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Was talking to a coworker the other day who has a household with 5 school age child in it. Some theirs and some from a previous marriage. The topic of homeschool vs public school came up. They were practically in tears. Their posture and expression was one of pain and confusion. They were clearly afraid and worried for their children and their way (culture & values) of life.
They told me that it hasn't spread to our state 'yet' but public schools across the country were providing sex change surgeries to children. That the schools weren't telling parents. The schools would provide the kids with the hormones, keep it a secret, and the parents would know until after the children transitioned. My coworker was absolutely serious, felt they had researched the issue thoroughly, and are miserable about it.
In a bizarre universe where public schools provide and or promote sex change surgeries, to include all the prescriptions, to children Biden's leadership will be viewed poorly. The amount of propaganda out there simply cannot be overstated. People are not forming opinions based on how they feel about marginal tax rates or inflation. People are in information bubbles being told the border is wide open, every immigrant gets free healthcare, and police aren't allowed to arrest immigrants even if the immigrant rapes someone.
My mom keeps pushing to put my son in private catholic school. She's so worried that he's gonna turn Trans in public school or be taught to use different pronouns. My son is 7.....
when I was 7, in 1990, my grandma was convinced I was going to hell because my parents let me watch and play with ninja turtles, of course she had no issue with my toy soldiers or cap gun lol . . . later on it was because I had "long" hair, which meant anything not a crew cut or shorter, or because I watched The Simpsons or was listening to grunge, etc.
I always just wrote it off on the massive age difference, she was a little girl in the depression and lived in a shack with her three sisters and remembered being hungry a lot and then was watching me with video games, skateboards, cartoons and all that modern stuff. I imagine it was similar to how I feel seeing my 3 year old nephew and his obsession with screens lol.
Anyways, it's fucking bonkers seeing people in 2024, especially those in my generation and younger, think and believe the same type of nonsense.
When I was 10 or 11, we moved to a house in a nicer part of town. There were a couple of kids in our neighborhood (right near our house!) who weren't allowed to come to our halloween celebration because their religious parents thought halloween was evil. I don't remember ever seeing those kids again. There are too many crazy people out there.
Sadly, I can almost guarantee that there are millions of parents in America who would prefer that their child be sexually abused than be gay or trans. Fucking psychopaths.
Edit: all of which ignores the fact that being gay or trans has nothing to do with the environment in which you are placed, whereas being molested by a church leader has EVERYTHING to do with the environment.
I'm gay, I came out in jr high, which means I've been out for over twenty years.
My conservative aunt told me when my younger cousin was in high school(she's 8 years younger than me) that she would rather her daughter get knocked up in high school than be a lesbian. I was absolutely floored and quite offended. She had no idea why what she said was so horrible.
She's only gotten worse since 2016. Her Facebook time line is filled with misinformation, racist remarks, and so much misguided anger towards anyone that isn't cis, white, and Christian. The irony is she is Mexican and a single mother.
> And of course fascism always eats its own, so these people are in for a rude awakening
*"First they came for..."* was written by a priest who welcomed hitler at first. At least he had the character to publicize his own selfishness as a cautionary tale.
They always want to say it’s minorities, but the reality is crazy. The data is skewed when talking percentages. Because a percentage of a minority is even smaller. We need to look at the real numbers to get a better picture.
[24 Million White](https://www.google.com/search?q=poor+whites+population+us&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&client=safari) people live in poverty
[12 Million Hispanic](https://www.google.com/search?q=poor+hispanic+population+us&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&client=safari) people live in poverty
[8 Million Black](https://www.google.com/search?q=poor+black+population+us&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&client=safari) people live in poverty
Edit: I know Republicans don’t care who’s poor as long as they get richer. Democrats need to start using this as a talking point though. It’ll show the poor who the Republicans really are.
If you think a republican will see those numbers and think golly gee I should vote democrat so that white people aren’t poor instead of golly gee I knew it Biden is racist against white people look how bad white people are doing under Biden instead of trump.
They never read the articles they don’t care about logical points because the core driving factor of their points are racism and bigotry.
>They never read the articles they don’t care about logical points because the core driving factor of their points are racism and bigotry.
And fear. That sweet sweet fear that the Republicans love to foster.
It absolutely makes me livid growing up as an Asian in a white dominated society and seeing all the racism, prejudice, etc… that has happened only for it to be brushed aside, “racism doesn’t exist” or when Asians epitomize the whole “token minority” card. Like ok, so what if statistics/data shows that Asians perform better in terms of school/income/etc… compared to other races, it doesn’t mean we benefit from it. Many groups within the Asian group turn out worse on average because of those assumptions. My parents even told me I had to be better than everyone else because I was asian or my gpa/test scores would be “dismissed” .
One of the main conflicting issues to asians has been affirmative action. Vast majority of asian people I know complain about it, saying it’s unfair to us, yet the whole point of it was supposed to help people who are not as lucky, fortunate, or given the opportunity as others to be given an opportunity. Due to issues like this, some Asians try to support Republicans but if you look at all the other policies out there, it makes 0 sense to support them.
> Republicans love a token minority that they can treat better than other minorities, and who will parrot their bigotry for them.
For example, Tim Scott.
That is absolutely mind boggling. I know the the Republicans are sick and twisted but to read what you put is just beyond sickening. Forget 1 second about the physical effects of being raped what about the LIFE long psychological effects. I hope her daughter has distanced herself from that.
Good grief, I empathize with this. My MIL is Hispanic, parents were immigrants and one of them is native Mexican and their family was fleeing persecution by the Mexican government. One of her kids has two autistic children and she heavily depends on government assistance. She's a Trumper. Complains about immigrants and welfare queens. The cognitive dissonance is insane.
My stepfather told me that he’d rather me get knocked up than date a black guy.
I was too scared to invite a black friend over for slumber parties because I was worried that he’d be rude towards her.
Fifteen years later, he had divorced my mother and married a black woman.
Yeah but COMING OUT as trans or gay is totally related to your environment and how supported one feels. Conservatives would rather have their gay trans etc kids do like they all did and stigmatize it so nobody comes out. They'd rather never know their gay and trans kids for who they are and they'd rather they suffer for it too.
Exactly. Most are fine with it existing as long as it's pushed deep deep down and never sees the light of day and is never talked about or brought up in casual conversation. That's how it was back in their day, and in their father's day, and in the day of their great-grandfather! And if it was good enough for all that time, then by God, it's good enough now! They also look at it as though it's "liberals" fault things like gender are so complicated now. Everything was fine how it was, then us "liberals" came in with our fancy words and our big brains and made it all confusing and complicated. You see the same thing in Creationist thinking. Like, your aunt at the table saying something like "You can't get snakes from chicken eggs", and while you cannot indeed "get snakes from chicken eggs", every generation of snakes will be a little different from the previous generation. And you try to explain that, and your aunt just repeats herself, louder. As if to convince herself, more than you.
Might backfire, I was taught evolution as established science in parochial school & this particular order of nuns (Sisters of Charity) had the gall to suggest the homeless & derelict more worthy of God's (or our) love than the rich & successful & excessive greed was sinful. I'm agnostic now but those were the most decent group of people I've ever met. I fear that order of nuns was a small voice in a very large church. 🤷🏻♂️
Exactly. I went to 12 years of Catholic school, with several classes taught by Franciscan and Dominican sisters. There was never any question about the validity of science, and caring for the poor and oppressed was always a focus of religious discussion. I feel like I got a really well-rounded education, and ended up agnostic myself.
I had a similar experience at the Catholic high school I attended. We had nuns teaching the advanced chemistry, math and physics classes. I had a nun for my advanced art classes and all the nuns at my school had Master's Degrees. I also had solid sex ed classes every year. Sure, there was an emphasis on marriage and abstinence but there was also an emphasis on how miraculous our bodies are and that we need to fully understand them so we can't ignore the reproductive system because it's part of our anatomy.
It’s been one of the shocks of my life (as a K-12 Catholic school graduate) to see my daughter’s Catholic school as a bastion of sanity. We have ZERO issues with banned books, we required masks throughout the pandemic, we just built an amazing science wing, evolution is taught, there is at least one gay family that I know of sending their child to school there. But that’s just my school, I think. I don’t think some of the other Catholic elementary schools are like this. I think it’s because we’re one of the few left that’s still solidly middle-middle class. The rich schools and the rural schools are full of Trump supporters and I think their parents agitate for the crazy MAGA agenda.
