12-10-2016, 10:38 AM
(12-09-2016, 02:01 PM)The Wonkette Wrote: I thought that this article might be of interest to posters and readers of this forum.
Quote:Who were the rural Americans that were instrumental in creating the current political reality? Joining a chorus of conversations on this topic comes the Census Bureau, bearing fresh data that helps paint a clearer, more nuanced picture of this famously aggrieved segment of the American population.
Home ownership is much higher in rural America, and it is higher in some very poor rural communities than in prosperous urban areas. Of course, there may be some who live in tiny apartments in the cities during the workweek and return to the rural homestead on weekends and holidays, which might make some economic sense. But even without poverty, the landlord-tenant relationship is almost never one of chumminess. Owning a home makes one an asset-owner who sees taxes to pay, taxes that obviously cut into one's dreams of conspicuous consumption even if the tax revenue is collected for acceptable reasons.
Home owners are likely to be net creditors instead of net debtors. Just to meet ordinary repairs a home-owner needs to have some savings. If one rents a furnished apartment and the refrigerator goes bad, one calls the landlord and never sees the repair bill or the cost of a replacement refrigerator.
There is much rural poverty, but that largely involves non-white minorities. Those minorities vote heavily Democratic even in rural areas, probably because the Republican Establishment is associated with people who have treated those minorities badly in the past. Culture? Rural people are not the ignorant hicks of urban legend. They get much the same cable television and pop music as their urban counterparts get (allowing for ethnic differences); they are on line; they get as much formal schooling.
Rural dwellers miss out on two-hour one-way commutes on congested ten-lane freeways and high rental costs, crowds in the cities in which they work, and of course the ugliness of urban sprawl. Rural folks are usually closer to nature in some form, even if it is only an unremarkable grove of trees. City dwellers are generally deprived of any chance of seeing natural beauty, and not surprisingly they are environmentalists.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.