White Rural Trump Supporters Are a Threat to Democracy
In the popular imagination of many Americans, particularly those on the left side of the political spectrum, the typical MAGA supporter is a rural resident who hates Black and Brown people, loathes liberals, loves gods and guns, believes in myriad conspiracy theories, has little faith in democracy, and is willing to use violence to achieve their goals, as thousands did on Jan. 6.
According to a new book, White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy, these aren’t hurtful, elitist stereotypes by Acela Corridor denizens and bubble-dwelling liberals… they’re facts.
The authors, Tom Schaller, a professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and Paul Waldman, a former columnist at The Washington Post, persuasively argue that most of the negative stereotypes liberals hold about rural Americans are actually true.
The electorial college is a threat to democracy.
But neither political party wants to hand that control over to voters.
We need a critical mass of progressive politicians in office before we can fix the system, which is why they're everyone else's biggest political enemy
The funny thing is the electoral college was designed to counter exactly this event. In the case an absolute tyrant is going to get voted in, the electoral college is supposed to be the last chance to challenge it. But with the way the GOP is going, ain't no one gonna challenge anything.
As they say, the devil will come bearing a cross wrapped in the American flag.
The GOP has shown, and proven, they will use any and all means necessary, including violence, to gain power. This isn't theoretical anymore.
I'm so tired of my family members and other people that identify as "centralist" saying that both sides are bad.
No....only one side has used violence to overthrow an election. And that side's political leadership said it was "normal political discourse".
If both sides are the same, then you should be upset that "both sides" are violent.
Well, both sides are bad. Your argument is Trump is far worse. Which as an American you should feel that way. Because Trump would be fucking horrible for America. But if you were Palestinian, you'd definitely prefer Trump as he might pull support from Israel.
Thus, the problem today isn't that there is a good guy, it's choosing which genocide you support. Do you support the genocide of Palestinians or Ukrainians. Either way, you get to vote for genocide. Clearly the US is a shining example of democracy.
*Edit: Those who are wondering why Trump would support Palestine, it's simple, he's a Russian puppet. It serves him to switch sides to get more money from Russia. Obviously, Trump wouldn't do something that doesn't benefit him, but when you're half a billion dollars in the hole, uncle Putin is going to come to save the day. If Trump wins of course.
Half the GOP wants to turn Gaza to glass. You can't seriously think Trump would be better for Palestinians.
Since when did anyone day that? Stop shutting down any criticism of Biden. We have the right to be angry
From OP
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/08/us/politics/israel-republican-candidates-debate.html
GOP on Gaza. Glass may be a slight exaggeration, but they are 100% behind Israel.
There are valid criticisms of Biden. But trying to claim the GOP would be better for Palestine is horrendously naive at best.
That's in the comment they were replying to.
what universe would trump help anyone but himself? lmfaooo
I would like to know what DC Elseworlds dimension you're talking about when you say Trump and the GOP would be an improvement or preferable to the Palestinians. There's literally no evidence of that and decades of evidence, statements, and policies to the contrary.
Biden is trying to play politics, sidestep dealing with a genocide, and avoid trying to change the US stance with Israel. It's a shit position he needs to change. He's also receiving a ton of push back from within his own party and base.
Trump fully supports the genocide, the entire party he represents supports it, and would be glad to have Palestine wiped from the map. How anyone can say that Trump could be perceived as an improvement in any way is beyond me.
He's just stirring. Everyone knows Trump doesn't give a damn about the Palestanis. And that bullshit about him being on the take from Russia. These are all neocon talking points. Maybe he's saying Trump would be pro Pal to chip away at him with the pro Israel nutters who are practically the most lowerful lobby in Washington.
Firstly who cares who a Palestinian thinks about an American presidential election? Next Why on earth would you imagine that Trump would withdraw "support" from Israel. Our support is mostly selling them arms. He supports Israel. He supports their actions.
You're as nuts as the poor country hocms being deride here.
That was the story, but the real reason was the existing tyrants didn't want to be overthrown either.
You have to have a realistic view of what we started out with to understand why 99% of the people in politics don't want to change it.
At the end of the day, America has never really been a democracy. And the people who can change that just don't want to.
It's just easiest to hold onto that power when we think change is just an election away. It's a lot of elections away, we can't just win one and go home. It's a war not a battle.
This is correct and the actual point of the story.
I read the MSNBC article about this book last week and came away with “Wyoming’s 600,000 residents hold the same influence as California’s 39 million.”
Right?? Seems like gerrymandering is the bigger threat to democracy here.