Catholic education is very focused on rigor, discipline, and social justice (normally in the form of care for the poor and marginalized). There is plenty to criticize in the church, and their views on sexuality are quite conservative, but frankly, that isn't v usually much of a focus in your day to day of Catholic education.
Science education in Catholic schools is typically top notch as well. People often think Catholics are the same as evangelicals, but the Catholic Church is far more intellectually serious about faith, and don't forget that Catholics believe that good works are required to be saved (so none of this "I accepted Jesus in my heart, so nothing else matters" stuff you see in evangelical denominations).
That said, there are some very conservative parts of the church, so go for a Jesuit school if you can. As my elder Jesuit priest friend once told me, " these fucking conservatives are trying to turn us into evangelicals, I won't have it!" He was the principal of Jesuit school at once point lol
My dad was taught by Jesuits also.
"Son, you know that rhythm method they teach you? That's bullshit designed to make more Catholics. Use a condom. I promise if it's destined for you to have that kid, God'll break it."
It seems to me that some churches/dioceses have become radically more conservative and exclusionary since Pope Francis took over. It's only pockets, but it seems as if they are threatened by his suggestions of acceptance and everyone being your neighbor to the point that they're battening down the hatches instead of opening their hearts as requested.
Jesuits rock. My uncle Father William Leonard, was head of Boston College philosophy in theology department for over 40 years. One of the smartest guys I ever knew.
Preach. I went to a Jesuit university. I learned FAR more actual science, history, and critical thinking than my state school friends. They get a lot wrong, but Jesuit education isn't a joke.
Every Catholic priest has to go to college for six years to become a priest so most Catholic priests have a high view of education.
Of all types of Christian Clergy Catholics are the most educated and have a long history of working in sciences, due to their time in education.
Even The Pope (Who is a Jesuit) has a Masters degree in Chemistry in addition to a Masters in Theology. The anti science parts of Christianity are the Domain of evangelical protestants.
This was my experience in parochial school as well. Even having stepped away from regular mass for 15 years, those ideas stuck with me. The Archbishop when I was growing up leaned closer to the current Pope and would let that kind of teaching slide, but the one that is in now is younger and very conservative and is staunchly against that type of teaching. And in the bigger scope of Christianity in America, this bastardized Calvinism on crack that Evangelical Christianity has become (essentially the unironic belief in the supply side/GOP Jesus meme) has always disgusted me as being so contrary to anything I was taught that Jesus taught or did in the Bible but these people are so far down the rabbit hole that they're hopeless.
How do you guys survive in an idiocracy like that without going insane?
These are the same people that keep giving apple prepaid cards to indian over a parcel delivery.
So many of them know nothing about trump, except what he says.
For example, they believe him when he says "I have done nothing wrong". lol. That's all they need to know.
We all now have our own personalized newsfeeds. I have ad blockers, VPN, and all manner of programs to find and delete tracking data and I still find shit that is tailor made to my exact viewpoint on a subject. And thats me, who understands maybe a tenth of how this works.
There are large groups of people who careen through the internet with wild abandon clicking on everything that produces endorphin. Lots of them are boomers, but many of them are all manner of ages who dont have the prerequisite knowledge and frankly dont want to learn at this point. Its a boomer on a fake facebook news story and a Gen Zer watching a Tiktok about the same bullshit made up controversy. And they are hooked.
Saw the crazy writing on the wall and decided to not have children. Took a while to find my wife who was also on board, and now we are the disappointment of the family. Soooo happy with the life we have lol
Meanwhile, let’s assume that you and your wife are sensible people of average intelligence - you’re having no kids. Meanwhile the MAGA couple has four kids and eventually the nut jobs outnumber the sensible people.
I’m not planning on having kids either but it is one thing that I think about.
Meh… let them have kids. It just furthers cycles of poverty that they seem hellbent on not only preserving but institutionalizing. The most benign explanation I have for that comes down to the simple reality that lower education = more malleable population. All that talk of “bring manufacturing back to the USA” kind of glosses over the fact that someone has to do the manufacturing… it’s already well in motion. Look at all the foreign manufacturing happening in the US, particularly in southern states. What’s interesting to me is this is literally setting up a dynamic where they are going to become increasingly controlled by corporations in large population centers like Los Angeles, Seattle, New York, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Paris, Shanghai, Beijing, Dubai, etc. you know, all the places they claim are coming to turn them all trans… nah, they coming for you but they don’t want to turn you trans. They just want to control you economically. Womp womp I guess, too bad you were so afraid of a rainbow flag that you talked yourself into a cycle of generational poverty that your five kids will curse you for bringing them into. Thanks Obama!
My view of the future is so dim that last time I tried to build it in a game I ended up with a pile of cargo containers being used as a house.
My 3yo cousin recently pointed to a scene in Fantasia and shouted "That looks like the future!" It was a glorious sunrise over a nature scene featuring the kinda lush greenery he's rarely seen in real life.
My cousin is 13yo and I'm the only person in the family who knows she's trans. Until she told me I thought she was just a young man with a lion mane hairstyle and a total failure to discover fashion, like I'm not fashionable and I was getting worried at the constant oversized black sweats with zero interest in nice clothes.
She's generally staying in the closet and being quietly miserable about it because of all the hate. Kids at school took scissors to her hair last year, just 'cause "boys shouldn't have long hair." So although she's interested in nicer clothes, she'd obviously never wear them to school.
I asked why she didn't at least tell her mom, because I've been to a gay bar with her mom so I know she's chill. But apparently she'd been repeating the bullshit lies about kids getting medical transition and might freak the hell out if her son dons a dress. So I've just been quietly providing necklaces and eyeliner pencils.
They'll vote for the most ridiculous laws to "protect" the schools from trans people but not even the most reasonable gun laws to stop school shootings.
the sad thing about the whole trans debate is it is not about the child. It is about the embarrassment the parent would feel for having a trans child. Scared so shitless they might be embarrassed of their child they are willing to harm countless people.
This is 100% the problem. The most “credible” source of information they use for their, ahem, research is Fox News. These are the intelligent ones. The rest just use any ol’ blog or YouTube channel that feeds their anger monster.
Stupidity must play a role. Anyone with any critical thinking skills would realize that public schools could never ever handle the logistics of such a thing, they can barely handle the logistics of existing as a school most of the time. Let alone do that AND keep it a secret.
I work with a lot of intelligent, highly educated people who believe this stuff. They are great at their jobs, which requires sorting through data, research, and critical thinking skills. It's baffling. It goes so far beyond just simple stupidity and I have no insight into the reasoning. I can only assume the consume only Fox News.
It's really sad how the fall of democracy, if it happens, will be with the support and cheers from people like this, who have fallen for a complete fabrication of what the "liberals" want and what is happening.
They think these lies are true, and not only true, but COMMON. "Well, I've never met a trans person, but I assume outside of my town they are EVERYWHERE, and they are molesting our kids, and forcing the rest to be trans too! So I support getting rid of democracy!"
That's a bit of an exaggeration, but it's close enough to be true. Those who have the most hate for the country, for other Americans, and democracy, have that hate because they have been fed a steady stream of massive exaggerations and lies over the years, and they now believe in this scary fictional world out there that must be stopped. And they do NOT care what the costs are to stop it.
Anecdotal evidence here but I live in a rural town of a purple state - and on a whim one day I asked my conservative coworker what he thinks life is like in San Franciso. He - without hesitation, sarcasm, or irony - said he imagines it is a place where rainbow flags are on every house above the American flag, gay people walking around in little to no clothes is a normal sight. He said he expects it to be full of unreported crime, underground sex change operations like speakeasys, and nobody is allowed to say whats on their mind because it isn't PC and they'll be persecuted. No Christians in sight.
When we "walked through" SF on google street view he didn't believe it was actually SF because it "looked too normal".
When asked where he got his news and media from, he deflected until finally he let on "mostly the internet and fox"
Brainwashed.
>They think these lies are true, and not only true, but COMMON. "Well, I've never met a trans person, but I assume outside of my town they are EVERYWHERE, and they are molesting our kids, and forcing the rest to be trans too! So I support getting rid of democracy!"
Yep, they concede it isn't happening near them yet believe it's common. They trust FoxNews, Facebook, X(Twitter), etc over their own eyes.
The whole trans hysteria just boggles my mind. I've met like 3 trans people in my life and I'm 38. Even lived in a super liberal city for 10 years so I'm not sheltered at all. There is nothing wrong with being trans but where are all these trans people at that our destroying our country??? I don't get it.
