In my long life I have lived in widely diverse areas, from growing up in and around San Francisco and Los Angeles to living in the Appalachian hills of East Tennessee and small suburbs near Atlanta, and points between. I've worked all over the country,
There is no doubt that in some poorer and more remote areas there is sometimes serious ignorance, most often due to lack of education and isolation. To think this is a white phenomenon is ignorant in itself, as these problems are broadly shared by any person of any race who does not have the opportunities and experiences of those in more affluent and diverse areas. That said, these same people are more generous of spirit, more tightly knit in their community, and have more common sense, than big city dwellers by far. And, as far as intolerance goes, I have never seen worse condescension and intolerance than among the cultural elites in big cities, so many of whom apparently need years of therapy - maybe that's because smaller-town folks are in general happier. You couldn't pay me to now live in places like LA, Chicago, or New York - let alone my hometown SF which has become an embarrassment but too fat-headed and narrow-minded to see it.
Worst of all, the big city elites poison our society by imposing their personal values on the entire country since they wield the levers of power economically, culturally, and politically. People in the rurals have their faults, but I've never met one who thinks he/her has all the answers or would impose their values on other people, as the city elites do constantly and ruthlessly.
They can write a book saying we've all got Yosemite Sam and Tweety Bird Tattoos on our butts and we would not be phased by it, because we know who we are.
Go Sohrab! I know that I'm reading a good article when the truth of each paragraph has me laughing.
Haven't read White Rural Rage but I see it brought up a lot in liberal land and suspected it was what you reveal it to be here, another screed that just validates the fear and prejudice progressives hold toward rural voters and poor white Republican voters. "They're just ignorant bigots who hate minorities and progress in general.".
The possibility their viewpoints might have some validity is (as you note) ignored.
I moved to upstate New York two years ago via Ottawa, Canada and before that Portsmouth, NH. I was raised in a suburb of Boston, MA. I am surrounded by farmland and live in a small town called Mount Morris. The people in upstate NY are wonderful and very friendly and polite. I have had a handful of "political" conversations with strangers at restaurants and they have been very civil and measured. I was surprised how may locals supported Ramaswamy's campaign. Anyhow, thanks for this article.
Thanks to everyone who commented. Very heartfelt. It’s going to take all of us to get this mess straightened out. Trump has his problems, but he loves and understands the working man. I think he is the only answer for now. We have got to do some something about the left leaning federal goverment. It is too big and is out of touch with the real America.
Leave it to Democrats to crap all over white rural voters, and then bemoan white, rural, anger. What, precisely did they expect? That people who live outside the cities would collectively yell out “Please, sir, may I have another?”
It isn't clear what great deal "Joe Biden has invested in rural development via his industrial policies and other measures, but beyond the dripping scorn for them and their lifestyle that rural Americans see every time they turn on their TV or pick up a newspaper, what they do see is Biden trying to take away their gasoline or diesel pickup truck, doubling their energy cost to heat their homes and run their farms, make groceries painfully expensive, and flood the country with drugs with unvetted, often unidentifiable, illegal immigrants from all over the world.
It would take a lot more than obvious fabrications about green jobs and "democracy" to convince these practical, patriotic people to vote for Biden.
Quite valid points here that the authors of White Rural attribute sinister or angry motives to positions that are not inherently bigoted. So the overall thesis here makes sense.
However, every well-designed study of the net fiscal or economic impact of immigration has shown that it is positive, or neutral at worst. Low-skilled immigrants in particular fill critical labor shortages and largely complement native born workers, increase aggregate demand, boost the payroll tax base, etc. Immigrants commit fewer crimes than native born and their values frequently align more closely to the traditional social values of rural America. These are all facts regardless of what rural Americans may feel about immigration. Those feelings aren’t inherently bigoted, and they are in fact shared by many urban elites, but they are still factually wrong. There have to be better ways to illustrate the overall point without peddling these misconceptions.
Center for Immigration Studies is an organization dedicated explicitly to lowering immigration to the US. It is an untrustworthy source and a statistic on whether or not someone uses a social program is meaningless without considering the total amount of public subsidy consumed and the amount of economic contributions made by immigrants.