"mass of progressive politicians" so you want every single person in America to think, act, feel, and vote the same? That doesn't happen anywhere in the world...well, except communist countries of course.
That's not what they said. Progressive is just basically rational. Progressives think differently about things all the time. It isn't really a nailed-down ideology of any sort.
Whereas conservatives are notable for not thinking much about anything at any time. Besides their fears. Having no discernible ideology themselves other than they want what they want. And they need someone to hate and scapegoat.
An liberals are? Why do these articles always attack one side? I live in California, I'm seeing first hand what these extreme liberal views are doing. There's people literally fighting for the right to allow the homeless to use drugs, shoot up heroin, and shit and piss wherever they want... it's ridiculous. And don't get me started on the petty crime that's being ignored..because apparently, according to liberals, we need to completely revamp our criminal and judicial system because people who steal shit shouldn't be going to prison... it's fucking ridiculous.
More so than conservatives? Absolutely. Still not great. Also remember that progressives!=liberals. Some liberals are mildly progressive sure. Not enough of them or progressive enough.
The reason articles tend to attack a specific side pretty regularly. Is because they're abjectly horrible and significantly worse than the next worst group around. Which happens to be liberals. Who are also very shit.
Nah, Saint Ronnie shuttering mental hospitals national wide. Pushing those people out on to the streets untreated. Is literally what caused all of that. But that's blasphemy to say inn'it? You expect the state or police to have the time or funds to police such things. While closing the only, already inadequate system focused on taking care of those people. While voting at every turn to starve state and federal government of funds and resources to actually handle such situations. Irrationally frothing at the mouth about how your parties actions are all the fault of those evil liburuls!
Prison should only be a solution for those that pose an actual threat to society. Petty theft and drug use ain't it. It's pretty inhuman and grotesque the way you treat it as some garbage dump to permanently dispose of people you don't like. Especially irrational when your realize that they'll get out eventually. But that not only is recidivism far too high because prison doesn't actually address any actual problems. It actually trains them to be better criminals.
This is exactly what I was talking about. You're behaving irrational and vindictive. Blaming everyone but yourself for the problems you create and seek to exacerbate as a "conservative". You complain about people complaining about the failures of the system, even as you champion the failed system. Putting it's failures on the group your cult told you to hate. It's 100% bananas. And you refuse to see it.
I'll rag on liberals all day long. I barely have even faint praise to give them sparingly. But my god, conservatives somehow make them seem reasonable.
I'm always amazed that a bunch of redneck, Southern, city haters decided that a rich, Manhattan developer was one of them
Don’t be. They’re rubes. Dumber than dogshit. Just pawns in a game.
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Hard to give them a decent education when they defund the school systems because 'muh taxes' and denigrate their teachers and everything else public Ed ('ceptin the "pride of the town", the HS football team, because that one QB is gonna git scouted 'cuz he' s got a helluva arm)
Sorry, one more thought. No one ever voted for "let's impoverish rural america" just like no one ever voted for "let's make sure teachers can barely afford to live on their salary, while also expecting them to be the primary source of education for literally everyone in the country." Teachers (and many other groups) have a lot of righteous anger too. I don't see them doing what maga is doing, and I wouldn't expect them to get a pass if they did.
While I am more than OK laying much of this at the feet of corporate greed, I'm less so inclined to lay much of it at the feet of average non-rural folks just trying to get to work and feed their families every day. As you say - they've got the same requirement to do so as the magas.
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That's a fair point of view that I can't argue with!
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Social welfare programs, student loan forgiveness, higher education/tuition reform, minimum wage increases, UBI, single payer healthcare and on and on and on benefit EVERYONE, not just people who vote D or live in blue states. (Barring potential interference from R governors)
That doesn't mean there may not be some valid criticism about some of those programs, or that we might not have to experiment over time to get them right.
But it's VERY hard to have sympathy for folks who constantly vote against the party who proposes those (imperfect) solutions and participate in the vilification of those programs and that party, especially when they INSTEAD vote for the party who plainly has the interest of only one demographic in mind, and is actively trying to fuck over everyone not in that demographic.
We can't even try those things which may help them (and others), because they will never let us.
Edit: Final para of the article offers a similar summary:
They are the cause of their own downfall and reject any ideas that might help them. They deserve no pity. They've earned their place in the intellectual hierarchy. The smart ones all leave for cities with no plans to return.
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I'm not sure what your point is. Being a farmer doesn't make one worthy of worship. It also has no bearing on what I said. Most rural people are not farmers.