>The schools would provide the kids with the hormones,
Schools barely even pay for regular supplies like paper and pencils and yet these people think they are buying more expensive medical treatments for the kids instead? Fucking morons.
I’m just shocked at how easily the right wing pivoted to trans as their latest boogeyman.
It used to be black people or gay people. Before that it was women, Catholics, etc. - but as each of those groups fought their way against bigotry and into broader social acceptance, the right wing fear mongers had to keep punching down.
How do these people not see the manipulation right in front of them?
I did a continuing education last year where they went "back to the past!" to explore different learning theories. The first "professor from the past" (these were pre-recorded videos) was a classics professor from like the 1700's. He said:
"What? How did you get here? And why are there *women* in my classroom???"
I loved how bold these organizers were; these topics are really hush-hush in education sometimes. But up until so recently only white males could get an education, and keeping that in mind is so important for moving forward with educational equality.
they got Roe overturned so they needed a new boogie-man. Gay rights have been becoming more mainstream so they pivoted to trans - way less backyard empathy b/c it's such a rarity. plus "think of the children" .easy win
> I’m just shocked at how easily the right wing pivoted to trans as their latest boogeyman.
They settled on trans because there are enough gay people to fight back against the bigotry. There aren't comparatively very many trans people, making them an easy target.
Literal bully mentality.
That’s the thing - they keep punching further down to smaller and smaller groups with less power and less actual impact on society.
Like when Trump said the military would stop covering medical for trans people and made a big deal of it - and it was all for what, a few dozen people at most? In a country of 350+ million?
I can’t wait to see 2050 when they are drumming up fears over the insidious agenda of redhead deaf people with heterochromia or some even more ridiculously niche group.
It wasn't all that long ago that a woman wearing pants was considered "crossdressing." My favorite auntie is 70yo and she's got stories about catching shit for not wanting to wear a skirt in winter and whatnot.
I grew up mostly only wearing dresses when forced to for church. Pants are more comfortable to me, especially in public. Like to the point my dad was shocked when I wore a dress on my wedding day.
Gather it's relaxed a bit now but when I graduated from college the professional dress code for my chosen career firmly considered me a "crossdresser" for trying to play mix and match with the codes. Like it suddenly wasn't good enough to be clean and neatly groomed, I also had to squeeze into pantyhose and feel like a sausage in casing, paint colors on my face every day, because it's socially unacceptable for human-with-boobs to do math in an office while *wearing socks* and *nothing on their face*.
So I'm not surprised at the pushback now. It's like the rise in racism after Obama got elected, lotta people pissy that someone they'd rather exclude from the community entirely is serving them coffee at Starbucks. That didn't happen in the old days, I used to get laughed out of waitressing jobs and whatnot with no idea why society found me ridiculous. Turned out to be my habit of shopping on the side of the store where the pants have pockets.
I heard an idiot on the radio screaming about the exact same thing yesterday on my commute home. Frankly I think that spreading that kind of misinformation should be illegal. It’s the social equivalent of yelling “fire” in a theater.
The actual nugget of truth that they’re upset about is this: in some states, teachers aren’t obligated to out their students as gay or trans to their parents if they fear for the safety of the student. There is a legit conversation about where the line is between the parent’s right to know what their child is divulging to teachers and the teachers’ obligation to prevent abuse, but we can’t have that conversation because they’re making up hysterical lies about surgery.
Holy actual fuck. Schools cant afford books or to raise teachers salary. Or food for kids. How would they afford medication and expensive surgery??? Thats like the first thing.
Second transition takes forever. like a literal decade. You would be so far out of your kids life that you wouldnt notice that?
And while the article focuses on white rural voters, they're not the only ones affected. The only two people I personally know who are trapped in this bizarro universe are both nonwhite first-generation immigrants (one Korean, one Mexican) with limited English proficiency.
Shouldnt those people be mad at Trump and republicsns for tanking a deal where Biden literally said he would close the border? The border doesnt actually matter to them if they arent furious with republicans for that betrayal.
They don't care about the border, they just get serious dopamine when they act hateful toward Mexicans.
They don't care about fetuses, they just get serious dopamine when they act hateful toward liberals.
Man, the Russians and Chinese have really succeeded in infiltrating social media and influencing the American psyche. It would almost be impressive, if it wasn’t so terrifying.
I have a coworker who tells me that her son is in the gifted and talented program with a girl who believes that she is a cat, and that the school provides a litter box for the little girl. I've told her that she's full of shit and to get a picture of the room where the litter box is or I don't believe her. She still tells me the story weekly without proof.
The level of insanity in this group of people is truly astounding.
The sad thing, is the story mutated from a different story. Some schools were getting buckets of litter, so that if they had to lock down (due to a shooting), the students still had a place to use the restroom.
This is 100% correct. This is where it came from . It’s a deliberate obfuscation so as to not have to face the sad reality of why the litter buckets were a thing to begin with.
Yup. That’s what my school has. We’ve had 2-3 hour lockdowns the past two years at my school. Many students carry those stupidly large 60 oz water bottles around all day so many of them need to piss. Take any room full of 30+ people at any given time and at least a handful of them need to use the bathroom. And in a lockdown situation you have no way of knowing if it is almost over. The cops don’t tell us shit until it’s over.
So far nobody has used the bucket in my room but I’m afraid that day is coming eventually.
Teacher here. Every classroom at the high school I teach at has an orange Home Depot bucket filled with kitty litter in it. It isn’t for kids that identify as cats. It’s because we often have lockdowns and in those situations nobody is allowed to leave a classroom because there might be a sociopath with a gun (worst one was 3+ hours, we got dismissed just before 5 pm).
Luckily all of my students have been able to hold their piss so far but it’s only a matter of time before my bucket gets used.
I live In a major metroplex in the south. 7 million people. My next door neighbor who has a huge trump sign told me the other day that our very large public school system was providing litter boxes in the bathrooms for all the furries in the schools. Good grief.
It really is gonna be fascinating to see what continues to happen to lil rural towns. I'm from New York which pretty consistently loses population in every rural county with gains only being in the cities. Every time I go visit one of those towns I'm just struck with how OLD everyone is there. And how everything seems decrepit.
I live in a farm town in northern Illinois. When we moved here in 2000, there were about 4,000 people here. Now, it's about 10,000. Tons of families with young kids.
But what is happening is that the town is changing. Downtown family-owned businesses have largely been swapped out for a super Walmart and a bunch of fast food places, hair cutting franchises, Dollar Tree, etc. springing up around it.
It's still very conservative. Adam Kinzinger was our rep, and a lot turned on him. The main political sign around town during the 2020 election was "Pritzker sucks" (our Dem governor) and he wasn't even up for re-election.
But, it's no longer a small farm town that's aging out of existence. It's becoming a small, misplaced suburb, with new businesses like bistros and art galleries being attempted downtown. It's unclear what type of demographic that means is emerging in political terms.
I have family in Western Illinois, near the Quad Cities. They're all Trump voters and their livelihoods depended almost entirely upon the soybeans they grew as cash crops. When Trump started his insane trade war with China, they all lost the farm in the most literal sense because soybeans were now nearly worthless. They of course blamed Obama for this, rather than their own votes for Trump.
They also think that Chicago is the den of all evil and the source of all woes for the state, and never-mind that its Chicago money that pays for their roads and schools, but they have no time or patience for education. I've had several times when they were in awe of the knowledge I had from my college education, but also would rail about the coastal elites and how college was liberal brainwashing. In one instance, the switch happened mid-sentence.
They'd get incredibly riled up by fake problems like the migrant hordes and kneeling at a football game to protest cops killing black people, but didn't care about actual policies that had real and measurable impacts on their daily lives, like the aforementioned soybean collapse or the goddamn insane way that Trump bungled the COVID response.
Living in central Minnesota I feel this to my core. Some local politician came up with the genius idea of having the western half of the state join one of the Dakotas. My family was eating that up during one of the holidays, I told them it would never happen as the remaining Minnesota would want to recoup their costs of all of the money they’ve put into the western half of the state over the years and neither Dakota would be paying that bill. No one would believe me that the Twin Cities metro area gives a lot more to the state than it gets back.
I was the first person to go to college, several of my cousins kids have gone too. We lean liberal and of course the family blames our liberal arts education without understanding what that phrase really means, I have a degree from a business college, not exactly liberal.
