interests and then going “hmmmmm why do these people keep voting against their own interests 🤔” is stupid, but what do I know.

hint: it’s because they don’t know what they’re voting for. they’re doing it because they’re bigots and they haven’t had to feel the pain of the other side of their actions. the collateral damage that comes from that will be their fault, not mine. I used to agree with you. that changed this year.

It's sadly widespread. It's also ridiculously counter productive. An addiction to revenge politics. And the, "they'll learn if they touch the stove," theory has been proven wrong for the entirety of US history. You can't punish a group of people into learning a lesson. It feels good though.

this isn’t “revenge politics.” this is “here’s-what-you-begged-for” politics.

I think that the Republican voters in these rural communities should have to feel the pain at some point. not my fault they vote for this.

We're not the ones who voted for this!

God damn, you sepp closet rightwingers do go mask off at the drop of a hat. It's no wonder your country has been committing atrocities in the name of "peacekeeping" for longer than I've been alive, you've a culture of sociopathy.

What if we just killed you, the fascist, instead of mass murder?

Killing rural Americans strangely ignores e.g. the 6.1M Californians who voted Trump, not to mention the urban white fascists in power, the obvious Ivy League fascism pipeline, etc. Some extra rural Michiganers will die, of which ~20% are registered Republicans, what does that achieve?

plenty of ppl in need in Detroit and other places, no need wasting money on money losing rural areas (after all, that's what is most important, ROI)

Also, Detroit, like most rust belt cities, would benefit from population growth. We should enable and encourage people from rural Michigan to move there.

as horrible as it is to think that i'm getting *extremely* tired of "republicans break everything -> they beg someone to fix it -> they elect democrats to fix it -> the democrats don't fix everything in four years -> they get pissed and elect republicans again"

Amazing how many of you are just willing to admit you’re just trash publicly

Somewhat, but Trump made significant gains in the Detroit area last year, just like he did in many other major cities around the country.

you are adolf fucking hitler

Liberal genocide. Very cool. And you guys wonder why you can't attract voters. You wonder why many find you indistinguishable from the right.

False flags are a thing. Looks like we found one.

I'm rural white. I'm leftist, LGBTQ, and I voted for Kamala. You're nothing but trash. You're easily as bad as the people you hate. You only imagine your hate is better because of classism.

Facists control the federal government, are regularly putting troops on the streets and Democrats are quietly going along with it. Oh and now ICE is better funded than the Marine corps. Do you think normalising eliminating political enemies will go well for you as an allegedly left wing person?

what the hell, you're a piece of shit and so is everyone who liked this post.

swing vote, or non-vote? time.com/7307430/poor...

So you're opposed to political terrorism against guys like Brian Thompson, but random rural Michiganders should be pulverized until the balance is better for Democrats?

Whos pulverizing who? They're punching themselves in the face and then shouting that I'm punching them because I don't feel like interposing my head between their face and their fist

Is these people dying from medical neglect a good or bad thing?

Ppl will inevitably die, because the government rural whites voted for cut medical funding so deeply that there's no longer enough to go round. I'm saying trust if there's an allocation of resources that is both more efficient and tracks what ppl actually voted for, then that allocation is better

Either urban safety net hospitals will have to close or rural hospitals will have to close. We no longer have enough funds available for both. I'm not sure why you're so gung ho about killing off poor ppl in the city to help rural voters whose fault this is in the first place

I'd like you to take a second and read what Ben Shapiro has said about what Gazans deserve and why, and consider if your life should continue as it has

What the fuck are you talking about. What does Medicaid funding have to do with Gaza, and why in the world would I want to subject myself to listening to ben shapiro

because you sound exactly like him.

They could simply vote for life-sustaining policies for themselves instead of voting to kill themselves because it gives them a hateful libidinous surge.

And psychopathic sludge like you can just fuck off forever, that's another fun possibility to roll around

Life- sustaining policies for whom? I know another party who hates the poor. Dem voters who were too blinded by their privilege to see the country they live in until facism took over is what lead to trump - thanks for finally noticing but it's too fucking late. I'll never vote Dem again in my life.

Hm Democrats sure love sacrificing people in the interest of winning elections, which they still lose anyway

You’re going to a really dark place man

Yes.

Given that they're about to destroy your city's circulatory system, I'm surprised you're not.

Hating entire population groups just gets into endless cycles of reprisals and is bad for the soul

No one needs you to feel hate. Hate is what's in your mind, and whether you feel that is between you and your sense of self. This is just about where we send money. Call it tough love if that feels better.

Do I hate the Russians we sanction? Not really. I don't know them. Some are likely perfectly lovely people. Some are even liberals or hate Putin too. But we are treating them as an entire population group, that's what we can do.

Should there be downsides to embracing fascism, or not?

We need at least one cycle of reprisal to stop them from hitting the defect button every time

Personally I'm not OK on a practical level with trying to proxy other demographics as Trump voters, but I get @rev-avocado.bsky.social's moral logic here, and wrt endless reprisals: there was a political system set up to arbitrate disputes, and they chose to reject and break it! What's left?

There are plenty of *specific, identifiable people* who have committed crimes and should be punished. I reject the notion of enemy populations a priori; the other path leads to people saying shit like “we are justified in starving Gazan children bc their parents voted for Hamas”

Hence why I said on a practical level that I'm uncomfortable with proxying stuff like this, it's inevitably going to get innocent and blameless people caught in the net.

I think it is probably good to be uncomfortable about this stuff. I am not, but as Bill said, I'm in a pretty dark place. They put me here, and until they stop trying to destroy my family, I don't know if it'll be possible for me to leave.