At least you know you're among the most stupid, so you've got that going for you.
The farmers I know, the ones that were able to actually keep their farms, generally aren't voting for the dumbass who caused crops to rot in their fields.
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You have no idea what I do and do not know.
By your own reasoning as you've outlined it, you are the one looking in the mirror here.
You are presuming a whole lot about me here based on very little, which is hilarious and yet sad.
I stand by what I said. Your attempt to disparage me is about you. If you had any interest in proving me wrong, you would be able to do so with facts instead of lashing out at me like a wounded animal.
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Your lack of self awareness on your approach here, your inability to recognizing how you're making me into a caricature while complaining that I am characterizing others is truly bizarre.
I wonder if makes you feel superior to me. You're dehumanizing me and can't see it. Crazy.
You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons.
Are you referencing when Trump said he liked dumb voters? He knew he could get them to vote against their interests, their family interests and anything that would improve their lives. But yeah. "Screw that group of people I think I am better than"
Accurately pointing out what they are. In no way implies they have a monopoly. Despite democrats being measurably better by nearly every metric. They are still largely problematic and often do little to actually serve their constituents.
To be fair he went out among them and convinced them of that.
Maggie Haberman the journalist says that one of the things about Trump that is undeniably genius is his way of charming the people he wants to support him. That's how he won, by connecting with these people. It is his one singular talent.
It’s like they’ve never seen a Pace Picante Sauce commercial before.
Man that unlocked a memory from my youth...
They simply deny everything you present to them. Facts do not matter. They are literally living in their own imagination and refuse to accept reality. It is time to reopen the mental institutions and throw them back in, along with the ACLU clowns who let them out to begin with.
My gods y'all say some legitimately evil shit sometimes.
Defending against violent fascists is evil?
I know what side you're on now.
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I cant help but notice that your path of pacifism and "incremental change" has led to the rapid and accelerating rise of fascism....so until you can come up with a solution that has actually worked historically as well as mine has, you have no business trying to ivory tower your "superiority complex.
By the way, wtf does "less than a month old" mean? How is that relevant? Exactly what gate are you keeping, and by whose authority? How old are you? Were you born in the 90s or after? Do you have any concept of a world before cable news was able to spew nonstop propaganda and the airwaves weren't saturated with constant radical fascist garbage? I can assure you that there is no possible way that I could be their equal in any way whatsoever. You would probably have nothing to compare to to know that.
Reagan shutdown the mental institutions.
Whatever hatred you have for the ACLU is based on your ignorance.
Deleted - you weren't making the point I thought you were. Still though - yikes.
Rural America is mostly a wasteland. It's either where people of means deliberately choose to live away from society, or it's people who are too ignorant, poor and/or drug-addled to have much choice. Neither group is going to be left-leaning... and that's why when you look at electoral maps, you see all that red.
Pick a highway, any will do, travel along it and tell me what you see. I already know. One little failed town after another. They might have a dive bar or ancient gas station, but most commercial buildings will be long abandoned. If you need anything, you'll have to find a decent city with a generic walmart, dollar general, mcdonalds, etc. Long gone are the mom-and-pop grocers, general stores, etc.
The irony is these are solid red Republican districts. Cities have major problems too, but they are full of action; plans, projects, hopes of a better future. There is no future for the average rural American.
They are frustrated and angry, as well they should be. Too bad they can't see the forest through the trees.
As a resident of one of these towns, another issue is that many people who are knowledgeable or capable are simply trapped. Several years ago in the area I live we use to have an economic development council that sponsored some proposals on alternatives to the anchor industry here (coal fired power generation), I shit you not, one of the remarks made by the workshops was a reference to a 2017 WSJ article that stated "rural is the new ‘inner city.’”
Rural areas have, and I'm quoting someone who presented at a workshop "lower economic status, lower education levels, higher wage gap, poorer health, higher rates of teen birth, and greater impacts from the opioid epidemic."
The largest obstacle facing the trapped knowledgeable and educated people in rural areas is the obscene fucking cost of housing and the double-negative we're facing on having little equity and cheap housing, where we want to move somewhere desirable and progressive having housing that's beyond our lifetime earnings potential.
For the ignorant, this feeds into the anger cycle of wanting to just burn the whole thing down, and for the reds they look at every way they can fuck things up for the rest of us as a middle finger back at the country for the squalor they're stuck with. They'd rather burn the forest down than try to fix anything, because they're also lazy. Lazy in the sense of not wanting or accepting change. They'll work hard at what they know, but learning new concepts is pushed against.