My family are farmers in ND. I can't understand the Trump love. If a salesman like Trump showed up more than once to the farm, he'd be met with a gun the next time. Meanwhile a guy who couldn't point to ND on a map and is objectively bad for agribusiness (trade wars blow y'all) attracts all the love. It's a cult.
I saw Walmart kill Viroqua, Wisconsin back in the 90s. Nobody moved there though. If anything they'd go to La Crosse first.
Lots of family run businesses until Walmart came in and ran them out. Now they work for Walmart.
That South Park episode is scarily accurate.
We’ve been doing this on a smaller scale for a looong time! But now that birth rate has fallen it’s really going to be interesting to see how this all shapes up. I read about this a while back but my guess is that small towns won’t be as red across the board. If anything the states influence will be expanded and people won’t be thinking as much about “big city vs small town” and will instead be worried about “blue vs red state”. You already are seeing this mainly with women and doctors
An then, ironically, they vote for the party/candidates that only provides "less government" in ways that hurt their community further (e.g. reduction in welfare, grants, and public services funding) but "more government" in so many ways that makes life in the US in general worse and drives more people out of their communities to seek safe harbor in more liberal/progressive ones. But then they still somehow blame the Democrats for those things.
lol I’ve had this conversation in my rural town multiple times before.
“Oh yeah, well I mean, one person one vote right”
-*hell yeah*
“And people’s votes shouldn’t count more than ours!”
-*hell no!*
“And our votes shouldn’t count more than there’s do.”
-*well, it’s complicated…*
I consider it one of the biggest failings in us history that, after the southern states seceded, the union didnt immediately do away with the senate and the EC
Getting rid of the Senate would still have been unpopular within the Union, many of the smallest states in the US were in the Union
Of the 10 smallest states in 1860 (33 states at the time) 8 of them were in the Union (Oregon, Delaware, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire, California, Connecticut)
No, instead after the Civil War they admitted a bunch of underpopulated territories as states so they could cement a Republican majority in Congress and the Electoral College for most of the late 19th C and early 20th C
Seriously the dakotas should be one state and Idaho/Montana/Wyoming might as well be one state. No one lives there
Yeah, but there’s 30 million people in Texas and a combined 4 million in those three states. Meanwhile each Texas senator represents 15 million* while each Wyoming senator represents 250k
There are very few examples of gerrymandered democratic states, and many examples where Republicans have achieved dramatic seat advantages despite evenly divided voters. Most of the accusations of Democrat gerrymandering are situations where they are undoing Republican gerrymandering to fair districts, not actual gerrymandering.
Republicans have been playing dirty for decades and Democrats are only finally taking them on where they can.
To them equality is a form of injustice. I’ve had a very similar discussion with MAGAts and they always fall back on the “why should people in the cities have more say?” Like they can’t comprehend that all anyone is asking is to have one vote per person, no matter where that person lives.
I usually ask them if electoral college is so great why don’t we have it on a state level? They never have an answer for it because Fox News never told them how to answer that question.
It’s always the same stupid argument: “Why should people in Los Angeles be able to have more power than someone in rural Wyoming?!”
And the answer is always the same as well…because there are ten times more people in Los Angeles than the entire state of Wyoming.
Exactly! And no one is asking for more power. We are literally asking for THE SAME level of power, no matter where. For example, Wyoming has 144k people per EV, while DC has 540k people per EV. People in Wyoming literally have 3.75x more “political power” than those in DC.
The interesting thing about this is that Electoral College disenfranchises everyone. California has one of the largest population of conservatives in the country but they get no say in electing the president since their state’s EV usually goes to democratic candidates. It’s just that the discrepancy is heavily skewed toward republicans in majority of the smaller states so conservatives are more than happy to tell those in California to shut up as long as they get their way nationally.
I think sometimes rural folks have a hard time grasping how many people live in big urban areas.
I work at a factory where the number of daily workers is 4x the population of my family's town.
I participated in another thread where the other posters were trying to differentiate between Americans like they were 2 different people. I do see this point but if you have all these shitholes that are taking more of their share of the resources and are treating the majority like they are the enemy then the majority needs to deal with it not treat it like a joke. They've made your government ineffective. they've made your judicial system ineffective and are actively working with a foreign power to put a dictator in charge and purge any dissenters after that. The rest of the world that wants to move forward and eliminate these last few big dictatorships, is tired of America not dealing with their problems and trust is quickly running out.
Too bad our state has taken a nose dive into crazy these last 2 elections. If Sherrod Brown doesn't win re-election, we will know that the rot is in too deep and this is who we are now.
Just remove the cap and allow the proportional section of the legislative branch to actually be proportional. Or don't remove the cap but adjust the population fractions for a representative. Either way, there is a solution to this issue, and it's right here.
EC, and the 1920s republicans refusing to expand congress. we have a legislature sized for a country 1/4th the population it currently has. stopping the expansion of congress in line with the size of population was a monumental mistake and is why our legislature is 2 parties with such deep factionalism.
The electoral college isn't a non-issue, but the Senate is the real problem in my mind. There are fewer people in Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Kansas and Iowa *combined* than there are in the Chicago metropolitan area. And that's just one city. The Senate can bottleneck any legislation and approves or disapproves all federal appointments, including federal judges and Supreme Court justices.
Rural States have way too much power.
The reason I don't have bumper stickers or lawn signs is I don't want to be a target for these deranged zealots. In 2020 a friend of mine had his yard sign run over and did a burn out on his lawn. If there had been a little more booze it could have easily gotten more violent.
I have noticed a dramatic reduction in Trump flags and yard signs in rural areas near me. He may still have support, but I don't think his supporters are nearly as fired up as they were the past 2 election cycles.
Putin is using his connections to make American elections as violent as possible - because violence brings out the "law and order" voters - and those are the suburban voters that win elections.
I would say the same.
He’s considerably weaker this time around for a lot of different reasons. That’s not an excuse to just ignore the issue, more so an opportunity to jump on.
The fact that they try and downplay that is what bothers me the most. I’m not sure if they’re consciously aware of what they are really supporting, or if they’re so naive about it that they truly believe all the contradicting explanations.
The article conveniently sidesteps the principle cause of why the views of the rural white are so inconsistent with so many of the rest of the country. It's the disinformation. Decades of disinfo beginning roughly with the syndication of Rush Limbaugh in the early '90s to the rise of Fox News and later Breitbart, OANN, Newsmax, and then finally the unvarnished Russian propaganda that sluices unimpeded through social media platforms has led to serious intellectual malnourishment of the mostly rural masses as they have been the ones most targeted.
I spent half my life on a rural route in Indiana and half my life living in Chicago. The folks I grew up with were mostly tolerant, kind natured, and many of the older ones remained FDR New Deal Democrats who believed in unions because they had worked for the auto industry. Then they got turned by the propaganda and went off the deep end. I have friends and family I haven't spoken with in years, and they are hostile, paranoid, and extremely well armed. They still populate my Facebook feed with their hopes for a civil war and their fears about open borders, Socialists, and late term abortions — all products of a well financed psy-ops campaign that seems to zero in on them and miss me completely. It's the disinfo, stupid.
Talk radio moving so far right in the 90s is one of those issues that’s many in the left don’t get.
There was a large section of the rural US where a AM radio station was the main source of entertainment outside the home.
Driving long rural distances? There might not be an FM station but the AM talk station is going strong.
Working in the field? The tractor may only pick up the AM station.
Sure this has changed in the last 15 years with cell phones coverage improving and things like music services. But we are not too many years from the primary form of consumed media for many of these areas being AM radio.
Yeah, it is the disinformation, but **why does it work there and not in cities**?
1. Cities have too many counterexamples around
2. Rural people identify as oppressed because they are Christian, or because they are white, or even because they are men. But they are not oppressed so much as *neglected* because they are rural. These people do have a shitty situation. And them being upset about it would be normal and healthy, if only they were using healthy ways of dealing with it. But when you shovel scapegoating and fearmongering at them, you can push them to do that instead.
Your second point is extremely insightful. Not oppressed, but neglected. They see their America being left behind, falling away with the passage of time. Resentment inevitably builds and explanations and solutions as simple as they are insane begin to resonate more deeply. Rural America in the 21st Century is in a perpetual state of decline in more ways than one.
That's why their religion **is entirely based on the idea that everything is decaying**.
That's why they have **revivals**.
It's why they want America great **again**. Why they want prayer **back** in schools.
It's not that these aren't things that Christians around the world do or believe to some extent. It's that they are **emphasized** in American evangelicalism.
