Rural Rage
- Thread starter hobie1616
- Start date
Bristol-Cruiser
Super Anarchist
Back, in general, to the original topic. This rural/urban divide is not just USAnian. In reality, large urban centres in different countries - think NYC, Chicago, Toronto, Sydney, Shanghai, Rome, etc - often have more in common when it comes to things like economics and lifestyles than they do with rural parts of their countries. A lot of research has been done on so-called 'world cities' and their integration into the global economy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globalization_and_World_Cities_Research_Network
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globalization_and_World_Cities_Research_Network
Voyageur
Super Anarchist
it divides all of us. it's part of the plan. we are in this together, always. fuck the oligarchs.
- Thread starter
- #44
To the Editor:
Re “Can Anything Be Done to Assuage Rural Rage?,” by Paul Krugman (column, Jan. 27):
Mr. Krugman’s piece on rural resentment illustrates, in its inadvertent condescension, the very reasons rural people resent big-city elites.
Mr. Krugman details the reasons rural complaints about big government are wrong, noting, for example, that much more federal assistance and more investment funds go to many rural areas than come in through taxes. This misses the deeper issue: Human beings need to be needed, to feel that the work they do matters to the larger community.
For decades now the jobs that help men to feel they are contributing something essential, such as coal mining, manufacturing and farming, have been disappearing. We’ve created an economy that cuts off access to meaningful work, and then told people we’ll “help them” with welfare. Who wouldn’t resent that?
Carol Frances Johnston
Indianapolis
To the Editor:
In my town of approximately 5,000 people, there are at least five farms. Those federal farm subsidies go mostly to corporate farms, leaving family farms the crumbs. Who helps young people who want to farm to buy farmland? Who helps farmers construct decent housing for their migrant workers? Who helps food producers convert to organic farming or to crops that pay them more?
What if the government reopened the rural hospitals that were closed and subsidized them, staffing them with nurses, nurse practitioners and midwives who know when to send their patients to doctors and when to treat them on-site?
What if it helped locals revitalize Main Street, set up food co-ops when the only supermarket leaves town, and replace the only bank when it closes?
These projects will turn rural residents’ negative opinions of “the government” around.
Andi Weiss Bartczak
Gardiner, N.Y.
To the Editor:
When my kids graduated from a rural high school in upstate New York in the mid 1980s, every classmate with decent academic skills and ambition went away to college, most never to return. They were applauded and encouraged by their teachers and the community.
Those left behind must have had some feelings of resentment. While they are proud of their children’s achievement, their children and grandchildren now live far away. The kids may have picked up more liberal social values and no longer attend church.
Thus, the resentment toward “elites” in a rural area may be less that they feel disrespected, but that the elites have taken their family away. Economic issues are secondary.
William Hussey
New York
To the Editor:
As a product of rural Ohio and a current San Franciscan, I disagree with Paul Krugman’s argument about the disrespect rural Americans feel. It is not a simple manner of which side makes fun of the other.
White rural Americans have felt they have been progressively losing the culture war on the battlefield of our cultural institutions (entertainment, media, education, politics) since at least the 1960s.
These institutions have been used to change or advance views on various issues — race, gender and sexuality, political correctness, to name a few — and this has been seen as an affront to a deeply held identity rooted in faith and family traditions. This affront is where the rage comes from.
Seth Andrzejewski
San Francisco
Re “Can Anything Be Done to Assuage Rural Rage?,” by Paul Krugman (column, Jan. 27):
Mr. Krugman’s piece on rural resentment illustrates, in its inadvertent condescension, the very reasons rural people resent big-city elites.
Mr. Krugman details the reasons rural complaints about big government are wrong, noting, for example, that much more federal assistance and more investment funds go to many rural areas than come in through taxes. This misses the deeper issue: Human beings need to be needed, to feel that the work they do matters to the larger community.
For decades now the jobs that help men to feel they are contributing something essential, such as coal mining, manufacturing and farming, have been disappearing. We’ve created an economy that cuts off access to meaningful work, and then told people we’ll “help them” with welfare. Who wouldn’t resent that?
Carol Frances Johnston
Indianapolis
To the Editor:
In my town of approximately 5,000 people, there are at least five farms. Those federal farm subsidies go mostly to corporate farms, leaving family farms the crumbs. Who helps young people who want to farm to buy farmland? Who helps farmers construct decent housing for their migrant workers? Who helps food producers convert to organic farming or to crops that pay them more?
What if the government reopened the rural hospitals that were closed and subsidized them, staffing them with nurses, nurse practitioners and midwives who know when to send their patients to doctors and when to treat them on-site?
What if it helped locals revitalize Main Street, set up food co-ops when the only supermarket leaves town, and replace the only bank when it closes?
These projects will turn rural residents’ negative opinions of “the government” around.
Andi Weiss Bartczak
Gardiner, N.Y.
To the Editor:
When my kids graduated from a rural high school in upstate New York in the mid 1980s, every classmate with decent academic skills and ambition went away to college, most never to return. They were applauded and encouraged by their teachers and the community.
Those left behind must have had some feelings of resentment. While they are proud of their children’s achievement, their children and grandchildren now live far away. The kids may have picked up more liberal social values and no longer attend church.
Thus, the resentment toward “elites” in a rural area may be less that they feel disrespected, but that the elites have taken their family away. Economic issues are secondary.
William Hussey
New York
To the Editor:
As a product of rural Ohio and a current San Franciscan, I disagree with Paul Krugman’s argument about the disrespect rural Americans feel. It is not a simple manner of which side makes fun of the other.
White rural Americans have felt they have been progressively losing the culture war on the battlefield of our cultural institutions (entertainment, media, education, politics) since at least the 1960s.