I hear you and it is one of the many battles we are waging - to keep hold of our own goodness in the face of a lot of evil. and they really don't deserve our souls on top of everything else they are taking.

saw this the other day in a shop

Bro do you want to talk later? Is this something more than just the general news?

Stressful day, but no mostly the general news. The steady buildup of disasters and the looming ones that are inexorably coming are rolling in my chest.

This is true in a general moral sense, but at a certain point you lose the agency to make those types of distinctions anymore. At a certain point it’s effectively just an enemy army and the only choice left is them or you.

Israelis would say they literally are faced with an enemy army and the choice is me or you. I hate maga but they have not October 7thed my family

Israeli propaganda is nigh indistinguishable from shit that would be posted in Der Stürmer, it's very Goebbelsesque, only rightwing monsters or imperialist-brainwashed dupes support it.

They would if they could.

They are also visibly and aggressively building the capabilities and consent to do so.

The Israelis are the ones with all the guns and all the money and diplomatic recognition, and therefore they have vastly more moral agency to make these types of calls than the Palestinians (which they used to commit genocide) Suffice to say, Democrats are not the Israelis in this analogy.

Not really. Gazans didn't vote to starve Gazan children, that's something non-Gazans are imposing on them.

The equivalent metaphor re Gaza would be allowing Hamas to govern Gaza after Gazans voted for Hamas.

If this were limited to “we’re not bailing you out,” fine. But rev is saying something much harsher than that, which is we should hope they die out

Did Gazans deserve to be ruled by Hamas? No. Did they choose it that one time? Yes. I fully support rural Republicans having opportunities to change their minds and vote to be governed differently, which is unfortunately not an opportunity Gazans ever had.

If they're never made to feel the consequence of always voting for fascism then they're never going to stop voting for it. They did this to themselves. Bailing them out will simply tell them it's fine to keep voting Republican.

A big part of why deliverism didn't work for Biden is that Republicans were allowed to get away with voting against all the deliverism but then going and taking credit for it among their constituents. Lots of low info voters out there who sincerely think the deliverism came from the GOP!

I’m not one of those people who is going to bend over backwards to see the good in people who hate me either and frankly I want Philly and the collar counties to secede from Pennsylvania. But I don’t want to turn the state entirely into a tool of repression

You are probably a better person than I am.

bsky.app/profile/rev-...

the really dark place that we have all been brought to is “America in late summer 2025, where all the options are bad.”

They can get them back just as soon as they vote for Democrats.

Sure, cause the funding that's getting cut is being held in a safe place, just waiting to be spent again on hospitals & social programs as soon as the right people are voted in.

What percentage of votes have to be for democrats? If 49% of votes are for democrats vs 51% for Republicans, would that be enough to spare them?

Why would they vote for a party that is proclaiming that they deserve to die?? Why would they vote for a party that says that people should die in childbirth because their local rural hospital closed and the nearest one is 200 miles away? Why would they vote for a party that hates them?

Literally

IMO an equally good notion is gerrymandering them out of existence until they're ready for self government

I am all in favor of rural white disenfranchisement

You sound like a Trumpster - you know that, right?

He sounds like a fascist. Kind of person who gets erect thinking about the pain and suffering of their enemies. And since “enemy” here means “lives in a 51-49 GOP stronghold”, he just wants indiscriminate death across the lines on a map he considers the enemy. Loathsome person.

Some of them are ok (basically just Vermont)

I would like to know how we can cultivate more and more Vermonts around the country and then I would like to move to one

Displace a critical mass of NYC DSA members and their families to a rural area.

Like this was if you squint what happened in Vermont

Then I guess what we need is an interstate straight from Brooklyn to Charleston, WV (or high-speed rail to central PA)

Vermont and Western Mass yeah

Parts of the Hudson Valley.

This is an old thread now but I’m in rural Vermont and I’ve got sad news for you…

Yeah I've heard some heinous shit about racism they've faced from non white people in Vermont

parable of the drowning man except the drowning man posted bail for the guy who bombed the dam resulting in the flood

They're not noble savages who know not what they do. They're citizens of a democracy who have chosen collective pain and by God they need to feel that shit.

This should be the plan for 2027 also, federal budget starts at $0 and if Mississippi wants its snap money back to build aging football stars recreation venues they can vote for our bill to disband DHS

Mississippi is a state where an enormous number of people have been systematically disenfranchised. People who have had their rights taken from them are not the people we should be punishing. We can do better than that.

I'm really not convinced we can do better than that, we've tried for decades and it's resulted in missippians deciding my neighbors need to be kidnapped by feds

If you are denied the right to vote, are you then responsible for the choices made by the people who took that right away from you?

The problem is so much more complex and intractable than can be solved by punishing everyone in a district that voted red, easy and satisfying though it may be to fantasize about.

I am denied the right to end the kidnappings in my neighborhood, I will probably have the opportunity to remove the federal budget that funds that activity, my representatives should do so.

Yes, that is something that should end and by ending it, it saves money and, more importantly, people's lives.

that's great, but that's not the choice presented me. I choose my neighbor's freedom over rural hospital's in MS

Sure. And that's part of why we're here. We see our neighbors as actual people, but those people over there? Not actual people and they deserve what they get.

just leaning right into that dictatorship there buddy, every day you remind me why the ideas that come out of you smell worse than pigshit

I try and keep you muted but goddamn you do set yourself up for dunks

Why would anyone vote for someone who wants them dead cause that worked out so well for Kamala?

If you think people deserve to die because they don’t vote your way, or even if they happen to live in the same area as people who don’t vote your way, you are every bit as despicable as the worst Republican.