Talk to employers in North and South Dakota, farmers in Arizona and Iowa, construction contractors in Utah about the role that immigrants play in their workforce and whether they could continue operating their businesses without immigration. You will find that when the question is depoliticized they are not nearly as short-sighted about immigration as the beltway elites that run CIS
Last time I looked rural America was feckin' EMPTY. These two numpties reckon a docked tail is wagging the dog! Dimocrats: they be stoopid. Or rather the high panjandarums of the Dimocratic Party think their clients are stupid. It could be rural America is exactly this; but they are vastly outnumbered. Theirs is a pinkie on the scale; not two ruddy great boots.
TheFP seems ok but still the fakery is there as this article is an example. The Democrats of 1820 with not in anyway a liberating party, they were the Slaver party, they eliminated the existence of any other party and began with single party rule and Andrew Jackson. And the article applies a modern concept of liberal and conservative as if democrats have been liberals the entire time fighting conservatives, this is completely false as I stated already there were NOT two parties back then, Whigs, know nothings and other small pointless parties could not compete against the massive democrat tyranny, it wasnt until the anti slave abolitionists all finally ended up in the republican party which formed not long before lincoln won. That was nearly 40 years of near absolute democrat party rule, they were tyranical, war mongering invaders and worst of all Slavers who eventually started a civil war. This article as rewriting democrat party history, there was no concept of modern liberal or conservative back then, they were the party of slavery and were not in anyway some sort of group fighting for the regular american, this was the party regular americans were being abused by.
"It is true that immigrants fare somewhat better when scholars study individual, rather than household, welfare use. " - it is even more true that legal immigrants fare much better than illegal migrants. Grouping them together for any study is intellectually dishonest and any data resulting from such data is garbage by design. After legally immigrating to this country almost 30 years ago, I am yet to meet a single person in the United States who opposes legal, properly managed, immigration. Those who compare mass migration today to immigration policies before 1924, fail to understand that open borders and a welfare state cannot coexist. You cannot have both.
I'm worried about farmers. They're the focus of progressives wanting to destroy them. This is dangerous for the country, the world. We need and love our farmers!
Neither Webster nor Biddle had the technology to entice the dead to come out and vote in such vast numbers. Who needs deplorables when we have the deceased?
In my long life I have lived in widely diverse areas, from growing up in and around San Francisco and Los Angeles to living in the Appalachian hills of East Tennessee and small suburbs near Atlanta, and points between. I've worked all over the country,
There is no doubt that in some poorer and more remote areas there is sometimes serious ignorance, most often due to lack of education and isolation. To think this is a white phenomenon is ignorant in itself, as these problems are broadly shared by any person of any race who does not have the opportunities and experiences of those in more affluent and diverse areas. That said, these same people are more generous of spirit, more tightly knit in their community, and have more common sense, than big city dwellers by far. And, as far as intolerance goes, I have never seen worse condescension and intolerance than among the cultural elites in big cities, so many of whom apparently need years of therapy - maybe that's because smaller-town folks are in general happier. You couldn't pay me to now live in places like LA, Chicago, or New York - let alone my hometown SF which has become an embarrassment but too fat-headed and narrow-minded to see it.
Worst of all, the big city elites poison our society by imposing their personal values on the entire country since they wield the levers of power economically, culturally, and politically. People in the rurals have their faults, but I've never met one who thinks he/her has all the answers or would impose their values on other people, as the city elites do constantly and ruthlessly.
They can write a book saying we've all got Yosemite Sam and Tweety Bird Tattoos on our butts and we would not be phased by it, because we know who we are.
Go Sohrab! I know that I'm reading a good article when the truth of each paragraph has me laughing.
Haven't read White Rural Rage but I see it brought up a lot in liberal land and suspected it was what you reveal it to be here, another screed that just validates the fear and prejudice progressives hold toward rural voters and poor white Republican voters. "They're just ignorant bigots who hate minorities and progress in general.".
The possibility their viewpoints might have some validity is (as you note) ignored.
I moved to upstate New York two years ago via Ottawa, Canada and before that Portsmouth, NH. I was raised in a suburb of Boston, MA. I am surrounded by farmland and live in a small town called Mount Morris. The people in upstate NY are wonderful and very friendly and polite. I have had a handful of "political" conversations with strangers at restaurants and they have been very civil and measured. I was surprised how may locals supported Ramaswamy's campaign. Anyhow, thanks for this article.
Thanks to everyone who commented. Very heartfelt. It’s going to take all of us to get this mess straightened out. Trump has his problems, but he loves and understands the working man. I think he is the only answer for now. We have got to do some something about the left leaning federal goverment. It is too big and is out of touch with the real America.