That doesn't make it right, and I agree with you on all counts. Unity would get them a hell of a lot farther than the same tired old Reagan rhetoric they peddle. I'm just extremely fortunate in threading the needle through economic transition and getting to stay at my house without worrying about having to move, and I don't like the city after having grown up in the Bay Area California. What you said still resonates with me as I can tell you understand it. We have no action plan and no hope because these towns are full of people who would just rather be angry than change.
So true.
One thing you can be sure of is that they all have a dollar store.
I have these stereotypes, because I've met these people. I used to live among them. So many Confederate flags in northern Michigan
Yeah I know they’re facts. I spend far too much time as a semi-passing trans woman in rural America. I think a lot of people overestimate the proportions of these people, I’ve met so many thoughtful, kind, and progressive hicks, hillbillies, and other rural sorts.
But the fact is I’ve never seen passive aggressive Bible verses on mailboxes in cities. I’ve never heard an educated urban coworker rant and rave about how blm protesters are funded by George soros. I’ve never seen city folk wear a mask that says “government control device” on it or carry a Bible with them onto a factory floor or put newsmax on the company share point.
And the armed city folk I know are far more likely to be responsible gun owners and not have a couch gun. Jesus fucking shit so many people talk about their fucking couch gun and they always act like it’s reasonable and normal and every gun owner has one instead of the reality that that’s not a safe place to have a gun. They also don’t realize that you shouldn’t advertise owning the only thing that gets more valuable when stolen, especially not by putting a bumper sticker saying one is in the fucking car.
I'm sorry... couch gun??? Like they just shove a gun into the couch cushions? What the hell kind of purpose would that serve? Opening a beer can or turning on the tv? Or are they all just living in constant paranoia of someone kicking their door in and trying to kill them?
Or turning around in their driveways apparently
I couldn’t tell you. It boggles the mind in fact. This is so normal to these people that no explanation is necessary
Usually this means one accessible while sitting on the couch. Not necessarily in the couch cushions.
Home invasion. Exceedingly unlikely but some folks are paranoid. Same basic logic as having a gun in a bedside table, but for when you aren't in bed.
The funny part is if one ever did want to attack these rural folks, the logical method would be use literal fire. A drone would prevent having to risk their weapons. Then let their ammo hoards do the work. Use the drone against anyone who flees.
They seem to think people want to break in and rape and pillage but they're so over invested in fire power there is nothing much to steal and rape is more their thing than the left's.
They are not ready for a real apocalypse scenario or an invading force because as you've noted, we all assume they are heavily armed and their defense begins and ends with their gun fantasies.
Minor correction to your relatively insane post, but rounds that cook off generally don't have enough velocity to really do any significant damage, especially when they're not exposed out in the open.
Holy shit, the couch gun is normal? Here I thought I was just seeing some weird and rare manifestation of growing up in a rural area as a kid.
It is only in rural areas that I see this shit. Maybe in some of the type of suburbs where people daily drive a pickup truck
Our style of government is the largest threat to democracy.
We need to eliminate the electoral college, primaries, the Senate, President restricted to 1 term, perhaps 6 years, term limits for the House, All elections publicly funded, No reason elections cant be conducted via encrypted open source app, where voting can be done remotely and checks in place to ensure the vote has been tallied. No party affiliation on any campaign documents, signs, advertisements, no straight ticket voting.
I love the theory, but considering that every week we see some headline about some digital fraud or another, I think there is a great reassurance in keeping democracy as analogue as possible
Hanging chads...
Well yeah ok.
I support this entirely, but good fucking luck
The US can't even figure out giving IDs to its citizens, what makes you think they can make a cryptographically secure voting app? Not to mention that all forms of electronic voting opens up new attack vectors, which will definitely be exploited.
Just make election day a public holiday, make mail-in voting easier and assign enough polling stations with sufficient personnel to prevent long queues.
You know, the deriders of this bring up some good points, but I'd also like to bring up the point that digitally secured voting doesn't really need to be a super great solution. It would be great if it was, sure, but it doesn't need to be great, it just needs to be better than the alternative, which is pretty easy, I think. Voting analog is not necessarily a very secure way to vote either, as many people who remember the "hanging chads" issue will be quick to point out. It's also a pretty massive inconvenience for some people, which shouldn't really be discounted as a thing that prevents people from voting. "Oh but if they can't spare the time we don't want their votes anyways", but then you gotta keep in mind that in some places the wait times are gonna be multiple hours upon hours, and maybe days.
