Yes. Rural voters keep making themselves clear: they do not want shared prosperity, they want everyone else to suffer. Look at PA. Rural legislators broke public transit and are promising to keep it broken forever. Why? Because their voters want us to suffer. www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/transpo...
Conservative politics can really be summed up as “misery loves company”
I've always lived in the suburbs & exurbs, various states. I've always found this to be true. However, you would be surprised to know that a good amount of these people are open to voting D (or even regularly vote D). Even though they support stupid sh*t locally. We can get these people.
Here’s the thing, rural people are insanely jealous of all the access urban people have but should that access try to come to rural areas they get defensive & don’t want “outsiders” infiltrating their ways & customs. It’s an exhausting & weird place to live sometimes
Their “compromise” is if they can’t enjoy it exactly the way they want to then no one should be able to enjoy it in any way
It’s filling in the public swimming pool rather than share it with those people on a state/national scale.
Rural america (michigan) is soybeans, cornfields and sugar beets. Not much else for employment unless they go to towns and work in a dollar general or a little factory. 99% white, some drug crime and drunk drivers. They can go fock themselves. They shouldnt dictate to the urban areas.
And the physical farming of food needed by cities isn't even done by rural voters! It's done by the brown people that rural voters voted to terrorize and deport.
The corn they grow goes to the ethanol plant in Marysville Mi!!
Correct!!!
TBF, rural Virginia screwed over Northern Virginia for decades.
I would love it if urban America could stop economically carrying rural America until there’s a recognition that city people are also human beings who do not deserve rural vitriol.
Having lived amongst rural central PA voters, I can tell you that the conservatives are barely more cognitively functional than animals. It’s true that they desperately want everyone else to be crawling around in the dirt and filth with them and saying it’s the best way to live.
Giving it more thought, I still know some classically conservative folks that have tuned out of politics in frustration with the current Republican leadership. That said, a lot of rural areas have also been inundated with the most subhuman right wingers imaginable fleeing the city and burbs.
We should do what some other countries in our population density range have done and that has sort of helped with rural support for public transit: having rural/small town public services transport networks where buses connect with rural commuter trains that connect between towns of 5k-40k people.
It won’t end car reliance in such areas, but it has other benefits. And instead of having dedicated school buses, have a public transport bus network that is used by students and commuters into towns for classes & work.
As someone who lives in PA and who worked everywhere from Coudersport to Kensington in government agency outreach for years— this is accurate. Everyone to the west and north of the Philly suburbs wants SEPTA to fail out of spite alone. It’s that simple. It’s a cruel, fearful, and stupid state.
This is accurate, though we should also note that rural America (like where my parents live) has been largely abandoned for decades and mainly functions as value to be extracted for capital and outside interests. The nihilism isn't totally rational, but we shouldn't be shocked that it's there.
I used to believe this argument, having grown up in a rural area myself. But they can only vote for "make policy bad, make everyone suffer" so many times before "I'm suffering because policy is bad" doesn't work anymore. If rural people wanted better policies, they'd have voted differently.
Is it that rational though? Even Pre-Trump the local political culture was rooted in nationalism, religious conservatism, home schooling, social libertarianism, gun lust, and a DIY ethos that believes that government should serve no purpose for anyone. How do you penetrate that? (I've tried)
They were “abandoned” by the people THEY voted for.
Well, yeah, and by the Democratic administrations too. But it's not only about politics of course, it's also about how our economic system functions, and how underdevelopment can exacerbate pre-existing anti-government attitudes in areas like that - which is then reflected in voting.