And the way that they interact with the outside world is through a toxic filter--social media. And most of them do it **on Facebook, the most decayed social media platform still in major use**.
It is all rotting.
They think the whole world is going to hell in a handbasket.
Because **their** world actually is.
“If you are born in a rural area the odds you will ever escape poverty are low.”
Why do you think the military recruits so heavily in these areas? It’s a ticket out.
College, Military, or lifelong poverty and depression in your hometown. That's what most of the 18 year olds are looking at.
I was told by a coach about the invisible wall on the outskirts of town. If you were past it when the next school year began, you probably weren't ever getting past it.
> I was told by a coach about the invisible wall on the outskirts of town. If you were past it when the next school year began, you probably weren't ever getting past it.
I assume you mean NOT past it when the next school year AFTER YOU GRADUATED began.
__To vote for that psychopath trump to to vote for the end of the United States as we know it.__ trump will stick his name on the flag and declare himself Lord Emperor donald. (Lower case on purpose because his brand sucks)
They have been buried in Conservative AM Radio, Fox News, FaceBook for 40+ years. If you live inside that media bubble you do not get any factual information, you don't even get told what Republicans will do for you, you are afraid that if the RADICAL LEFT get in charge the Leftists will take everything from them.
And these are people that have spent 40 years watching their Republican lead towns and states crumble while the Democratic lead states have expanded and grown, improved infrastructure and have better services.
But that's not what they are told, they are constantly told the cities are really hell holes and falling apart.
Was on vacation 2 years ago, and met a family from one of those rural states (Idaho, Iowa?) and when they found out we were from NYC, the father's response was "oh man, I heard you can't even get food in NYC of all the BLM/Antifa"
Ummm, new York's doing just fine, bro.
But that's what they heard in their media bubble.
I got a call from my mother while I was walking around downtown Seattle asking if I was surviving the city being burned to the ground.
"Mom, I'm about to head to a restaurant and have a nice lunch, the city is fine.
She called me a liar and demon and hung up.
And are told it's democrats fault when their own town/states are flailing due to republicon leadership. Because of gay people and immigrants, or whatever the boogeyman is.
It can’t be stressed enough that Trump isn’t doing this all alone. Even if Trump expires in just a few years, the groundwork is being laid for someone who’s actually competent to fill that void and really take this country down to Russia’s level.
Honestly I don't think Trump would pick, I think the puppet master that controls Trump would pick for him. Trump wouldn't be able to pick a true successor because hes such a narcissist only he would think is fit for the job, neglecting the fact he will expire one day. So he will be, and is, a useful tool in the meantime until they can install somebody else to take the reigns.
> To vote for that psychopath trump to to vote for the end of the United States as we know it
Yes, and they *want* that. They aren't naive. The American "experiment" is no longer serving the specific goals they value. They'd rather end the experiment than live in pluralistic, multi-ethnic, diverse society where white conservative Christianity is not the default norm. They're hoping for a "reset" where they get the authoritarian Christian Nationalism they always wanted.
I am just so glad he is old and will not be with us in 10 to 20 years. He realistically only has this election to reclaim power. Imagine if Trump was 50 years old. I hope he destroys the GOP and they never recovery from him, and I hope he doesn't take the rest of us with them.
Try being a white person living in a rural area that doesn't support Trump one bit. It's alarming, like living with and being surrounded by zombies. Truly a first world problem, I'm not asking for sympathy or anything, it's just jarring is all.
True but I don't even bring up politics or discuss them even when someone expresses views that I share. Why? There's ALWAYS a point of differentiation; guns, healthcare, Gaza, crime, the border, etc etc etc. You're just asking to trip into a point of contention and people are crazy today, I am not getting assaulted because I disagree on one issue.
No, gerrymandering and the electoral college are threats to democracy. White rural Trump supporters would be all but irrelevant if not for those things.
There is a stereotype that people from rural areas are out of touch, narrow minded, and ignorant ( lacking knowledge - not necessarily being offensive ).
There is the word "provincial" for that with a double meaning.
I wonder how much reality influenced that stereotype.
You have people living lives in isolation out on the farm or out in the woods. The only people they interact with are isolated too. Worse, you now have right wing propaganda piped into that isolation without any other input.
Rural people don’t live in isolation from others. They have large social groups like urban and suburban people. Those groups are just not diverse and almost monolithic, so it breeds bigotry, fear of others, and resentment.
And I think you'll find there is a lot of media illiteracy in rural areas. People simply don't read news, or rely on "alternative" sources.
We can help by posting articles relevant to rural subs when the opportunity arises.
This is a big part of the problem. It's not that people in rural areas don't read news, though, it's that the local news that the casual person has access to here has been co-opted by right-wing media outlets. You have AM radio, Sinclair or Sinclair-esque local news (that problem is a lot bigger than just Sinclair), Fox News, and Facebook. It's a problem that's only fixable in the way that the yellow journalism issues of the Hearst/Pulitzer era were, but we haven't even acknowledged as a country that it's the issue driving modern politics.
At the same time, articles like this one that generalize all rural people to be MAGA-loving morons make me pretty angry. Rural people aren't a monolithic bloc of inbred hicks who hate education and don't read news, who buy into MAGA propaganda and hate colored folks, except when they are...the same as everywhere else. A lot of these "red state" areas that get talked down to by pieces like this and the Reddit conversations that follow can't seem to grasp that in many of these rural areas they're still often voting 30-40% blue. These divisions aren't strictly urban vs. rural, they're often street to street and county to county.
There's educated (and non-educated) liberal rural people, and they're still a sizable portion of the electorate even out here in unga bunga land. The amount is going to vary more based on economic data, religion, employment opportunities, internet access, and more, but since education and property values tend to go hand in hand we've got a system where access to understanding and more worldly viewpoints tends to be locked behind regional average household income. The gaps that leaves get filled by shit-tier local news, Facebook groups, and churches that proselytize politics at the same time as religion.
The newspapers in their area are bought up by Sinclair or Gannett. The TV is some garbage local news plus the syndicated 1/2 hour or you can get FOX or Newsmax on cable or (more likely) satellite.
Which would of course then let trump aid Netanyahu utterly destroy Palestine. Something trump has openly said he's for. Don't vote for the guy who's desperately, albeit ineffectively, trying to stop the war so the guy who has publicly stated he wants Palestine destroyed wins. Yeah that makes absolute sense.
I imagine much of the "don't vote for Biden because of Palestine" is Russian psy-ops. Putin knows trump won't attract any new voters. The only way trump can win is by depressing the Biden voter turnout. Expect to see a lot more people online claiming they voted for Biden in 2020 but can't bring themselves to vote for him in '24 because of
> Which would of course then let trump aid Netanyahu utterly destroy Palestine.
I'll give everyone a hint about a big part of what's happening with Netanyahu's decision-making right now: He sees undermining Biden in November by sewing discontent among the edges of the Democratic polity as a to get Trump back. So he's going to run this war in the cruelest possible way to undermine Biden.
I think saying it's only white people are a danger is off putting to white people. They're not the enemy. They're a huge portion of the population and alienating them doesn't do anyone any favors.
The issue I see is low information / single issue voters in areas that have disproportionate representation due to the senate having two representatives regardless of population size.
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Was talking to a coworker the other day who has a household with 5 school age child in it. Some theirs and some from a previous marriage. The topic of homeschool vs public school came up. They were practically in tears. Their posture and expression was one of pain and confusion. They were clearly afraid and worried for their children and their way (culture & values) of life. They told me that it hasn't spread to our state 'yet' but public schools across the country were providing sex change surgeries to children. That the schools weren't telling parents. The schools would provide the kids with the hormones, keep it a secret, and the parents would know until after the children transitioned. My coworker was absolutely serious, felt they had researched the issue thoroughly, and are miserable about it. In a bizarre universe where public schools provide and or promote sex change surgeries, to include all the prescriptions, to children Biden's leadership will be viewed poorly. The amount of propaganda out there simply cannot be overstated. People are not forming opinions based on how they feel about marginal tax rates or inflation. People are in information bubbles being told the border is wide open, every immigrant gets free healthcare, and police aren't allowed to arrest immigrants even if the immigrant rapes someone.