They’re the ones who think they deserve to die. Why do we have to save them from themselves?

Because not all of them voted for Trump, and a lot of them are children. You in favor of letting children die, bud? That’s a really bad look.

No, they are. Why do you think there should be no consequences for fascism? Why do you think we should sacrifice ourselves to protect fascists from themselves? Why do you think their lives are *more* important than the lives of people in the city? Not *as* important, *more*.

I don’t think any of that. Why do you think poor people in rural areas don’t deserve health care?

I think they do. THEY don’t. Budgets are limited and the best outcomes for the most people will come from letting them have what they want: nothing. To give them equal priority is the same as saying their lives are *more* important because of the increased cost. They can commute.

That’s bullshit. Everyone deserves healthcare. Giving it to people in need is NOT saying their lives are more important. That’s a completely absurd argument.

If we had enough resources, sure. But they decided to destroy those resources and we have to allocate what’s left more effectively. Why take funding away from people that want it in order to try to give it to people that reject it? Who does that help?

That’s not theoretical, states have taken federal funds and refused to spend them to help people. We could’ve given those funds to people that would use them, instead.

Would bailing out rural hospitals actually take funding away from anyone, or is that just an assumption you made to justify leaving people you don’t like to die?

This is basically what PA Republicans are doing around SEPTA and Pittsburgh Regional Transit. "Oops sucks you live in cities instead of our beleaguered crybullying hinterlands"

Precisely. And what goes around will come around. When we need money to rebuild SEPTA, it should come by stripping rural budgets to the bone.

Are you in the Philly area? I grew up in the burbs and lived there most of my adult life until I moved northward about 10 years ago. Anywho, as if the rural counties have any $$$. I'm guessing like many states, the rural counties are supported by the large cities. I am so done with this crap!

I say we keep all tax money local. MAGA is a cancer and it's time to excise the tumor. There is no more unity, empathy or compassion from me. Either they believe in liberal democracy or they move elsewhere. Preferably Mars. SEPTA is a greater necessity that does more good than any MAGA voter.

"Abe Hamadeh losing the Arizona AG election because too many Republicans died of COVID" is our model moving forward.

I hate this thought process and I hate them even more for insisting that I should think like that. They don't give me any other options, much less ones I find morally acceptable.

They’re a death cult, might as well let them do it to themselves while keeping ourselves safe

You're a disgusting person. You exemplify the moral filth that slowly turned this country into the fecal funhouse it is today. This is who YOU are, revel in it--social 💩 stain.

you're basically the result of benjamin netanyahu having a baby with pol pot then using the baby's head as a soccer ball

You do realize you're advocating for children dying just because of their parents' voting habits right?

Trump losing Georgia in 20 too

Your family members voted to destroy my family. The very least I can do is not intervene when the choices they've made destroy them.

oh so you're just a jaded child? okay

Death to America but won't tolerate any death in America? Many such cases

That "Firebomb a Walmart" tweet is more true than you think.

Hello! We are The Unity Center Cincinnati, supporting families through peer support, education, and creating a friendly environment. Please help us spread positive energy by liking and following our account! 💙✨ #SupportFamilies #CommunityCare

I prefer to think of the retribution in a positive light: we are going to make living in a metro area so much better that no one would want to live in an area without hospital access. Everyone is still free to live where they choose!

Does no one remember in Batman Begins when he says “I won’t kill you, but I don’t have to save you”?

two part question, do children vote and do children use hospitals

part three, do ppl living in a country also get m*rde*ed for the decisions of some neighbors or we just do this for smaller areas hmm

We should rescue the children who live in those areas from their murderous parents.

Yeah I'm not at a point of saying we should proactively wipe out the Confederates but I'm very much at the point of pulling the plug on any bleeding heart efforts to save them from their own choices. If I have to find out, the people who fucked around can too.

Children don't vote.

I know, I've got two of them. If the choice is "do scarce resources go to my kids or to the parents who maliciously voted to make those resources scarce", well, I wish we weren't triaging but we are thanks to those guys, and I don't know anyone who would choose someone else's kids over their own.

In my ideal world we tax the rich and have plenty of money to take care of everyone's kids, but socialism hasn't won yet and right now we're living in MAGA's world. It fucking sucks, that's the problem and the point.

Republicans exploit this asymmetry to their own advantage. They know Democratic partisans care more about rural healthcare than they do.

Bingo. As much as I want maga children to have a quality education, food, medical care, a living wage and dignified retirement, their parents don’t want that for us and our kids. And they are willing to kill theirs to harm ours. At some point you have to let them reap what they sow.

You know, this is exactly what Nazis said about Jews and Jewish children

hmm idk I think there were a few big differences actually

"haha yeah kids deserve to die because their parents neighbors voted for Republicans I'm a very serious person"

When you add the haha to my very serious position, you betray your need to exaggerate my position. We don’t have a binary choice here of save all children or let some die. That’s ridiculous. We simply can’t keep covering for them and cover ours after their cuts. Something has to give.

It's interesting how the assumption is rural = Republican. I live in a rural county. It went 62% to Harris. In a "blue" state. Of our two hospitals, one's closing, and the other is on the way out. The one that is closing provided the main maternity care here. You think children here deserve to die?

congrats! You’re a monster

This is still just "I think kids should die because I don't like the political choices that people who aren't those kids made"

Something has to give? How bout you?

they added the 'ha ha' because you're a fucking clown you dumb bitch, ha ha ha ha look at your stupid ass

embarrassing for you in so many ways. anyways! thank you for demonstrating why no one takes you liberal fucks seriously lol

Police budgets.

yeah man totally let's just keep that cycle of violence rolling. politics as performative revenge on the Other back and forth forever

They should feel free to move to the Indy metro if they want 20th century public goods.