These institutions have been used to change or advance views on various issues — race, gender and sexuality, political correctness, to name a few — and this has been seen as an affront to a deeply held identity rooted in faith and family traditions. This affront is where the rage comes from.
Seth Andrzejewski
San Francisco
Pertinacious Tom
Importunate Member
All the subsidies that were supposed to help the family farmer wound up going to ADM and other agriconglomerates, so let's have some more subsidies, but THIS time they're really going to go to the politically powerless instead of the politically powerful.
Sorry, don't have a pic of Lucy with the football handy.
The maw of nihilism affects most people at some point in their life. Why am I here? Why do I matter? Why does any of this matter? People will decry religion as the opiate of the masses, but as Nietzsche pointed out, if you kill God, you have to replace it with something. We've tried lots of options - nationalism, racism, tribalism, hedonism, humanism, and a range of other -isms. The most common circle of altruism was family. And now, even that's fading.
This is all part of being human - which is why it mimics across cultures. There is no single answer. There's never been a single answer. Everyone wants to matter. Everyone needs to be the hero of their own story, in some way.
If the goal is to produce tons of food, factory farming will always win out, by a large margin. Steam shovels beat sledge hammers. If you want individuals to matter, you have to make it possible for their individual contributions to survive through the supply chain.
This is all part of being human - which is why it mimics across cultures. There is no single answer. There's never been a single answer. Everyone wants to matter. Everyone needs to be the hero of their own story, in some way.
If the goal is to produce tons of food, factory farming will always win out, by a large margin. Steam shovels beat sledge hammers. If you want individuals to matter, you have to make it possible for their individual contributions to survive through the supply chain.
Last edited:
phillysailor
Super Anarchist
- 9,692
- 4,438
Man, the letters to the editor posted by @hobie1616 really prove the point, don’t they?
Those folks are screaming out for some socialism to save their embattled family farms and rural hospitals, but their institutions and media sources are telling them to hate the government and the democratic process which might bring saving legislation.
Their institutions and media have driven their kids away, so they resent the institutions and media built by their kids and resent their newfound “wokeness”. Rather than look in the mirror and see what is pushing their kids away (bigotry? Intolerance?) they seek to blame Soros and the NYT.
Time for those rural folks to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and get some diversity in their approach to life.
Those folks are screaming out for some socialism to save their embattled family farms and rural hospitals, but their institutions and media sources are telling them to hate the government and the democratic process which might bring saving legislation.
Their institutions and media have driven their kids away, so they resent the institutions and media built by their kids and resent their newfound “wokeness”. Rather than look in the mirror and see what is pushing their kids away (bigotry? Intolerance?) they seek to blame Soros and the NYT.
Time for those rural folks to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and get some diversity in their approach to life.
Steam Flyer
Sophisticated Yet Humble
They put the finger on the culprit, corporate ownership... then give it a complete pass and blame the goddam libby-rull elites.
It's like they've been brainwashed.
... oh, wait
It's like they've been brainwashed.
... oh, wait
Bristol-Cruiser
Super Anarchist
Stepping back a bit to look at the bigger picture, I think this situation, and many other problems we face, are all about change and our ability - or lack of same - to handle it. An important consideration in all this is the rate of change. The agricultural revolution happened over many generations and any particular generation didn't see the change happening because is was so slow. Now change of all sorts, technological, societal, personal, happens incredibly quickly, well within a generation, and can be seen as threatening traditional values or institutions whether it is the family farm, the role of religion in society (could be Christian here, Islam or Hinduism elsewhere), acceptance of difference gender and sexuality positions.
When we divide people up into conservative and democratic tribes (and it is increasingly tribal), I think we dividing on the basis of willingness/ability to deal with change.
When we divide people up into conservative and democratic tribes (and it is increasingly tribal), I think we dividing on the basis of willingness/ability to deal with change.
I don't even think that's accurate.
In one case the writer is upset that their children went to college and were congratulated about it! Because that's somehow destroying their family. They can't even imagine that maybe their children DON'T WANT TO BE FARMERS.
I mean... Jesus christ.
every classmate with decent academic skills and ambition went away to college, most never to return. They were applauded and encouraged by their teachers and the community.
Those left behind must have had some feelings of resentment.
If this is what they want, they are going to have to stop voting Republican. That's going to be a tough sell.
SloopJonB
Super Anarchist
But they hate, hate, hate socialism and consistently vote Republlcunt no matter how insane the candidate.
It's hard to sympathize with that.
Steam Flyer
Sophisticated Yet Humble
I have some sympathy for them, and I feel bad for the way they keep shooting themselves in the foot.
But it really fucking pisses me off that they insist on shooting ME in the foot (or anywhere)
While completely ignoring the fact that Trumps Sec of Ag was doing all he could do to promote the giving of those funds to the cooperate farms instead of the family farms as a matter of policy.
billy backstay
Backstay, never bought a suit, never went to Vegas
Fixed
jerseyguy
Super Anarchist
Glad you posted that. I was going to.
Thanks. As a college educated guy, who was typing that in his office at a university, I am going to hang my head in shame for such an obvious misspelling. If I had been home, I could have blamed it on drinking or my tablet's autocorrect.
Olsonist
Disgusting Liberal Elitist
Tom will be along shortly to tell us that corporations is people too. So when his boy Shitstain doled out free money to hard working corporations, his boy was really giving it to persons of the clay, persons of the New West, you know, corporations. Well, that and Hillary.
billy backstay
Backstay, never bought a suit, never went to Vegas
From a college dropout, "school of hard knocks" guy, just blame it on voice to text!!
Blue Crab
benthivore
The current S of AG served in the job under Obama. So he has a lot of time on the job already. Trouble is in the interim he was CEO of a dairy lobby at a M per.