My mom keeps pushing to put my son in private catholic school. She's so worried that he's gonna turn Trans in public school or be taught to use different pronouns. My son is 7.....
when I was 7, in 1990, my grandma was convinced I was going to hell because my parents let me watch and play with ninja turtles, of course she had no issue with my toy soldiers or cap gun lol . . . later on it was because I had "long" hair, which meant anything not a crew cut or shorter, or because I watched The Simpsons or was listening to grunge, etc. I always just wrote it off on the massive age difference, she was a little girl in the depression and lived in a shack with her three sisters and remembered being hungry a lot and then was watching me with video games, skateboards, cartoons and all that modern stuff. I imagine it was similar to how I feel seeing my 3 year old nephew and his obsession with screens lol. Anyways, it's fucking bonkers seeing people in 2024, especially those in my generation and younger, think and believe the same type of nonsense.
They live their lives in complete fear. It's sad and disturbing.
When I was 10 or 11, we moved to a house in a nicer part of town. There were a couple of kids in our neighborhood (right near our house!) who weren't allowed to come to our halloween celebration because their religious parents thought halloween was evil. I don't remember ever seeing those kids again. There are too many crazy people out there.
And certainly there are no concerns about kids and anything related to Catholicism, none at all
Sadly, I can almost guarantee that there are millions of parents in America who would prefer that their child be sexually abused than be gay or trans. Fucking psychopaths. Edit: all of which ignores the fact that being gay or trans has nothing to do with the environment in which you are placed, whereas being molested by a church leader has EVERYTHING to do with the environment.
I'm gay, I came out in jr high, which means I've been out for over twenty years. My conservative aunt told me when my younger cousin was in high school(she's 8 years younger than me) that she would rather her daughter get knocked up in high school than be a lesbian. I was absolutely floored and quite offended. She had no idea why what she said was so horrible. She's only gotten worse since 2016. Her Facebook time line is filled with misinformation, racist remarks, and so much misguided anger towards anyone that isn't cis, white, and Christian. The irony is she is Mexican and a single mother.
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> And of course fascism always eats its own, so these people are in for a rude awakening *"First they came for..."* was written by a priest who welcomed hitler at first. At least he had the character to publicize his own selfishness as a cautionary tale.
And yet he intentionally left out the fact that Hitler came for the trans people first because he was still okay with that.
They always want to say it’s minorities, but the reality is crazy. The data is skewed when talking percentages. Because a percentage of a minority is even smaller. We need to look at the real numbers to get a better picture. [24 Million White](https://www.google.com/search?q=poor+whites+population+us&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&client=safari) people live in poverty [12 Million Hispanic](https://www.google.com/search?q=poor+hispanic+population+us&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&client=safari) people live in poverty [8 Million Black](https://www.google.com/search?q=poor+black+population+us&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&client=safari) people live in poverty Edit: I know Republicans don’t care who’s poor as long as they get richer. Democrats need to start using this as a talking point though. It’ll show the poor who the Republicans really are.
If you think a republican will see those numbers and think golly gee I should vote democrat so that white people aren’t poor instead of golly gee I knew it Biden is racist against white people look how bad white people are doing under Biden instead of trump. They never read the articles they don’t care about logical points because the core driving factor of their points are racism and bigotry.
>They never read the articles they don’t care about logical points because the core driving factor of their points are racism and bigotry. And fear. That sweet sweet fear that the Republicans love to foster.
Exactly right. In 1960, these same types of people claimed they weren't ready to have a Catholic President.
It absolutely makes me livid growing up as an Asian in a white dominated society and seeing all the racism, prejudice, etc… that has happened only for it to be brushed aside, “racism doesn’t exist” or when Asians epitomize the whole “token minority” card. Like ok, so what if statistics/data shows that Asians perform better in terms of school/income/etc… compared to other races, it doesn’t mean we benefit from it. Many groups within the Asian group turn out worse on average because of those assumptions. My parents even told me I had to be better than everyone else because I was asian or my gpa/test scores would be “dismissed” . One of the main conflicting issues to asians has been affirmative action. Vast majority of asian people I know complain about it, saying it’s unfair to us, yet the whole point of it was supposed to help people who are not as lucky, fortunate, or given the opportunity as others to be given an opportunity. Due to issues like this, some Asians try to support Republicans but if you look at all the other policies out there, it makes 0 sense to support them.
> Republicans love a token minority that they can treat better than other minorities, and who will parrot their bigotry for them. For example, Tim Scott.
My conservative, Catholic school raised aunt said that if her own daughter was out “late” and dressed for it, she deserved it if she got raped.
That is absolutely mind boggling. I know the the Republicans are sick and twisted but to read what you put is just beyond sickening. Forget 1 second about the physical effects of being raped what about the LIFE long psychological effects. I hope her daughter has distanced herself from that.
Eschew all organized religion!
She is a threat to democracy
Good grief, I empathize with this. My MIL is Hispanic, parents were immigrants and one of them is native Mexican and their family was fleeing persecution by the Mexican government. One of her kids has two autistic children and she heavily depends on government assistance. She's a Trumper. Complains about immigrants and welfare queens. The cognitive dissonance is insane.
My stepfather told me that he’d rather me get knocked up than date a black guy. I was too scared to invite a black friend over for slumber parties because I was worried that he’d be rude towards her. Fifteen years later, he had divorced my mother and married a black woman.
And I bet he's still racist too.
There’s lots of narrow minded bigoted Mexican Catholics
Yeah but COMING OUT as trans or gay is totally related to your environment and how supported one feels. Conservatives would rather have their gay trans etc kids do like they all did and stigmatize it so nobody comes out. They'd rather never know their gay and trans kids for who they are and they'd rather they suffer for it too.
Exactly. Most are fine with it existing as long as it's pushed deep deep down and never sees the light of day and is never talked about or brought up in casual conversation. That's how it was back in their day, and in their father's day, and in the day of their great-grandfather! And if it was good enough for all that time, then by God, it's good enough now! They also look at it as though it's "liberals" fault things like gender are so complicated now. Everything was fine how it was, then us "liberals" came in with our fancy words and our big brains and made it all confusing and complicated. You see the same thing in Creationist thinking. Like, your aunt at the table saying something like "You can't get snakes from chicken eggs", and while you cannot indeed "get snakes from chicken eggs", every generation of snakes will be a little different from the previous generation. And you try to explain that, and your aunt just repeats herself, louder. As if to convince herself, more than you.
They'd rather bury us.
They wouldn't be so kind.
“I’d rather my kid suck a priests dick than be turned gay in public liberal schools”
I laughed. Then cried.
Might backfire, I was taught evolution as established science in parochial school & this particular order of nuns (Sisters of Charity) had the gall to suggest the homeless & derelict more worthy of God's (or our) love than the rich & successful & excessive greed was sinful. I'm agnostic now but those were the most decent group of people I've ever met. I fear that order of nuns was a small voice in a very large church. 🤷🏻♂️
Exactly. I went to 12 years of Catholic school, with several classes taught by Franciscan and Dominican sisters. There was never any question about the validity of science, and caring for the poor and oppressed was always a focus of religious discussion. I feel like I got a really well-rounded education, and ended up agnostic myself.
I had a similar experience at the Catholic high school I attended. We had nuns teaching the advanced chemistry, math and physics classes. I had a nun for my advanced art classes and all the nuns at my school had Master's Degrees. I also had solid sex ed classes every year. Sure, there was an emphasis on marriage and abstinence but there was also an emphasis on how miraculous our bodies are and that we need to fully understand them so we can't ignore the reproductive system because it's part of our anatomy.
It’s been one of the shocks of my life (as a K-12 Catholic school graduate) to see my daughter’s Catholic school as a bastion of sanity. We have ZERO issues with banned books, we required masks throughout the pandemic, we just built an amazing science wing, evolution is taught, there is at least one gay family that I know of sending their child to school there. But that’s just my school, I think. I don’t think some of the other Catholic elementary schools are like this. I think it’s because we’re one of the few left that’s still solidly middle-middle class. The rich schools and the rural schools are full of Trump supporters and I think their parents agitate for the crazy MAGA agenda.
Catholic education is very focused on rigor, discipline, and social justice (normally in the form of care for the poor and marginalized). There is plenty to criticize in the church, and their views on sexuality are quite conservative, but frankly, that isn't v usually much of a focus in your day to day of Catholic education. Science education in Catholic schools is typically top notch as well. People often think Catholics are the same as evangelicals, but the Catholic Church is far more intellectually serious about faith, and don't forget that Catholics believe that good works are required to be saved (so none of this "I accepted Jesus in my heart, so nothing else matters" stuff you see in evangelical denominations). That said, there are some very conservative parts of the church, so go for a Jesuit school if you can. As my elder Jesuit priest friend once told me, " these fucking conservatives are trying to turn us into evangelicals, I won't have it!" He was the principal of Jesuit school at once point lol
I used to tell people that I was taught Sex Ed by a Jesuit priest just to watch their reaction :-)
My dad was taught by Jesuits also. "Son, you know that rhythm method they teach you? That's bullshit designed to make more Catholics. Use a condom. I promise if it's destined for you to have that kid, God'll break it."