Reciprocity is a motherfucker.

children dont vote, loser

We have a political culture of enabling abusers

Sorry buddy this is eugenics because voting Republican is genetic

"Eugenics" quickly ceasing to have any fucking meaning

The assassination of MLK was eugenics send skeet

TBH yeah it kind of was

These people have outright rejected a social contract

Sometimes people need an object lesson.

Such as, 'This is a chair.'?

I struggle to understand how any good outcome is effected by one not having a hospital within a reasonable distance when, say, their child has a diabetic episode I understand the urge to mete out justice on people, but there are probably better ways of doing that than indirectly killing them

They’re welcome to take their child to somewhere that has a functioning hospital. Why do you deny these monsters agency? They want to hold a gun to their own head and threaten to pull the trigger, I’m not obliged to wrench the gun from their hands.

A person could die before they reach the hospital you're talking about. They didn't deny their agency.

Guess they shouldn’t have chosen to live that far from a hospital then. Oh, they *were* living closer to a hospital and then it closed due to their voting preferences?

Because the bill intentionally destroyed significant capacity and in choosing what to save we should put priority on people who will vote to support expanding that capacity. People will get hurt, but the need for triage is not Michigan's fault, and they need to triage with a view for the future.

Then they should vote for local congressmen and presidents that don't run on a platform of stripping "takers" of gov subsidized healthcare and deporting docs. They dedicate every vote to trying to kill us and right now they are winning so we need to focus on protecting and funding our own people.

democrats passed the ACA and medicaid expansion during the obama years to keep rural hospitals afloat. an overwhelming majority of rural america then voted to set the boat on fire. and they fucking did it all over again, post-COVID, knowing the consequences. how much more are you going to plead now?

Trump voters feeling miserable is a good outcome.

Children and the disabled dying is not a good outcome.

That hospital could be somebodies boat or golf course and everybody clawing to get to the looting end of the facist state, not the work camp. This is how the soviet union was run.

We can save rural people without saving rural hospitals. Detroit, like most rust belt cities, needs population growth. We should enable and encourage people to move out of rural Michigan and into Detroit.

We aren't choosing between good and bad outcomes here, we're choosing between bad outcomes. If they'd just left us the fuck alone, we wouldn't be in this position, but if I have to choose between their kid and my neighbor's kid, well, they made that choice for me.

people having hospitals is good

We could have a fully funded rural hospital system if rural white people elected legislators who wanted that more than they wanted to murder trans people or ethnically cleanse immigrants. Unfortunately, they have repeatedly decided that they want the latter.

At what point does the responsibility lie with them for not choosing their own child's life over their bigotry?

Mysteriously, telling voters that they’re dumb hillbillies too stupid to vote in their own interests has never helped win an election.

Didn't the author of "Hillbilly Elegy" successfully do that, first for OH-Sen then as VP?

You’re the ones saying they’re too stupid to vote in their own interests. You think they voted to defund rural hospitals BY ACCIDENT! I don’t think that’s the case. I think they knew the tradeoffs and decided they hate trans people more than they like medical care.

Have you seen what the current VP had to say about them a decade ago?

They're dumb angry hogs who voted to glut themselves on human suffering, and that's what they're going to get. A lot of that suffering is going to be their own and that isn't anyone's fault but theirs.

My majority white rural Virginia county went for Harris. It's not so hard. We lost our hospital years ago so I'm already used to driving for about an hour to get medical care. Let the rest of the piggies eat up.

I'm certainly no political strategist, but my big idea has always been to quit coddling or even listening to people who will never vote against white supremacy, and to go balls-to-the-wall on a fully progressive platform, progressive enough to ignite the huge number of currently tuned-out voters.

They did vote in their own interest though, and I want them to experience what it’s like. They can always vote differently if they don’t like it.

Pandering to their bigotries from across the aisle hasn't helped win an election, either, and that's a strategy that has — quite unlike your suggestion — been attempted ad nauseam.

Sure, we should fucking coddle the poor blorbo electorate for 30 more years. That's not ever backfired.

Neither has saving them from their own decisions. Why bother trying to get their votes at all?

cry us a fucking river, pleading for the white innocence of the quote unquote noble savages who bitch about "welfare queens who steal their tax dollars" won't do you much good in this crowd

I did no such thing.

trump voters deserve worse than being told they're dumb hillbillies imo

They did vote in their own interests. It's just that the lives of their own children were not their primary interest.

I guess we should keep telling them they’re the Real Americans. The true Salt-of-the-earth volk who should never have to bear the indignity of sharing a community with someone different from them.

Yes it has. Republicans think and say worse things about the people who vote for them, they love it when you call them shit eating hogs. "I understand your reactionary views are due to economic anxiety" would make them respect you less than if you begged to suck their unwashed dick.

Well 1: That strategy has never actually been tried. We HAVE tried coddling the redneck fucks and that sure as shit didn’t work out. 2: Some total randoms shooting their mouths off on Bluesky dot com is not an electoral strategy meeting.

Their interests in white supremacy outweighed their interests in hospital access and they voted accordingly. I think they should get what they voted for!

What elected official said that? What is the name and where is the quote?

I'm not arguing they shouldn't suffer for their choices, I don't even particularly care if they have libraries or internet access I do think access to lifesaving medical care is in a category of its own precisely because the lack thereof will cause people to die, and I don't think they should die

Again they were fine with that for us. I’m sorry there aren’t enough resources to go around anymore because of their decision, but if it’s them or me, I’m choosing me

Not only are they fine with that for us, they expressly voted for it *for themselves* Like we all know who the more hospitals party is, and they voted against it.

