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submitted 9 months ago by Synnr@sopuli.xyz to c/politics@lemmy.world
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[-] snooggums@midwest.social 121 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I still don't get why rural voters latched onto a clearly narcissistic big city property developer who lies constantly and treat rural people like shit as a response to big city politicians who rural voters think lie constantly and treat rural people like shit.

Just because he said words they wanted to hear? Politicians do that all the time! How is he the one they believe?

All the points in the article are accurate, but it just doesn't make sense that the personification of everything they hate about cities is who they end up worshipping.

[-] Blackbeard@lemmy.world 62 points 9 months ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)
[-] snooggums@midwest.social 48 points 9 months ago

Except he didn't fight for them and he lied constantly about fighting for them with no results.

[-] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 21 points 9 months ago

And dementedly burning down everything one sees and grabbing pussies doesn't make one "a fighter" - just a narcissistic asshole criminal.

Hooray what a hero.

Even if I grant all the arguments are true for the sake of discussion, the fact that they've seen how incompetent and ridiculously stupid he is for FOUR YEARS not to mention he tried to destroy their fucking government and they're all "yay we upset city people" Okay Granpa Jones but that makes you objectively a complete fucking asshole moron and your continued support of this rapist fraud criminal is not helping you in any way at any level. Try again. Got someone smart? Articulate? Anyone? We're open - any age, any gender, any race - anyone? No? This guy huh. He's your guy is he. Yeah.

That's what we thought.

[-] BossDj@lemm.ee 10 points 9 months ago

But they didn't see who he was. Their news media fed them a different story about liberals getting in his way and the immigrants making things worse and the government not letting him fix things. It's all the "lazy" city people voting for big government handouts that's making the world worse.

Anything he''s accused of is just liberal politics and a hoax.

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[-] nymwit@lemm.ee 9 points 9 months ago

It's not about facts though. They didn't logically choose to support him based on facts, figures, and results. It's all feelings.

[-] PRUSSIA_x86@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago

Perception is reality

It's a good explanation. And it confirms the core nihilism motivating these voters. "Burn it all down" is an abdication of responsibility and self-infantilizing by forcing that responsibility on everyone else.

Their frustration and motivation, while I can understand it, is an insult to those of us continuing to keep it together as they make everything worse.

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[-] Wojwo@lemmy.ml 6 points 9 months ago

Wasn't the first, Ross Perot had a huge following here in rural Utah for that very reason.

[-] Synnr@sopuli.xyz 5 points 9 months ago
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[-] Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world 49 points 9 months ago

I still don’t get why rural voters latched onto a clearly narcissistic big city property developer who lies constantly and treat rural people like shit as a response to big city politicians who rural voters think lie constantly and treat rural people like shit.

Because he gave their bigotry a voice.

[-] Quacksalber@sh.itjust.works 25 points 9 months ago

I read that rural voters often feel like the government isn't for them, they feel disempowered. And in response, they seek to undermine and break the system that disempowers them. They do not look to improve or change the system, they want to destroy it. So when people yell at them for threatening democracy by voting for a lunatic with dictator fantasies, they feel empowered.

[-] snooggums@midwest.social 16 points 9 months ago

I get that for voting, but not for how they gush and fawn over his rambling nonsense like he is the second coming.

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[-] Oderus@lemmy.world 16 points 9 months ago

Who they worship doesn't matter. Based on the article, they voted for a brick to be thrown into the window of the elites. It really doesn't matter who that person is, just as long as they inflict damage on the elites who have been marginalizing them for years.

It was a super informative article and I hope people read it, and not assume from the title or read the summarized version like we usually do.

If we keep labelling them 'deplorables', it'll make things worse. We need to reach out and listen while also helping as best we can.

[-] vexikron@lemmy.zip 15 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Because rural voters are stupid, because Republicans have spent the last 30+ years destroying public education, especially in rural and minority heavy areas.

This isn't an insult, its a fact.

When you're uneducated and have little experience of the outside world... well, youre extremely easy to convince with rhetoric over actual policy results.

Then combine that with the massively super effective Republican media machine (Rush Limbaugh, Bill O Reilly, Sean Hannity, Ben Shapiro, Steve Bannon, Alex Jones) which reinforces the religion + culture + politics of the rural Republican areas, and there ya go.

I dunno, it seems obvious to me, but thats probably because I was raised by a ditto-head (Rush Limbaugh's term for his followers) who later became a Q Anon, illegal-firearm-manufacturing-in-his-garage wacko, in a poor, technically suburban but realistically rural area.

