If anything, it goes back to the urban decay era of the ‘60s and ‘70s, or Prohibition, or even the birth of the modern American city
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All true. Globally, people have had a love/hate relationship with cities since our nomadic ancestors decided they didn’t want to keep wandering in the desert looking for water and food. In the US, the view of the city is mostly negative because we’re a country whose origin story owes so much (1/x)
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to westward expansion and manifest destiny. Growing up in southern suburbia, it’s very strange how much these voters identify with isolationist eras of the American west. As the fairytale goes, their families survived by working hard and not getting handouts and having common sense (2/x)
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so they believe everyone has a similar story. You can explain how Black America isn’t that many generations removed from laws designed to segregate them from society and economically disadvantage them, but they will only tell you it’s not their fault, Democrat-led cities should do more to (3/x)
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combat the algorithmically curated crime videos they see in their feeds, and that everyone should work harder. The mythical ethos White southern voters have ingrained in their minds has only been amplified by Trumpism, whose actors know they can rally something like 40% of the electorate (4/x)
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based on nothing more than offering to punish cities so the crime doesn’t spread into their carefully built community bubble, where crimes are anomalies and everyone is a helpful neighbor. Of course, the data show that these communities are full of violence, sexual assault, and poverty just as (5/x)
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much as any city, but the media ecosystem so critical to turning out those voters will never report on the problems in their own communities. That’s why whenever you see a Southern Baptist pastor arrested for molesting children, everyone throws up their hands and says “oh my gosh” (6/x)
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and then spends more time defending the character of criminals than dealing with crime. It’s an ugly mirror on themselves, and one that they have no interest in looking at. Sorry for the length, but I escaped this world, and I feel like coastal Dems have done themselves a disservice by not (7/x)
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soliciting input from people who know these voters, know how to reach them, and understand how entrenched their mentalities are. We will not win them by telling them how bad Trump is—that only makes them love him more because it feels like you’re attacking them personally. (8/end)
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