I agree they shouldn't die. Ultimately, nobody should ever die! However.

I think they should be caused to die more directly. Closing their hospital is the compromise position.

What a great thread! Ever noticed that almost every GOP policy leads to an increase in deaths?Seriously, it’s hard to find a GOP policy that doesn’t kill/cause life-changing crisis on balance. (Abortion, guns everywhere, school lunches, healthcare, gay equality, suicide hotlines).It’s a death cult.

I mean, it sucks but it's very hard to support hospitals in communities which have expressly and repeatedly exercised power to destroy those hospitals

Children can't vote.

They also voted to destroy their own family. Who are we to deny them what they want?

did you vote for Harris, does that mean you voted to destroy me as a trans woman by supporting her 'I'll follow the law' cop out?

When your enemy is making a mistake, do not intervene.

i wonder which voters (and non-voters) this strategy would impact most

We fight for everyone, signed every Far Leftist you know.

I cannot emphasize enough, everyone who voted for this shit damned us as a country and has hands drenched in blood. We are all going to suffer. Why should the people who represent us, the ones who didn't vote to do that, apply scarce resources to their welfare over my community?

They aren't sending resources to rural areas. Have you been to any rural area?

In the vast majority of the country the rural schools, hospitals, and infrastructure, however inadequate, are on my barely hanging on because of the subsidies these places receive from suburban and urban areas. That is why all of the hospitals are closing, these places can't support them w/o help.

Yeah. They're closing because we aren't helping the people there enough. What has been the result of that? The lack of resources I mean. Has less resources made these areas less reactionary or more reactionary?

You are saying nobody is sending anything to these areas (false). I put it to you, what has been the result of urban communities subsidizing rural ones for decades? Has urbanites subsidizing an increasingly large share of the existence of people in these places made them any less reactionary?

So you just have no understanding of anything in the world

lol yeah you’ve got me, I’m just a political scientist who has also lived in Trump country for the better part of a decade and is married to a girl whose parents live in a county Trump won by 36 points, I have no idea what any of these places are like. Starting to understand your rude tag.

In a world of finite resources, where tough decisions are being made *right now*, I don’t think the solution is “subsidize these places *even more*”. If the choice is “keep an urban hospital serving hundreds of thousands open vs. keep a rural one serving hundreds” and you can’t have both, what do?

Voting for the Republicans will help you achieve that faster

bsky.app/profile/colo...

Damn bruh be less loud about being morally bankrupt & practically frothing at the mouth to have "your team" be the one's wearing the fascist boot

You’re such a fucking baby. Abandon liberalism if you want change bitch

hell yeah austerity is so cool and based (when liberals want to do it)

Some of the folks who are mad at you have yet to realize that they’re basically at war. It’s not a war they declared or ever wanted, but it’s here. You have limited resources in a war, and you don’t give them to your enemies. And you can’t always help those innocents trapped behind enemy lines.

The US is barely one country anymore. Trump, the GOP, and its voters have made sure of that. As the right gradually turns up the temperature of a cold civil war, it’s reasonable for liberal states, cities, or communities to act in self-defense - including economically.

Like, I am pretty sure you and the op would reject that logic in any other context. Why is the doctrine of collective punishment acceptable only for your domestic political foes?

They’re going to get what they voted for. I told them not to. I voted not to give them what they voted for. They voted for it anyway, and because they had more votes, they’re going to get it anyway. Too bad. Hope they choke on it.

I’m not sure I’d reject it in every context. I support crippling sanctions on Russia and Israel, for example, due to the actions of their governments in Ukraine and Palestine. I understand that Russian and Israeli citizens would suffer as a result. Is that collective punishment of a kind?

Not a super relevant analogy, though, because I doubt Dem state governments are going to have the funds to bail out predominantly Republican areas from the consequences of their votes - not without making cuts to their own communities Same goes for if Dems take power in 2028 amid national wreckage

If you support BDS you support collective punishment.

Ok, so is what Israel's doing in Gaza, for example, justified? Because that is, *word for word*, what thier government has said to justify limiting aid. And *unlike* us, the Israelis are facing an *actual shooting war* that began with a pretty horrific attack against them!

No, it’s not justified - it’s genocide. And it’s not really the same at all! For one thing, Israel has enough resources to feed Gaza’s civilian population and is intentionally not doing so. It’s not like the Israeli government has to choose between feeding Gazans and its own people.

It would actually be extremely irresponsible for Dems to bail out rural hospitals. It would send the message that voting to inflict maximum harm and trauma on Dem communities and minorities will be rewarded with huge amounts of extra money handed out by Dems, and therefore was completely validated.

Because the resources aren’t actually scare and human life matters, you fucking turdburger. Ironically well-chosen DN, you’re just as good as Leo was.

you wouldn't know what a community was if you're life depended on it. I'm saying this with confidence because your life currently depends on it and you still can't recognise what it is.

your country has been damned from the beginning you dont get to escape it because you view yourself as "one of the good ones" hate to break it to you

Because we are about to have to make intensely hard choices about the distribution of resources, because the people of Fucksburg decided that they wanted their caudillo back. Why should we take food out of the mouths of people who didn't vote for this shit to feed Fucksburg?

The end-point of this logic, of course, is that our continued national union is no longer either feasible or desirable. Make of that what you will.

It's a Cold Civil War. When we win, I don't think these places will want to leave, because they need our blood to keep sucking on to survive.

Ultimately, society can't function without a partnership between rural producers and urban consumers. That's the entire story of civilization. But the terms of our partnership in this country can no longer stand.