Why latch on to Trump in particular?

Because he made it ok for them to mask off and hate all the things they hate but have been lying about hating for decades.

Its a kind of catharsis for them, that manifests in collective hatred of inferior enemy groups.

You know, standard fascist shit?

It doesnt matter that Trump himself is the antithesis of what an idealized Republican person would be. What matters is he lets them feel comfortable expressing themselves.

[-] Synnr@sopuli.xyz 9 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I think it's partly his 'strong man' persona, but also that he was one of the only candidates hitting on all the things they needed to hear. We need to do more for our rural communities. Help the farmers! Help the coal miners! Keep oil production flowing! He touched on the lifeblood on these rural towns, which is something other conservative politicians weren't doing as much. That let his message spread wider organically, from people who were quite literally willing to devote their life to him. He 'stuck to his guns' (on the issues they cared about anyway) which is what let them ignore the other things he said and did. There was also one of the largest state-sponsored propaganda campaigns in Internet history backing his election. In many or most small towns it became an Us vs. Them (Trump being the Us) and if you know how small towns work then you know it's "When in Rome..." creating a massive echo chamber across conservative America. When the mob is rallying for something, you stay quiet or face the consequences. Many didn't stay quiet and became outspoken, which furthered the division.

[-] snooggums@midwest.social 7 points 9 months ago

He said those things and did nothing for rural areas. Why are they still in love with him?

I knownthe answer is Fox News and repetition, but how do they not see through the obvious facade?

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[-] jordanlund@lemmy.world 41 points 9 months ago

Yup. Digging the county by county stuff too.

Here's my state for 2020:

You see those three GIANT counties in SE Oregon?

Left to right that's Lake, Harney and Malheur county.

Ruby Red. Here's how they voted in 2020:

Lake - Biden - 792 - 18.15% Trump - 3,470 - 79.53%

Harney - Biden - 894 - 19.95% Trump - 3,475 - 77.55%

Malheur - Biden - 3,260 - 27.62% Trump - 8,187 - 69.36%

Sorry guys, square miles and cattle don't get a vote.

You see that tiny little sliver of a blue county next to the panhandle? That's Multnomah county. I.E. "Portland" or "where the people live".

Multnomah - Biden - 367,249 - 79.21% Trump - 82,995 - 17.90%

[-] OpenStars@startrek.website 25 points 9 months ago

I remember looking up Iowa's county results right after a past election, and Florida too, and thinking: it is very easy to see the university towns. One or two oddities I had to look up... it turns out they were small universities. The correlation between education and liberalism is extreme. Austin vs. Texas at large would be another example.

[-] OneStepAhead@lemmynsfw.com 7 points 9 months ago

Whereas I do believe that it’s not just “education” but moreso intelligence that is the predictor of liberalism today, the “where the people are” as well as the age bracket make a big difference. Most small colleges are in small towns, but these colleges have a commanding presence in the population of the area. They can be gerrymandered into oblivion tho.

[-] OpenStars@startrek.website 5 points 9 months ago

Not as much as you might think.

To use a caricature example: a literally genius 10-year old who is still relying on argument-by-authority may think one way, before after a few years of thinking by themselves switch sides, so there really is something to the combined heft of a few thousand years of collected human knowledge, even if absorbed only by osmosis by people who never finished high school yet exist side-by-side with professors in those small college towns.

Also, wrt to Congress at least the two sides did not used to be as extreme as they are now - case in point: when the economy got really bad, Obama's solution was to bail out the banks (yeah in return for concessions but still, how "liberal" are Democrats, really?). So anyway, I could see a selfish farmer strategically voting for their own short-term best interests, in a manner consistent with being intelligent - i.e., it's not entirely IQ that may have been the driving force, so much as EQ.

In the past at least, though you did say "today" so... yeah, I have to agree, I just wanted to add that caveat that being exposed to other cultures and other ways of living by way of education may have been the more important factor not too long ago.

[-] OneStepAhead@lemmynsfw.com 6 points 9 months ago

Edge (caricature) examples will always exist. In college, I used to walk past the area where the “SchoolName Republican Meeting” took place. It always had 20 or so guys and 3-4 girls dressed like they were headed to a job interview. That’s not a hypothetical 10 year old but real people.

The Republican Party used to have ideas and thoughts, albeit backward and horrifying in many circumstances, but as of Trump, they’re largely nihilistic. You’re also correct in the thought that today’s democrats are in many ways to the right of 70’s and 80’s Republicans.

I’m not disagreeing that education plays a role, but that there’s a lot more nuance to how that is reflected in voting.