In any case, if you still wanted analog voting for any particular reason, you could still keep it open as a backup, which might not be a bad idea generally.
The 17th should be reverted and Senators should be elected by the state legislatures, not abolished altogether. It should serve it's intended purpose as the voice of the States. The Electoral College also still serves a purpose, but all states should be proportional delegate instead of winner take all. Ranked Choice or something similar is also needed, because FPTP always results in 2 shitty parties and is a root cause of many of our issues.
The House definitely need to be unlocked and proportional to population. Term limits are needed in both House and Senate, and money definitely needs to be removed from politics. Government provided war chests and that's all you get, hard agree on that. Hard agree on no ads, no PACs, etc. Get your message out in debates and town halls in an actual real campaign.
The states do not need a voice that is not proportionate to the population. If you want to have a second body with the indirection through state legislature, that maybe good, but it needs to be promotional allocated or vastly reduxed in power. Likely both.
Why do you think that the States don't need a voice in Government? The country is divided between the Federal Government, the State Governments, and the People, with the former being elected by the latter 2. Each State having the same number (2) of Senators puts all States on an equal level. Wyoming is just as valid a state as California or Texas, and should have an equal voice. Proportional representation in the House puts the each person on the same level, eliminating the current unbalance between Wyoming and California.
The People elect their local/state legislatures, which influences those who appoint their Senators, but the People and the State have different perspectives and prerogatives as they have different "jobs". It's certainly fallen out of style, but the whole "everything not explicitly granted to the Federal Government belongs to the States" is still a thing. We are a Republic of States, or are supposed to be at least.
I for one want more States to experiment with things like Universal Healthcare (Massachusetts), UBI (Alaska, kind of?), etc. They can do this because they are States in a Republic.
We should also get rid of the two party system by introducing a party chartered to only support or oppose things that multiple 3rd party polls find over one standard deviation from the norm support.
It's insane that given a political distribution that's normal for most topics we arbitrarily divide it into two halves rather than focusing on the center.
Even as someone who would fall to the left of the first standard deviation, I'd much rather live in a world where there was consistent stability around the norms as I fought to move the social norms in my preferred direction over time than live in a world where there's a 50% chance of Nazis being a thing again.
A significant majority of the county agrees on a surprisingly broad number of major topics, and yet we're divided into two camps currently being driven more and more by outspoken fringes that represent less and less of the general population, with everyone else falling in line out of a greater fear of the "other team."
You are seriously underestimating just how many people don't have smartphones (22.5 million eligible voters in the US). A number of your other suggestions are good, but the idea of all digital voting needs at least some form of backup option for people who either have hardware access issues or digital competency issues.
My friend's in-laws in rural Missouri are cutting holes into the walls to store guns in for whatever version of the apocalypse they believe is coming.
They are just more empathetic than you realize. They just put themselves in the shoes of the black/brown people and were like:
For what!?!
What the hell did some stupid farmer in the bumbfuck middle of nowhere do to warrant being shot in their home by people of a different skin color?
Some racist asshole living in a rural inbred community where everyone looks the same because their family tree has the same roots of people who never left their own poverty stricken hellhole didn't actually do shit to anyone outside of voting the way they were themselves indoctrinated.
There's definitely a lot of far right idiots being worked up into a frenzy of normalized violence that's very concerning.
But in one of the rare instances of legit "both sides-ism" I'm starting to see a very concerning trend of the far left giving in more and more to the language of normalized violence too.
I have a feeling both sides of this are useful idiots with the same hand pulling the strings, but c'mon dude - use your critical thinking skills before regurgitating rhetoric like that mindlessly.
Perhaps, you just missed out the sarcastic use of "empathetic" in my post.
The media made them paranoid. No one is actually coming for them. Also, many rural communities put so much effort into making non-white lives miserable (that includes voting to sustain systematic racism); to them retaliation isn't out of the realms of possibility because that is what THEY would do if THEY were put in the same position.
How can you complain about “both sides-ism” when you randomly bring up leftists? What even are the two sides here? There's paranoid rural people and their news. That's all.
Isn't this a tad much? Not all rural people are racist and inbred.
Truth. They also let people on sites like "Truth" and social media grifters tell them shit like "Public schools are turning your kids trans!" and they eat it up.