Sure but we live in a globalized economy. It will be easier for urban areas to import food than it will be for rural ones to export it. The entire American farming industry largely exists on the back of MASSIVE subsidies and tariffs as well as nontariff barriers.

The entire point of the dispute is that rural areas have consumption needs (healthcare, hospitals) that are provided by urban producers (tax dollars, sometimes healthcare professionals). It's not helpful to pretend that relationship only goes one way but it's the foundation of rural politics

That's true, but it's equally and obviously true that without a steady supply of food and raw resources, cities can't exist at all. It's a symbiotic relationship that's become parasitical.

I think rural areas are more dependent on urban than urban is on rural - American farming largely exists because of trade protectionism and subsidies

I don't disagree with this on principle -- if Fucksburg opts out of the social contract, Fucksburg forfeits the protections afforded by it. But a tremendous amount of this country's food is grown in Fucksburg, and that does present a problem here.

The people who voted for Trump do not, generally, own the places that produce our food. That would generally be four or five major agribusiness firms based out of Los Angeles, California.

Yes, but the food is not grown in LA, and the farms are not staffed by LA residents (that being said, I didn’t consider in this analogy that a lot of those farms a) are staffed by migrant workers who can’t vote and b) elsewhere in the state of California)

The situation is different in California because the rural hospitals in the agricultural regions likely serve a predominantly nonvoting and vulnerable Latino population. Rural Michigan, not so much.

I don’t think that split is as clean as you’d think. My wife grew up not far Mayfield, Kentucky, which has a significant Mexican population (many of whom are surely undocumented and work on farms), and Trump won Graves County 78-21 (It’s also James Comer’s district).

We’re well past the era when most people are farmers. The land is mostly owned by agribusiness. The land is mostly worked by those whom the people of Fucksburg voted to send to concentration camps.

This comes up later in the thread, but you’re absolutely right. My ire is reserved for the voters of Fucksburg here.

who grows that food? Where does food grow?

Because: 1) the Republican strategy has been "government doesn't work; elect us and we'll prove it" for decades now, and when people get pissed off about getting fucked over, it's a lot better to be positioned as "trans folks are fighting to save your medicare too, so lay off them" than "haha FOAD"

2) "deep red" is strongly correlated with effective voter disenfranchisement, voter suppression, and institutional-level disinformation campaigns. Nuking the plantation before evacuating the folks in chains is not the way.

3) We can use the Trump admin's artificially-created resource shortages as a cudgel to cut the tools of fascism instead. Take money out of police budgets. Sell their APCs for scrap.

I don't know how much of this applies to specific hospitals in rural Michigan (they have their own set of complexities, and the ideal remedy there involves piercing the corporate veil and cleaning out the bank accounts of private equity ghouls). But as a general concept, that's my case.

this was the theory behind the Biden presidency and Build Back Better. it didn't work. These communities tripled down on Trump even when their jobs depended on green energy infrastructure. You're advocating for something that's already failed

1) Biden didn't understand that the information battlefield was tilted against him because radical reactionaries control social media. People will not know the truth by default - emboss it on the head of a battering ram. 2) I expect it works a lot better as a challenger than an incumbent.

But people did know the truth. You can go back a few months and see tiktoks from midwesterners who were making money off Build Back Better, telling Trump he's right to go after waste but that these programs aren't the waste.

Indexing on people who create political Tiktoks is dramatically overestimating the share of the electorate who are actively engaged in the process rather than going with the flow.

We even saw it with Elon Musk when he threw a hissy fit over Trump's attacks on green energy. These people were not misinformed. They chose differently. And they should have to live with those choices.

Letting them experience the heat of touching the stove is a great way of getting them to understand the consequences.

But we need to position ourselves with the salve and bandages, not the laugh track. When have people ever reacted constructively to "I told you so"?

The concern is theyll go full UK and just blame more of their problems on immigrants

The fact that you think it will play out even remotely like that indicates how little you understand what is going on in rural communities, at least in the South The Republican Party down here will benefit politically from the hospitals shutting down

How many health care workers 2019-2025 were working triple overtime, with PPE shortages, isolating from their family and making soul crushing decisions on who should let life saving resources, were regularily getting spat on, yelled at and doxed by anti-maskers demanding to be saved.

If we're directing any resources at these places, it should be exclusively to rob them of every single decent person who wants out. Subsidizing the continued existence of R+30 counties was and is suicidal. The chuds clearly want pain. Why do we insist on denying them?

Because nobody has to vote for "FOOD" yet.

"Oh but we should do both" we don't have the money now, the people of Fucksburg made sure of that when they elected Trump. That's the whole fucking point.

I'm also reminded of this idea about funding, which at least in NY State makes a lot of sense.

I think the tough part of this is getting the Fed to purchase them, but honestly we should go ahead with it and when we retake control, have Congress assume those debts.

Yeah, fed support goes from "unlikely" to "impossible" once Powell's term ends. I like the idea of selling victory bonds to folks that pay out when the federal government gets unfucked.

begging people to live in society gets pretty tiring

given the trump vote in poor rural areas was due to: 1) relatively affluent in those areas voting trump by much higher margins than relatively poor 2) more of trump's margin in these areas was driven by likely democrat votes abstaining.... ...you're suggesting killing off democratic voters first

There's a half a mile between me and one of the hospitals that will close due to Medicare/Medicaid cuts here in southwest Colorado and the area in between us a trailer park populated with people who will lose healthcare and are hard-core MAGA and are not changing their votes but will double down.