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[-] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 13 points 9 months ago

Yeah I got to that part and remembered the meme "See all that red area? That's sand."

I get that it's tough to find a point of view for trump supporters that isn't racism or hate or idiocy, but . . . I dunno. voter maps aren't that useful. We're not talking about an average politician here - some interchangable figure who could have been active between 1950 and 2020. This guy is objectively a demented rapist fraud who tried to overthrow the government to stay in power.

Those aren't rural concerns, afaik.

[-] SupahRevs@lemmy.world 37 points 9 months ago

I grew up in a town where the factory closed and poverty grew. More poverty than most of the red voters will ever see. This made me move so far left and I don't understand how seeing these things happen makes people want to vote for Trump. The lack of having a voice is partly on people in rural areas and this is a tantrum for not having made their voice known as more and more detrimental things happened. The busiest store in my home town is Wal-Mart. People love Wal-Mart. The food co-op that provides local farmers a place to sell their produce is frequented by the left leaning types. In my view, the voice that is that the right wing does not care about helping their community through any kind of sacrifice. Ease and convenience are king. Cheapest cost is best, regardless of what sweatshop clothing was made in and what underpaid illegal immigrant picked their produce. And, they vote for a party who wants to remove regulations so worse and worse corporate actions can provide cheaper goods lining the pockets of billionaire owners.

The factory that closed moved to North Carolina and then overseas. The people that live in the small town now vote for tax breaks for the owners of that factory and vote for the party that villifies ebt, welfare and programs that help their neighbor. They think people are lazy who use these programs, not that they have experienced the loss of economic activity they have seen. If this factory, which was profitable but not at a high enough margin for the owners, were owned by the workers, it may still be operating today. This is my conclusion in seeing what the Cracked article discusses. Corporate greed has done damage to communities and the ability to give more power to workers is better than voting for some con-man who gives tax breaks to the rich. How could hard working Americans look at Shawn Fain and think his view is dispicable and think that what Trump has to say is better?

[-] Adramis@lemmy.world 30 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

The article: Rural people aren't just racist, homophobic assholes - they're struggling with apocalyptic economic destruction, constant discrimination and hatred, and have fallen through the cracks of society while society stomps on their face.

The comments: RURAL PEOPLE ARE BAD, FUCK RURALS

I guess you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them read the article...

I will say, though, that as much as rural people get fucked out of their votes in most situations, they are vastly over-represented in others. For example, each vote in the electoral college for California represents 703,000 people. In Montana, on the other hand, each electoral vote represents closer to 250,000 people. There's a strong sense among city dwellers that the rural folk are dragging the entire country into hell just because they're suffering under capitalism - and they aren't wrong, in some sense. America's inconsistent, patchwork electoral system definitely contributes greatly to the urban / rural conflict.

[-] june@lemmy.world 22 points 9 months ago

It’s not that rural people are bad, to me, it’s that they’re under resourced and groomed. They’re often victims of their ignorance, which is why so many people that ‘get out’ cite the exposure to other ideas as to why they evolve.

Yes they are dragging us down and backward, I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. But the ones to be angry at are the people in power.

[-] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago

Yeah I think it’s extremely tactically important (and good for the moral high ground) that we don’t mock them for being rural or for the struggles rural folks face. The meth and opiate problems are no funnier than crack. It sucks when you’ve only ever had one prospect and it was going to kill you but you can’t even do that just because it’s causing an apocalypse

[-] Beetschnapps@lemmy.world 9 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

The article: let’s construct a false image of city dwellers having a false image of rural dwellers to absolve rural dwellers of any personal responsibility.

It completely ignores how much they voted for and continuously cheered on their own economic demise and acts as if poverty only exists in the country and no one has ever suffered similar hardships in an urban setting.

The article got one thing right, THEY LOST THEIR MINDS.

They’ve lived through how many republican administrations yet it’s everyone else’s fault? Republicans have continuously gotten their way… reagonomics, 3 terms from the bush family, Donald trump…and things are demonstrably worse off. You cannot look at America and say the issue is that it was at any point NOT conservative enough.

All while these sensitive rural voters call the rest of the country “out of touch”. They aren’t bad people but holy shit how much do we need to coddle these children while this happens?

[-] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 9 points 9 months ago

Suffering under capitalism, yet they keep voting for those supporting the worst forms of it.

[-] thisorthatorwhatever@lemmy.world 6 points 9 months ago

It really is two different America's;

Urbanites have to compete internationally, Chicago vs. Sao Paulo, Los Angeles vs. Berlin. The international corporations compete against each other.
Rural folk are at the mercy of the urban markets, and large corporate resellers. The local wealthy merchant, isn't interested in international affairs, they want to be a despot of their local county/state.