Yeah, but they get their handful of cases they can use to prop those narratives up, like that girl who decided she was trans, went on T and got a double mastectomy all while still a minor, then desisted and is now generally unhappy since she's decided she's a girl again but there are permanent effects from going on T and she had her breasts removed (she's basically the right wing face of desisting). Or the one school that defended helping students socially transition while keeping it secret from their parents. If you ever ask the "public schools are turning your kids trans" folks for evidence that what they are saying is actually happening you eventually get pointed to one of a few cases like those.
In the case of the school helping students socially transition without telling the parents, being a parent myself, I can understand how upset those parents might be, but the public school was probably told not to tell the parents for fear that the parents might not take it well. That's a lot of parents. If my son came to me and said he did not feel right as a boy, I would respect his feelings, and support and help and empathize. Not many others would. At the school district in question, there would be so many kids pulled out of school and sent to Christian indoctrination centers to be forced to see themselves how their parents what them to see themselves.
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say tribalism probably isn't going to be what bring us together as a country, but hey, what do I know?
I know someone whose grandmother died some years ago and when they were cleaning out her house and doing some reno to it, they kept finding hatchets stored in places that would be accessible in case something went down, including several concealed inside walls. Apparently if things turned bad, granny was going to go down axe in hand. This feels like the same energy, just with more money to hide more expensive weapons.
Ok but that is a tiny bit funny, the mental image of it.
I think the best solution to this issue is to change the calculus of representation. The article mentions that rural areas have out-sized representation, but it only discusses the senate. The house, as well, has out-sized representation for rural areas. For example, California has approximately one Representative for every 749,000 people, while Montana has one Representative for every 560,000 people.
I think that to truly honor the idea of "one person, one vote", 3 steps need to be taken:
Abolish the electoral college
Dissolve the Senate, leaving the House as the only Legislative body
Dramatically scale up the number of representatives in the House, and tie representative count directly to population.
I'd love to see, for example, 1 representative for every 250,000 people, or something similar. That would push us from the current 435 to about 1,340 representatives, which would definitely require a new chamber for sessions. But it would also mean that demographic groups would be much better represented, and it would be much more difficult for batshit insane people like Marjorie Taylor Green to get or remain elected. If you're representing fewer people, those people have more incentive to vote.
And it's not like growing the House is a far-fetched idea. In fact, it is baked into the constitution. Article I, Section 2 says that the number of representatives should be directly tied to the population, with each representative representing no more than 30,000 people, and that adjustments to the size of the House should occur after every 10 year census:
And this is what happened, with the size of the House growing every 10 years up until, in 1929, they decided to keep it constant based on the figures from the 1930 survey. Having a cap on the number of representatives harms democracy. We can see the results in the decaying towns of rural America, and the batshit insane cultists who want to overthrow our government and install a fascistic theocracy.
You misread the passage. It doesn't say
It says
That means the opposite of what you said: each representative should represent no less than 30,000 people.
Whoops, my bad. You are absolutely correct, of course.
This is a direct consequence of the House being a fixed size. The method used minimizes the average difference in people/representative for any two states. You literally can't make it any better so long as the House is a set number of people, and increasing the size of the House to be one Rep per X people creates practical and logistical issues as regards meetings and floor debate and the like.
The reality is you have a couple of tiny states that get outsized representation by having the minimum one representative, and you have California that is just so much higher population than any other state that it blows the scale on the other end. For the rest of the states, it actually works pretty well. I've joked before that we don't really **need ** two Dakotas and Montoming would be a perfectly good name for another merged state. Or chop California into several pieces.
The US election system that gives these people completely disproportionate political influence is a threat to democracy.
Headlines like this are problematic. I think we can all agree that Trump has done a lot of damage to democracy in the US, but are rural Trump supporters really more dangerous than urban Trump supporters? That claim is suspect, and the article provides no evidence to support it (it provides evidence that most Trump supporters are rural, which is a totally different claim.)
And saying that white rural Trump supporters are worse than non-white rural Trump supporters is an even more serious claim. It's racially discriminatory, and seems totally baseless in this article.
The article has no evidence of these claims, and seems to indicate that the book doesn't even make the claims of the headline.
(I'm not objecting to the claims that Trump supporters are mostly rural and mostly white. That is common knowledge.)
65% of rural America voted for Trump in 2020 nearly half 47% believe the election was stolen that's half of all rurals not half of rural Republicans. Support for political violence is high with 1 in 3 Republicans nationwide and higher yet in rural America. It is easier for violence to take root where their is monocultural acceptance of the false premises used to justify it.
Listen, I'm as blue as my balls on prom night, but we'd have a huge problem if the right said some shit like this.