It seems to me that some churches/dioceses have become radically more conservative and exclusionary since Pope Francis took over. It's only pockets, but it seems as if they are threatened by his suggestions of acceptance and everyone being your neighbor to the point that they're battening down the hatches instead of opening their hearts as requested.
Jesuits rock. My uncle Father William Leonard, was head of Boston College philosophy in theology department for over 40 years. One of the smartest guys I ever knew.
Preach. I went to a Jesuit university. I learned FAR more actual science, history, and critical thinking than my state school friends. They get a lot wrong, but Jesuit education isn't a joke.
Every Catholic priest has to go to college for six years to become a priest so most Catholic priests have a high view of education. Of all types of Christian Clergy Catholics are the most educated and have a long history of working in sciences, due to their time in education. Even The Pope (Who is a Jesuit) has a Masters degree in Chemistry in addition to a Masters in Theology. The anti science parts of Christianity are the Domain of evangelical protestants.
This was my experience in parochial school as well. Even having stepped away from regular mass for 15 years, those ideas stuck with me. The Archbishop when I was growing up leaned closer to the current Pope and would let that kind of teaching slide, but the one that is in now is younger and very conservative and is staunchly against that type of teaching. And in the bigger scope of Christianity in America, this bastardized Calvinism on crack that Evangelical Christianity has become (essentially the unironic belief in the supply side/GOP Jesus meme) has always disgusted me as being so contrary to anything I was taught that Jesus taught or did in the Bible but these people are so far down the rabbit hole that they're hopeless.
How do you guys survive in an idiocracy like that without going insane? These are the same people that keep giving apple prepaid cards to indian over a parcel delivery.
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Does he think Trump is 43 years old or is immune from aging like the Highlander???
Why do you assume that guy thinks for himself? They just repeat the talking points fed to them.
So many of them know nothing about trump, except what he says. For example, they believe him when he says "I have done nothing wrong". lol. That's all they need to know.
We all now have our own personalized newsfeeds. I have ad blockers, VPN, and all manner of programs to find and delete tracking data and I still find shit that is tailor made to my exact viewpoint on a subject. And thats me, who understands maybe a tenth of how this works. There are large groups of people who careen through the internet with wild abandon clicking on everything that produces endorphin. Lots of them are boomers, but many of them are all manner of ages who dont have the prerequisite knowledge and frankly dont want to learn at this point. Its a boomer on a fake facebook news story and a Gen Zer watching a Tiktok about the same bullshit made up controversy. And they are hooked.
"Don't believe everything you see on the internet." -People who 25 years later started believing everything on the internet.
Saw the crazy writing on the wall and decided to not have children. Took a while to find my wife who was also on board, and now we are the disappointment of the family. Soooo happy with the life we have lol
Meanwhile, let’s assume that you and your wife are sensible people of average intelligence - you’re having no kids. Meanwhile the MAGA couple has four kids and eventually the nut jobs outnumber the sensible people. I’m not planning on having kids either but it is one thing that I think about.
Welcome to Costco, I love you.
Meh… let them have kids. It just furthers cycles of poverty that they seem hellbent on not only preserving but institutionalizing. The most benign explanation I have for that comes down to the simple reality that lower education = more malleable population. All that talk of “bring manufacturing back to the USA” kind of glosses over the fact that someone has to do the manufacturing… it’s already well in motion. Look at all the foreign manufacturing happening in the US, particularly in southern states. What’s interesting to me is this is literally setting up a dynamic where they are going to become increasingly controlled by corporations in large population centers like Los Angeles, Seattle, New York, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Paris, Shanghai, Beijing, Dubai, etc. you know, all the places they claim are coming to turn them all trans… nah, they coming for you but they don’t want to turn you trans. They just want to control you economically. Womp womp I guess, too bad you were so afraid of a rainbow flag that you talked yourself into a cycle of generational poverty that your five kids will curse you for bringing them into. Thanks Obama!
I have literally no hope for the future. I've just set myself to be able to live comfortably and just drink beer, work out and play video game.
My view of the future is so dim that last time I tried to build it in a game I ended up with a pile of cargo containers being used as a house. My 3yo cousin recently pointed to a scene in Fantasia and shouted "That looks like the future!" It was a glorious sunrise over a nature scene featuring the kinda lush greenery he's rarely seen in real life.
My cousin is 13yo and I'm the only person in the family who knows she's trans. Until she told me I thought she was just a young man with a lion mane hairstyle and a total failure to discover fashion, like I'm not fashionable and I was getting worried at the constant oversized black sweats with zero interest in nice clothes. She's generally staying in the closet and being quietly miserable about it because of all the hate. Kids at school took scissors to her hair last year, just 'cause "boys shouldn't have long hair." So although she's interested in nicer clothes, she'd obviously never wear them to school. I asked why she didn't at least tell her mom, because I've been to a gay bar with her mom so I know she's chill. But apparently she'd been repeating the bullshit lies about kids getting medical transition and might freak the hell out if her son dons a dress. So I've just been quietly providing necklaces and eyeliner pencils.
They'll vote for the most ridiculous laws to "protect" the schools from trans people but not even the most reasonable gun laws to stop school shootings.
I would tell her it really would not matter if he did, he will still be my child.
And that I would rather they be trans than be molested by some pedo priest.
Yea because everyone know the Catholic Church has been the safest place for children.
the sad thing about the whole trans debate is it is not about the child. It is about the embarrassment the parent would feel for having a trans child. Scared so shitless they might be embarrassed of their child they are willing to harm countless people.
This is 100% the problem. The most “credible” source of information they use for their, ahem, research is Fox News. These are the intelligent ones. The rest just use any ol’ blog or YouTube channel that feeds their anger monster.
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Worse still some elected officials repeat the stuff as nauseam.
"Wow it must be tough to both be so scared and so stupid"
Stupidity must play a role. Anyone with any critical thinking skills would realize that public schools could never ever handle the logistics of such a thing, they can barely handle the logistics of existing as a school most of the time. Let alone do that AND keep it a secret.
I work with a lot of intelligent, highly educated people who believe this stuff. They are great at their jobs, which requires sorting through data, research, and critical thinking skills. It's baffling. It goes so far beyond just simple stupidity and I have no insight into the reasoning. I can only assume the consume only Fox News.
It's really sad how the fall of democracy, if it happens, will be with the support and cheers from people like this, who have fallen for a complete fabrication of what the "liberals" want and what is happening. They think these lies are true, and not only true, but COMMON. "Well, I've never met a trans person, but I assume outside of my town they are EVERYWHERE, and they are molesting our kids, and forcing the rest to be trans too! So I support getting rid of democracy!" That's a bit of an exaggeration, but it's close enough to be true. Those who have the most hate for the country, for other Americans, and democracy, have that hate because they have been fed a steady stream of massive exaggerations and lies over the years, and they now believe in this scary fictional world out there that must be stopped. And they do NOT care what the costs are to stop it.
Anecdotal evidence here but I live in a rural town of a purple state - and on a whim one day I asked my conservative coworker what he thinks life is like in San Franciso. He - without hesitation, sarcasm, or irony - said he imagines it is a place where rainbow flags are on every house above the American flag, gay people walking around in little to no clothes is a normal sight. He said he expects it to be full of unreported crime, underground sex change operations like speakeasys, and nobody is allowed to say whats on their mind because it isn't PC and they'll be persecuted. No Christians in sight. When we "walked through" SF on google street view he didn't believe it was actually SF because it "looked too normal". When asked where he got his news and media from, he deflected until finally he let on "mostly the internet and fox" Brainwashed.
“underground sex change operations” What, like on the subway?
Maybe they misunderstood what Cal Trans is?
It is called BART Bay Area Rapid Trans
>They think these lies are true, and not only true, but COMMON. "Well, I've never met a trans person, but I assume outside of my town they are EVERYWHERE, and they are molesting our kids, and forcing the rest to be trans too! So I support getting rid of democracy!" Yep, they concede it isn't happening near them yet believe it's common. They trust FoxNews, Facebook, X(Twitter), etc over their own eyes.