Leave it to Democrats to crap all over white rural voters, and then bemoan white, rural, anger. What, precisely did they expect? That people who live outside the cities would collectively yell out “Please, sir, may I have another?”
It isn't clear what great deal "Joe Biden has invested in rural development via his industrial policies and other measures, but beyond the dripping scorn for them and their lifestyle that rural Americans see every time they turn on their TV or pick up a newspaper, what they do see is Biden trying to take away their gasoline or diesel pickup truck, doubling their energy cost to heat their homes and run their farms, make groceries painfully expensive, and flood the country with drugs with unvetted, often unidentifiable, illegal immigrants from all over the world.
It would take a lot more than obvious fabrications about green jobs and "democracy" to convince these practical, patriotic people to vote for Biden.
Quite valid points here that the authors of White Rural attribute sinister or angry motives to positions that are not inherently bigoted. So the overall thesis here makes sense.
However, every well-designed study of the net fiscal or economic impact of immigration has shown that it is positive, or neutral at worst. Low-skilled immigrants in particular fill critical labor shortages and largely complement native born workers, increase aggregate demand, boost the payroll tax base, etc. Immigrants commit fewer crimes than native born and their values frequently align more closely to the traditional social values of rural America. These are all facts regardless of what rural Americans may feel about immigration. Those feelings aren’t inherently bigoted, and they are in fact shared by many urban elites, but they are still factually wrong. There have to be better ways to illustrate the overall point without peddling these misconceptions.
Center for Immigration Studies is an organization dedicated explicitly to lowering immigration to the US. It is an untrustworthy source and a statistic on whether or not someone uses a social program is meaningless without considering the total amount of public subsidy consumed and the amount of economic contributions made by immigrants.
Talk to employers in North and South Dakota, farmers in Arizona and Iowa, construction contractors in Utah about the role that immigrants play in their workforce and whether they could continue operating their businesses without immigration. You will find that when the question is depoliticized they are not nearly as short-sighted about immigration as the beltway elites that run CIS
Last time I looked rural America was feckin' EMPTY. These two numpties reckon a docked tail is wagging the dog! Dimocrats: they be stoopid. Or rather the high panjandarums of the Dimocratic Party think their clients are stupid. It could be rural America is exactly this; but they are vastly outnumbered. Theirs is a pinkie on the scale; not two ruddy great boots.
Katie Couric might want to read this article.
TheFP seems ok but still the fakery is there as this article is an example. The Democrats of 1820 with not in anyway a liberating party, they were the Slaver party, they eliminated the existence of any other party and began with single party rule and Andrew Jackson. And the article applies a modern concept of liberal and conservative as if democrats have been liberals the entire time fighting conservatives, this is completely false as I stated already there were NOT two parties back then, Whigs, know nothings and other small pointless parties could not compete against the massive democrat tyranny, it wasnt until the anti slave abolitionists all finally ended up in the republican party which formed not long before lincoln won. That was nearly 40 years of near absolute democrat party rule, they were tyranical, war mongering invaders and worst of all Slavers who eventually started a civil war. This article as rewriting democrat party history, there was no concept of modern liberal or conservative back then, they were the party of slavery and were not in anyway some sort of group fighting for the regular american, this was the party regular americans were being abused by.
This was a straight up Grift marketed to the MSNBC crowd and the blue bubble .
Nothing more nothing less . They sit on a throne of lies .
"It is true that immigrants fare somewhat better when scholars study individual, rather than household, welfare use. " - it is even more true that legal immigrants fare much better than illegal migrants. Grouping them together for any study is intellectually dishonest and any data resulting from such data is garbage by design. After legally immigrating to this country almost 30 years ago, I am yet to meet a single person in the United States who opposes legal, properly managed, immigration. Those who compare mass migration today to immigration policies before 1924, fail to understand that open borders and a welfare state cannot coexist. You cannot have both.
I'm worried about farmers. They're the focus of progressives wanting to destroy them. This is dangerous for the country, the world. We need and love our farmers!
Neither Webster nor Biddle had the technology to entice the dead to come out and vote in such vast numbers. Who needs deplorables when we have the deceased?
I would like to start a bumper sticker campaign:
"I installed your bathtub: F ... the elite"
"I butcher your steaks: F... the elite"
"I change your grandmother's diapers: F... the elite"
"I wired your fuse box: F... the elite"
"I empty your garbage: F... the elite"
"I drive your food to your grocery store: F... the elite"
That is why Trump will win in 2024: To F... the elite!