Yes, there are many kinds of voters who vote or do not vote for many reasons

They're personally invested in Trump, but less so for Vance. Laying the groundwork to get them to blame Vance for the consequences of their own behavior rather than engage in self reflection could pay big dividends if Trump dies.

There's literally no point to what you've said. This is the result of those votes and non-votes and I'm not inclined to believe they thought Trump would be good, so fuck them and fuck you.

So what should the state cut to save rural hospitals? Or are you proposing Dems raise taxes to save the hospitals?

imo to the extent the democrats have the ability, the messaging of "we are going to absolutely tax the very richest to help YOU" is one that polls well. that said for many of these hospitals this is, like the OP's entire thesis, only a theoretical exercise as dems don't have the power

You seem to have sidestepped the actual question. Who should go without so that rural voters can be spared the policy consequences of their choices.

In Arizona. Mohave County didn't vote R+50 because of disengaged Democrats. Nor did Greenlee end up R+40. They did, in fact, choose this.

i'm describing broad trends in non-votes & shift btwn 2020 & 2024 particularly, in many but obvs not all areas-- w/ research i summarized elsewhere in thread. the details could certainly be contested! but imo it's important to remember that much of trump's gain was actually more the democrats' loss

the framing of this thread imo surrenders to a notion i think most involved would contest in other contexts-- that there's a fixed, immutable public rather than many publics made & remade through politics. how the democrats can succeed in remaking those publics (& do they wish to) is a good question

You made statements, but can you please link directly to the reliable research you're referring to? Because I will: 1. eig.org/economic-geo... 2. www.brookings.edu/articles/tru... 3. (typical of other rural counties:) www.michiganpublic.org/politics-gov...

The Democrats' "loss" was largely due to Republicans purging 20 MILLION FUCKING PEOPLE FROM THE ROLLS between 2020 and 2024.

Abstention is half a vote for Trump.

I’m an election worker in rural, red Texas. Trump wins in those areas because most of the voters in those areas have been trained to show up and vote in every freaking election and to only vote for Republicans. Also, TONS of poor white voters show up to vote Republican. It’s a damn cult.

You should get them organized for the defense of their own community’s material interests.

this is literally the only conclusion: "let's kill the poorer potential democratic voters to eventually hopefully get to the less poor trump voters and kill them too." moral considerations aside, not sure this strategy works out as well your thought experiment assumes

My home county has the lowest life expectancy in the state and only continues to get more red. It is hardly affluent. What is stopping these communities from doing a local levy to fund hospitals?

i described relative affluence & nature of the voters, w/ demographic & sociological research elsewhere in the thread. "how do you win back likely democratic voters who abstained in substantially greater numbers in 2024 than 2020" is a very good question. "by killing them" is not imo the answer

if your home county isn't affluent, a levy wouldn't fund anything resembling a hospital system. Maybe a doctor's office.

My conclusion is that this is one of many ways that rural dwellers can be asked to pay the true social cost of rural life alongside property taxes, gas stations, and refraining from future rural broadband and electrification projects.

The excess deaths you’re talking about are real and tragic and are the inevitable consequence of rural voters’ policy preferences. The same thing would occur if they continued to win elections forever and never had to live under a Dem government again—as they would prefer.

I'd need to see reliable proof of this, bc everything I've read on the effects of abstention in '24 say that increased R turnout in rural areas bolstered T2.0, while abstention of D's in urban areas resulted in losses for Harris AND his support was much higher in economically distressed rural areas.

You're stupid. Lmao.

Na this is bullshit

Actually yes, the affluent in my small central Kentucky town own and control everything.

Poor white people in rural areas who vote GOP are not temporarily embarrassed democrats waiting for a pro-union savior. That idea should’ve died with Biden

It should have died with Sanders, but he didn't even make a good enough showing to try it, it had to be someone else picking up the idea.

Sanders is where the delusion started because a whole bunch of conservatives in Michigan and West Virginia voted for him as an anti-Clinton protest in 2016

the poor white ppl in rural areas who voted democrat in 2020 & abstained from voting in 2024 constitute a not insignificant # of voters tho. what to do about that is an excellent question; i have my (subjective, hard to empirically test) answers but they differ from the premises of this thread

There is polling on this! White rural Medicaid recipients voted heavily for Trump! This is not unknown.

And ‘closing rural hospitals frequented almost exclusively by rural senior citizens will mainly kill democrats’ is one of the stupidest sentences ever posted on this site.

@ctxplz.bsky.social

Gladly, @collie.bsky.social. context chain to your parent post 👇👇👇

The poor white people don't vote as often, when they do it's overwhelmingly for Republicans.

Poor white people absolutely do show up to vote Republican. They will drag themselves to the polls on their deathbed to cast their votes for the worst people who promise to punish everyone who is different from them. Source: me, an election worker in very red, rural Texas.

i'm sorry that the data (which i linked elsewhere in the thread) disagrees with you, but i'm going to go with the data on this one

Respect that you have the energy for this. You’re right and I’m in agreement but this fantasy that these voters just want “authentic” left wing policies. Just look at the data, speak to them. There is no common ground.

Worst part is if or when they notice the hospital will close, the economic engine of these places, somehow it will be our fault. So they still can’t vote for us.

Vile little cocktoaches aren't they

Don't worry man, you'll get your wish. The Georgia state legislature is going to absolutely destroy urban areas instead when faced with the Trump budget crush.

democracy is normatively good in part bc people have essential dignity. To the extent that there is an objective morality, allowing people to live according to their own values and preferences is in accordance with that morality. The people of Fucksburg voted for “suffering.” Give it to them.

The reason Georgia flipped blue is that Atlanta is growing like crazy and becoming more diverse. That's it, that's the ball game.

