Comment on Where are all the successful "red cities"?
faythofdragons@slrpnk.net 1 day agoTo expand on what @emeralddawn45@lemmy.dbzer0.com is saying, I live rural because I don’t make enough to live in the city. My town is rapidly gentrifying and I might not afford to live next to cows any more pretty soon. City folk spend more on rent than I make in a month.
A lot of our ‘welfare queen’ perspective is colored by the fact that tax-funded services are usually concentrated in the city. I keep petitioning my county transit authority for better rural bus service, but the best they can do is make the city bus lines run every 15 minutes instead of every half an hour. Meanwhile, I’m paying uber $50 just to get to a doctor’s appointment and wait to catch a ride home when a friend gets off work. Food costs more for worse quality in rural areas, so food stamps don’t go as far as they would in the city. Welfare in the city feels like you could live like a queen off it. It’s not entirely true, because the amount you get is scaled to income, but per dollar, you do get more for your welfare in cities.
There’s also that city dwellers can get really nasty about rural folk. I’ve never voted for a republican in my life, but living out here makes people assume the worst of me. I get told that living rural means I’m a bootlicking hick that’s too stupid to know what’s good for me, so it’s hard to sell that they deserve sympathy and we don’t.
AA5B@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
I’m sure these services are a big part of it - you can’t see all the poverty assistance spread out across a wide rural region but you can see there’s no bus service.
Certainly some services only work with higher population densities, but that’s why some of us prefer cities. Rural areas have advantages too, but either way is a compromise. We each made a choice where to live.
But turn this back to what would you do? As a liberal elite urban snob, i freely agree that my ideas are not likely to work well: maybe you don’t want internet service, education, connectivity to the modern world, infrastructure, fine. But im trying and i dont know what else to try. Step up and propose something. I don’t have any say for your county but if you say you need rural bus service, I’m all for that. And I’ll go further and say we should fund intercity rail, and rural bus service to all the towns it passes, to open more of the world to both of us. Stand up, tell us what you need, and you just might get it and more …. It’s not charity it’s a pooled resource making life better for us all.
This article pisses me off a bit, because it does seem likely, but there is no one that people on the left like, who is so corrupt, spiteful, narcissistic, destructive as Trump. We’d never vote to tear everything down, including the democratic traditions that are the foundation of our society. Plus if your strength and independence is so core to your self-image, where is it? Voting for a tantrum to knock everything off the table is no one’s idea of strength. Instead of denigrating what other people try to do for you, stand up and tell us what you need. Make a proposal we can all get behind. A big difference this article misses is that we want the best for you and will act to improve your life if you meet us half away, we have the entire resources of the country pooled to help all of us, where rural MAGA voted for lashing out, for hurting people
shalafi@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
As a middle-aged, white, gun nut in the South, I’m definitely not feeling that urban liberals want the best for me. I’m liberal to the left of Obama, many of us are! But social media tells me I’m a racist cunt who should die in a fire.
AA5B@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
Did you vote for the racists and fascists? Vote for suspending human rights, kidnapping people off the streets with no due process? Current politics have really made me understand how much white privilege I have and this is the fullest time in my life that I’ve been “woke” enough to be grateful for my skin color. What is going on now is way beyond the pale.
faythofdragons@slrpnk.net 17 hours ago
Okay, this is one of those weird assumptions that people have about rural folk that I do not understand. Why does everybody assume that the 2k people living in my town don’t want any of that stuff? It’s one of the barriers I keep running into with the bus service, y’all city folk assume that we don’t want it even though we’re asking for it.
My town went blue. Most of my neighborhood are noncitizen farm workers who couldn’t vote at all. Assuming all rural areas are stereotypical alabama is frankly insulting. You get a pass, because you don’t live up here, but it’s infuriating when I hear the same bullshit coming out of locals followed with “that’s why I voted against the rural school levy, they don’t deserve it”.
Except that’s not showing up in any real way. For example, I’m currently looking at the worker retraining programs, and the closest one is 70 miles away. Why should I not complain about that?
AA5B@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
I did grow up sort of rural. I do know what it’s like to have fewer people, fewer amenities. But my town always managed to vote for at least good school funding.
But it is all politics. I started from conservative attitude and have gone much more progressive over time. Part of that is moving to a more progressive city and seeing how well it works. But most of my life it’s been “you deserve the same benefits that I have”. The same quality education, connectivity, infrastructure, all the modern amenities that make up a good quality of life. But I keep voting for that when it seems like rural conservative areas are the ones voting against it, those who would most benefit, are most against. Most of my life I could understand where they’re coming from, most of my life I could see the logic. I just can’t anymore. The modern conservative/progressive divide just doesn’t make any sense. Maybe part of it is money. In my conservative phase I cared a lot about being fiscally responsible and there was never enough money to go around. But now I have a better idea where the money comes from. It’s my money. I live in a major city that is the economic life blood of the region in a blue “donor” state that gives more to the nation than it takes. I’m voting to spend my money on your buses, your internet, your renewable energy, your education and job training so we can all benefit and I don’t understand why conservative people shit all Over that.
I also used to be conservative for strong family values, but that really seems performative and inconsistent with what I consider family values. Don’t be all self-righteous with your family values that really don’t seem to value families.
You should complain. You deserve better.
faythofdragons@slrpnk.net 13 hours ago
Pick one? We complain, and y’all go off on that whole rant in your second paragraph that boils down to ‘how can you be so ungrateful for all this help I’m giving you’, when we’re not getting help? You understand how frustrating that is, right?
AA5B@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
And yet this was one of the major points where Hillary Clinton lost. Part of her platform was greatly expanding job training opportunities. People shit all over that …. While they had a point that those haven’t always worked well in the past, at least it’s something. At least it’s better than the guy lying to everyone’s face with no intention of doing anything.
Why vote Democrat where some people would benefit from job training when you can vote for some blowhard spouting gibberish who will just make your life harder?