I think I'll withhold judgement until reading the book. Partly due to my own confirmation bias, but also partly:
I've always just imagined they're more susceptible to manipulation. Primarily getting news by word of mouth, the TV, or radio.
That’s definitely probably part of it, but I think the biggest issue is homogeneity. Racism is hard when you can chat with black and brown people regularly. You aren’t hating some perceived immigrants but an actual human being that you know. Especially in places like the rural north and Midwest there was no mass movement of black people there. Similarly people will hate on Muslims in rural Kentucky but not in Dearborn Michigan.
And it’s not just racism. Queer people have always existed everywhere. But rural queer people are often much less open about it and often move away including before coming out. So people in bumfuck nowhere either dont have any queer people anymore, or their queer people are closeted or invisible.
Educated people also tend to prefer urban or suburban areas. Yeah maybe you’ve got a few lawyers or people who went to a local Christian college, and if you have a factory it has some engineers for sure. And you definitely have people who went to agricultural college. But you don’t have professors or scientists or people with humanities degrees. And notice those degrees I mentioned are overwhelmingly white and male programs. You can get them and not make black or brown or queer or even female acquaintances in school.
By and large more rural areas got affordable or accessible internet access much later so they are more succeptable to scams as well.
Ok, I was well aware of the gun fetishism, but I gotta say that the polytheism is very surprising!
The most generous interpretation of Christianity is that it's monotheish. The Doctrine of the Trinity is like crypto: you can't understand it unless you believe in it.
Maybe they mean the sometimes not so subtle differences in worship by various sects of Christianity?
I think it's funny that they call themselves monotheistic and then do these verbal gymnasics to keep that true (like calling other deities 'saints' or claiming that Jesus is god's son but also 100% the same entity as god - oh yeah and that holy spirit thing too).
You mean you're NOT your own dad, and also a disembodied spirit? I thought everyone was!
It's fact. I live in KY. Many are stupider than you think.
I visited the bourbon trail area. Everyone was lovely to talk with but that was as long as things stayed superficial..
It's weird because the leaked Parler account maps showed the density of membership was in red parts of cities. Less in rural.
Is that maybe just because there's more people in cities? Rather than a higher concentration of parker users compared to the general population
Yes. People in rural areas aren't using parler, they're on Facebook like all the other boomers.
And what us the consequence from this observation?
you can remember that you hate your parents some more
Is this irony?
-Michael Cohen, Author of OP Article
-George Carlin
If they didn't do solid fieldwork, I'd be skeptical. Material conditions partly explain why people are the way they are, can't see liberals changing that.
As demonstrated by this book written by elitists, Acela Corridor denizens and bubble-dwelling liberals.
Point made. Depending on where exactly Waldman currently resides they might both be 3/3.
We looked at some data and sources intending specifically to justify our prejudices and found that our prejudices were in fact justified! Who knew!
Kill all the natives and take their land. Manifest Destiny
I just love how if you don't vote Democrat, or you don't have liberal views, you're a "threat to democracy." I swear, if it was up to some of you, we'd be a one party system, with every single American thinking the EXACT same way...
Nah, I mean, I was around when George Bush was the guy. I didn't like him, I didn't feel he was a good leader, or fit for the office. I would try to convince people not to support him or the war(s) in the middle east. But he was not a threat to democracy. Except maybe through The Patriot Act...
There was a lot of things I didn't agree with that Mitt Romney believes. I think voting him in would have been regressive and bad for gay people, etc, who I care about. I think he is wrong about things. But he's not a threat to democracy. I belive that he believes the things he claims to believe, and that he believes in his heart that he's doing the right thing. I just disagree with him.
John McCain seemed like an honorable man. Again, I felt that his priorities and mine didn't line up, but he was nowhere near a threat to democracy.
The reason this dude is a threat to democracy is because he has openly and repeatedly disregarded voting and the function of government, which is kinda democracy's whole thing. If the votes don't count, and the results don't follow the will of the voters, then it's not a democratic system. If you systematically choose to make it so some segment of your citizens cannot vote, or their voices are not heard, then it's not a democratic system.
Didn't actually read the article did ya?
Hint: the article isn't saying all Republicans are a threat to democracy. It's saying that those who hold anti-democratic views--e.g. election denialism, supporting returning Trump to power by force, etc--are predominantly rural white Republicans.
Those are just facts. You can either accept those facts or join those folks in denying reality.
We both know the article is basically saying that one party is a threat, and the other can just do whatever they want. It's been like that forever now... Republicans= bad, Democrats= good.
Denialism it is, then! Very well, carry on.
