05-05-2018, 05:21 PM
(05-05-2018, 02:18 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(05-05-2018, 10:14 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Rural America is beginning to hurt due to the trade wars that hurt farm producers in some 'Red' states... as the People's Republic of China retaliates. Economic distress in rural areas, we must remember, made possible the New Deal coalition in the last 4T.Funny. The Democrats should've paid more attention to the economic distress going on in their rural regions a few years ago. Evidently, the Democratic party didn't realize a portion of blue America was suffering and basically in a state of crisis or simply didn't care because they weren't minorities or women seeking more financial support from government. So, how does it feel being a member of so-called white privilege?
The distress for small farmers coincides with the consolidation of farming into fewer and larger farms. The giant corporate farms clearly align with the Right, so economic distress for small farmers caused many of them to sell out if they weren't put through bankruptcy.
Economic distress for small farmers was severe in the 1920s; rural areas got burned badly before the Stock Market Crash of 1929. The technology of the tractor raised productivity while cutting crop prices even faster. As you can expect, giant farms can enjoy the benefits of economies of scale.
The banks were all-powerful in rural America, which may have fueled some of the antisemitism in the rural discontent (Banking is not a particularly Jewish activity, Jewish bankers largely confined to banks that have largely Jewish clientele in places of mass Jewish settlement, so the anger is misplaced). Bankers could make a neat profit selling foreclosed property to surviving, increasingly-giant farmers.
Prices can go so low that even the surviving giants get into financial trouble.
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.