What do you mean, going to? The state leg has long shafted Atlanta on infrastructure; MARTA is the only American subway system that doesn't receive state subsidies, and also Atlanta is ridiculously under-freewayed for an auto-oriented metro area of its size (compare it with Houston or Dallas).

“Save Them With Funding” What funding they’re gonna scream and cry and yell about getting taxed at the state level! The lack of consistent object permanence around the conservative worldview, as childish as it is, is maddening!

The type of people who reject a rural county fire service and cry foul when their house burns down and they can’t pay for the service at point-of-use!

Absolutely all this

I largely agree with this. But if we must bail them out I would at least like us to require every bailed out hospital put a large "saved by the democratic party" banner over one or more entrances.

We're naming every single one after Barack Hussein Obama and/or George Soros and/or Hillary Clinton

yeah, that's clearly not true.

Harris lost 6 million votes from what Biden had in 2020. Trump gained 2.5-3 million votes, mostly from people who didn’t vote in 2020. Most of that swing is from votes lost by the Dems.

I don't even think it's *wrong*, in the strict sense, to say we should have more empathy for these people than they do for us. but I think you do not understand human psychology very well if you think urbanites will let the rurals kick them around forever without getting bitter over it

I have more empathy for them than they do for me because I'm only joking when I say we should bring back the Vendee for them, rather than being totally serious.

You're honestly pretty dumb

And what of the ones who did vote democrat? Or the children? You are not noble or smart or just. You’re laundering your bloodlust under the guise of politics. You are fine with babies dying due to the way their parents voted. You’re a heartless piece of trash.

Why yes, I do believe we should end DEI. Henceforth we shall stop taking the tax revenues generated by (diverse, majority-minority) cities to prop up failing (white) rural areas.

Sure man. Instead of using this as an issue to organize and make inroads to these communities, building the type of consistent and broad power base the democrats so desperately lack, between now and the next election cycle, just propose slow eradication.

They live in 95% white fentanylburgs and think multiple cities completely burned down over the George Floyd demonstrations. They're not compatible with liberal democracy. They can surrender their right to vote to get free booze cruising as they wish as a compromise. In their own towns

Sounds like you’re incompatible as well.

You tell me, what parts should we sacrifice at the altar of rural white nationalism? The civil rights act? Trans rights? Tell me what you're willing to give away for the whiniest, most entitled demographic in politics who won't even give you the slightest props.

None of them. You convinced them why it's good. You do actual politicking and pass laws that materially benefit them.

Biden tried that, didn't work.

I completely disagree that Biden tried to do that.

Rural people might also get better healthcare at hospitals in population centers! (kinda screwed in an emergency though)

The emergency is that they keep voting wrong tbh

You're no better than the Nazis you claim to hate.

As a trans person the proposition of punitively taking healthcare away from somebody else, unless that somebody is a leading figurehead of genocide, makes me sick and truly you should feel bad inside but you’re just a shitty little edgelord desperate for dopamine so that will be what you feel later

Go contemplate your own nonexistence, you fucking ghoul piece of shit. Those rural hospitals provide service to kids, to immigrants, to the disabled who lack resources to get to the polls, to everyone; even if you want to pretend that a majority's vote makes everyone guilty, THESE FOLKS CAN'T VOTE.

I posit: what if, instead of spewing this shit, you just ate it instead?

Only 20% of the total state population is rural. The white suburban enclaves surrounding cities like Detroit and Flint are why it’s a swing state

You're a piece of shit for positioning this.

Now, republicans are trying to bankrupt Michigan by killing property taxes. Koch did this in his state of Kansas and bankrupted the state so he knows this will work. Koch is bankrolling republicans in Michigan: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uqhz...

It's not a monolith. I have many friends in rural Michigan who voted for Harris. It's not cool to wish this on any place.

Unfortunately, it's the only way they're going to learn.

They should kill their neighbors then.

They should blame their neighbors not the people their neighbors are trying to murder.

Seems to me like you're saying people deserve to die because of their neighbors.

Their neighbors are the ones killing them. Take it up with them.

No youre the one killing them in this hypothetical you dumb fuck

And you're cheering them on. Way to go.

If they didn't want me to do that, they should have convinced their neighbors to not try to fucking murder my family.

Also, once again, I would be happy to pay for their stupid ass hospital if they would leave me the fuck alone, but they won't, so here we are.

Do you think someone being rural means their neighbor listens to them? lmao

so rural whites deserve to die for voting GOP and rural Blacks deserve to die for not being able to stop them, just to be absolutely clear about what you're saying over and over in several different places in this thread

Should Ukraine refrain from taking out a recruitment center in Voronezh or wherever because of the chance that an opponent of the regime might happen to be walking on the sidewalk in front of it at that moment?

Who bears ultimate responsibility for collateral deaths from Ukraine's legitimate self-defense? "Deserve" has nothing to do with it. There are a finite number of dollars, and every dollar that goes to a hospital in BFE is one that doesn't go to a hospital in real America that needs it just as bad.

Either way, some people are screwed. Why is it the responsibility of the people who have been shit on and tyrannized for centuries to continue to sacrifice themselves so as to prioritize the well-being of a population that, for the most part, were the ones doing the shitting and tyrannizing?

Have they considered moving to a mid-sized city in Michigan that can support a hospital without massive government subsidies?

My people in Cheboygan already have to drive to Traverse City for medical care. No, they could not afford to just move their families. Many of them left poverty in Flint. But hey, fuck em. Tough break, guys!

Munson in Traverse City serves a population center, is affiliated with a medical school, and has a level III NICU. It isn’t a rural hospital.

I'm aware of that.