No one is forcing R leadership to be morally bankrupt enablers of fascism.
R invited the bogeyman in because it was the only way they thought they could win. And now they have a problem.
We're not forgetting (meaning - all the rest of us who reject that shit) what the leadership pushed and what the rank and file voted for.
Not sure how they think they will back out of this. Two current examples:
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-fans-missouri-caucus-wellman/
https://newrepublic.com/post/179282/surprise-gops-favorite-gathering-full-nazis
Get fucked. These people are products of poverty and the system that is designed to fail them.
This is just Democrat/Liberal PMC propaganda to help them feel better about their abandonment of the working class people of America for the benefit of their donor class.
Then they have a shocked Pikachu face when the people they left to stagnate and rot, turn out to be the shitty products of their environment aka the neoliberal hellscape of modern day America.
And now that they are shitty people, we can just forget all about how we got here, and put all the blame on them.
Part of the problem is that they continue to vote against their own interests, making it impossible for the left to help them, as they continue to vote Republican.
They have been voting against their own interests for decades.
Their grandparents filled in local swimming pools with concrete because they would rather do that then share with the colored folks.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/public-swimming-pools-still-haunted-by-segregation-legacy
I fully agree with you here that we're not having a conversation about what produces these people. I have parents that are quite terrible people, but I can see what made them that way. They've watched their savings and pensions evaporate and their job opportunities dwindle. They feel strongly that the government doesn't support their interests and share the feeling that most Americans have that the system isn't working. They don't feel represented.
Supporting Trump and other ridiculous conservative positions is their way of lashing out. It's not a productive response, but I feel that this disenfranchisement is a major driver that creates these people. They are Americans too, and we should be asking what we can do to build unity and improve America for everyone.
Yes, they are still responsible for their actions. However, I think that it's equally bad to ignore the factors that are producing these people in mass. I prefer to view these people as misinformed children who rather hurt others than fix problems.
Worshipping the personification of the system that fucked them over is the stupidest reaction possible.
I agree with you. It's really stupid. But remember, half of people are below average. We're not going to get away from having lots of stupid and gullible people in our country. We have to build a system where they aren't so easily manipulated.
Unfortunately, the right wing also wants to gut education. Education could help people avoid some of the idiocy of the right wing.
True, but at the same time we have to remind ourselves that blindly following Trump hasn't really hurt them yet. Not in any real, tangible sense, that is. As far as they can tell, the economy felt pretty good while he was in office, lots of the democratic norms he trashed had no impact on their lives, and most of the negative consequences the left has warned about haven't yet materialized.
Covid "wasn't his fault", and all his crimes mostly amount to more political theater to them. Then when Biden took office two wars started, and illegal immigration skyrocketed. Even if none of that were his fault, he's easy to blame for it.
Even supporters of the Third Reich followed blindly for a while because it put them on a cultural pedestal and stabilized their economy (kinda). Even when they watched trains carry millions of Jews to their deaths, they still shrugged and kept believing things were at least on the right track. It wasn't until the fascist noose started closing around the necks of non-traditional enemies of the right, and until the hell of war showed up at their doorsteps, that they were shaken out of their slumber.
Trump simply hasn't backfired on them yet, and until he does, they'll continue to push the envelope into oblivion. I'm afraid he'll have to burn the whole thing to the ground before his supporters will realize what a terrible mistake they made. And by then, it will be too late to recover.
Except that they're not misbehaving children, they're fully grown adults with agency to make their own decisions. An asshole with shitty parents is still an asshole.
What I can do for rural Americans is vote for Democrats that will raise my taxes and use them to fund these poor states. Then they pull shit like this. Their local GOP parties and the voters that agree with them are evil to do that to kids. Rince and repeat for expanding Medicaid, etc
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/8/8/1786532/-Cartoon-You-made-me-become-a-Nazi
Private military contractor?
Professional-managerial Class
I mean, the Democrats didn't really leave these people to rot, they've largely been prevented from doing anything to help them since rural areas vote so overwhelmingly Republican. What do you really expect the Democrats to have done when it's the other party these folks keep electing to represent them? They effectively say they want the policies that have left them so exposed and disadvantage, then they have a shocked Pikachu face that "those darn liberals haven't done anything to help us." Heck, even in broad terms, their voting habits have screwed all of us by preventing broadly popular things like universal health care or drug reform from going forward because of the disproportionate power the self-destructive votes they cast wield at the national level. My sympathy for them is extremely limited, and my patience at their insistence in making everyone else suffer for their god-awful politics has long since run out.