So you get local rural 'noble', that have every interest in undermining urban business, as it doesn't affect them. It's why politics is so bitter and cancerous. The wealthy rural owners, have no steak in the game for America to do well internationally. The most conservative people tend to be wealthy rural people, think of the guy that owns a farmers co-op in rural Nebraska.

Essentially this is what happened during the American Revolution. The northern cities had enough of England, and rural American farmers fought because they thought they would wrestle some control for themselves away from the east coast cities.

[-] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 6 points 9 months ago

In my home of Ohio we’re so gerrymandered that we regularly pass ballot initiatives. We frequently have to amend our state constitution.

I get the nuances here. I really do. Most of the people I’ve dated have been Appalachians, my girlfriend grew up on a tobacco plantation in Tennessee. Most of my career puts me in rural factories where as a visibly queer women in a male dominated career I’m routinely treated slightly worse than in cities and I deal with their very real problems. But the thing that I keep coming back to is that they aren’t punching up, and when we mock them as slack jawed yokels we aren’t either. We need to show them solidarity but we also need to stand firm on important issues. Yeah feel free to mock us city folk for thinking we’re better, but don’t act like plenty of us didn’t flee your small towns because of your behavior.

When we as a left show them an open hand we can let them reject it

[-] Synnr@sopuli.xyz 5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

You are spot on. I need to disable my notifications on Lemmy or I'm not going to get any work done today.

We need to move past First Past The Post.

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[-] Moobythegoldensock@lemm.ee 18 points 9 months ago

Article summarized:

“Cities are big, scary places where people do things we consider weird. And we’re so brainwashed that we think that cartels in Mexico and religious extremism in the Middle East are somehow the fault of liberal cities in the US. Our small towns are still clinging to industries that died 30 years ago and are now relying on subsidies from the blue states to survive, but people are afraid to move somewhere relevant because their neighbors lie about how horrible those places are, so instead of actually doing something about it we all collectively threw a temper tantrum.”

This is basically the same shit they were saying pre Civil War to justify keeping slaves. It’s a toxic mindset that’s 200 years overdue to die.

If Republicans finally decide to stop just making shit up and actually listen to scientists rather than spitballing from a 2000 year old mythology book, then they can participate in adult conversations. Throwing a childish tantrum and then refusing to grow up garners no sympathy from me.

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[-] Pretzilla@lemmy.world 14 points 9 months ago
[-] jballs@sh.itjust.works 13 points 9 months ago

Just realized this article is 8 years old. Doesn't seem like much else has changed.

[-] Cryophilia@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago

Fanaticism happened in the 8 years since. Trumpism is essentially a new religious movement and to its adherents, anything Trump says goes.

In 2014 these rural people would have gladly driven their 4 wheelers over to Russia to shoot Russians themselves. Now, since their god-emperor is in bed with Russia, they love Russia.

All the motivations that led rural Republicans to vote for Trump in 2016 no longer apply. Now it's pure religious fanaticism, propaganda, and doublethink.

[-] Donjuanme@lemmy.world 12 points 9 months ago

I'm very surprised cracked has released an original article at all.

But I feel the author has drastically missed the mark. Summarized near the end with

"Already some of you have gotten angry, feeling this gut-level revulsion at any attempt to excuse or even understand these people. After all, they're hardly people, right? Aren't they just a mass of ignorant, rageful, crude, cursing, spitting subhumans?

Gee, I hope not. I have to hug a bunch of them at Thanksgiving"

Didn't they just spend the entire article justifying why the red non-urban areas feel that way towards the blue areas?

I feel the cities would welcome people from the country side, while you can't spend 1 day in a country town without being "from one of the big cities, and you should go back to it" (from experience, as a child)

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[-] shalafi@lemmy.world 8 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

You steal that from me OP?! LOL, I've posted it a few times because I believe it's an accurate and important take, and no less so for being written in 2016.

I've lived and experienced both sides of this. Yeah, it all rings true.

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[-] ninjan@lemmy.mildgrim.com 6 points 9 months ago

Damn, Cracked was a loooooooong time ago. This article was hardly new but still long after their heyday. And his other stuff was almost the same mix of thought provoking and hilarious that the old articles provided, if a bit more of column A and a bit less of column B.

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This is a fucking fantastic read. I've been saying this to anyone who'll listen lately. When this dust settles we're still going to have to live with these people.

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this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2024
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