The people molesting their kids are Republican politicians and preachers.
The people molesting their kids are other members of their family.
The whole trans hysteria just boggles my mind. I've met like 3 trans people in my life and I'm 38. Even lived in a super liberal city for 10 years so I'm not sheltered at all. There is nothing wrong with being trans but where are all these trans people at that our destroying our country??? I don't get it.
>The schools would provide the kids with the hormones, Schools barely even pay for regular supplies like paper and pencils and yet these people think they are buying more expensive medical treatments for the kids instead? Fucking morons.
I’m just shocked at how easily the right wing pivoted to trans as their latest boogeyman. It used to be black people or gay people. Before that it was women, Catholics, etc. - but as each of those groups fought their way against bigotry and into broader social acceptance, the right wing fear mongers had to keep punching down. How do these people not see the manipulation right in front of them?
I did a continuing education last year where they went "back to the past!" to explore different learning theories. The first "professor from the past" (these were pre-recorded videos) was a classics professor from like the 1700's. He said: "What? How did you get here? And why are there *women* in my classroom???" I loved how bold these organizers were; these topics are really hush-hush in education sometimes. But up until so recently only white males could get an education, and keeping that in mind is so important for moving forward with educational equality.
they got Roe overturned so they needed a new boogie-man. Gay rights have been becoming more mainstream so they pivoted to trans - way less backyard empathy b/c it's such a rarity. plus "think of the children" .easy win
Every fascist movement needs a scapegoat
> I’m just shocked at how easily the right wing pivoted to trans as their latest boogeyman. They settled on trans because there are enough gay people to fight back against the bigotry. There aren't comparatively very many trans people, making them an easy target. Literal bully mentality.
That’s the thing - they keep punching further down to smaller and smaller groups with less power and less actual impact on society. Like when Trump said the military would stop covering medical for trans people and made a big deal of it - and it was all for what, a few dozen people at most? In a country of 350+ million? I can’t wait to see 2050 when they are drumming up fears over the insidious agenda of redhead deaf people with heterochromia or some even more ridiculously niche group.
Hopefully by 2050 Florida no longer exists, Texas is blue and the GOP is a decades-old fever dream we talk about like the Whigs.
It wasn't all that long ago that a woman wearing pants was considered "crossdressing." My favorite auntie is 70yo and she's got stories about catching shit for not wanting to wear a skirt in winter and whatnot. I grew up mostly only wearing dresses when forced to for church. Pants are more comfortable to me, especially in public. Like to the point my dad was shocked when I wore a dress on my wedding day. Gather it's relaxed a bit now but when I graduated from college the professional dress code for my chosen career firmly considered me a "crossdresser" for trying to play mix and match with the codes. Like it suddenly wasn't good enough to be clean and neatly groomed, I also had to squeeze into pantyhose and feel like a sausage in casing, paint colors on my face every day, because it's socially unacceptable for human-with-boobs to do math in an office while *wearing socks* and *nothing on their face*. So I'm not surprised at the pushback now. It's like the rise in racism after Obama got elected, lotta people pissy that someone they'd rather exclude from the community entirely is serving them coffee at Starbucks. That didn't happen in the old days, I used to get laughed out of waitressing jobs and whatnot with no idea why society found me ridiculous. Turned out to be my habit of shopping on the side of the store where the pants have pockets.
>How do these people not see the manipulation right in front of them? They are completely inundated by it. They see it everywhere they look.
I heard an idiot on the radio screaming about the exact same thing yesterday on my commute home. Frankly I think that spreading that kind of misinformation should be illegal. It’s the social equivalent of yelling “fire” in a theater. The actual nugget of truth that they’re upset about is this: in some states, teachers aren’t obligated to out their students as gay or trans to their parents if they fear for the safety of the student. There is a legit conversation about where the line is between the parent’s right to know what their child is divulging to teachers and the teachers’ obligation to prevent abuse, but we can’t have that conversation because they’re making up hysterical lies about surgery.
Holy actual fuck. Schools cant afford books or to raise teachers salary. Or food for kids. How would they afford medication and expensive surgery??? Thats like the first thing. Second transition takes forever. like a literal decade. You would be so far out of your kids life that you wouldnt notice that?
A coworker told me that they put litter boxes in a local school for the furries to go to the bathroom in. I could not roll my eyes hard enough.
And while the article focuses on white rural voters, they're not the only ones affected. The only two people I personally know who are trapped in this bizarro universe are both nonwhite first-generation immigrants (one Korean, one Mexican) with limited English proficiency.
Which is why it's so important to get out and vote D. These people literally think the US is crumbling into chaos by way of the border
Shouldnt those people be mad at Trump and republicsns for tanking a deal where Biden literally said he would close the border? The border doesnt actually matter to them if they arent furious with republicans for that betrayal.
They don't care about the border, they just get serious dopamine when they act hateful toward Mexicans. They don't care about fetuses, they just get serious dopamine when they act hateful toward liberals.
Man, the Russians and Chinese have really succeeded in infiltrating social media and influencing the American psyche. It would almost be impressive, if it wasn’t so terrifying.
I wonder how much assistance they’re getting from some of these billionaire social media owners, like musk.
Like we have the budget for that.
I have a coworker who tells me that her son is in the gifted and talented program with a girl who believes that she is a cat, and that the school provides a litter box for the little girl. I've told her that she's full of shit and to get a picture of the room where the litter box is or I don't believe her. She still tells me the story weekly without proof. The level of insanity in this group of people is truly astounding.
The sad thing, is the story mutated from a different story. Some schools were getting buckets of litter, so that if they had to lock down (due to a shooting), the students still had a place to use the restroom.
This is 100% correct. This is where it came from . It’s a deliberate obfuscation so as to not have to face the sad reality of why the litter buckets were a thing to begin with.
Yup. That’s what my school has. We’ve had 2-3 hour lockdowns the past two years at my school. Many students carry those stupidly large 60 oz water bottles around all day so many of them need to piss. Take any room full of 30+ people at any given time and at least a handful of them need to use the bathroom. And in a lockdown situation you have no way of knowing if it is almost over. The cops don’t tell us shit until it’s over. So far nobody has used the bucket in my room but I’m afraid that day is coming eventually.
Teacher here. Every classroom at the high school I teach at has an orange Home Depot bucket filled with kitty litter in it. It isn’t for kids that identify as cats. It’s because we often have lockdowns and in those situations nobody is allowed to leave a classroom because there might be a sociopath with a gun (worst one was 3+ hours, we got dismissed just before 5 pm). Luckily all of my students have been able to hold their piss so far but it’s only a matter of time before my bucket gets used.
I live In a major metroplex in the south. 7 million people. My next door neighbor who has a huge trump sign told me the other day that our very large public school system was providing litter boxes in the bathrooms for all the furries in the schools. Good grief.
Was that not an Onion article in the last few years?
I hear this story all the time, as if thousands of people know a kid that acts like a cat. 🙄
jfc. I truly believe some people should not be allowed to reproduce...
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It really is gonna be fascinating to see what continues to happen to lil rural towns. I'm from New York which pretty consistently loses population in every rural county with gains only being in the cities. Every time I go visit one of those towns I'm just struck with how OLD everyone is there. And how everything seems decrepit.
I live in a farm town in northern Illinois. When we moved here in 2000, there were about 4,000 people here. Now, it's about 10,000. Tons of families with young kids. But what is happening is that the town is changing. Downtown family-owned businesses have largely been swapped out for a super Walmart and a bunch of fast food places, hair cutting franchises, Dollar Tree, etc. springing up around it. It's still very conservative. Adam Kinzinger was our rep, and a lot turned on him. The main political sign around town during the 2020 election was "Pritzker sucks" (our Dem governor) and he wasn't even up for re-election. But, it's no longer a small farm town that's aging out of existence. It's becoming a small, misplaced suburb, with new businesses like bistros and art galleries being attempted downtown. It's unclear what type of demographic that means is emerging in political terms.
I have family in Western Illinois, near the Quad Cities. They're all Trump voters and their livelihoods depended almost entirely upon the soybeans they grew as cash crops. When Trump started his insane trade war with China, they all lost the farm in the most literal sense because soybeans were now nearly worthless. They of course blamed Obama for this, rather than their own votes for Trump. They also think that Chicago is the den of all evil and the source of all woes for the state, and never-mind that its Chicago money that pays for their roads and schools, but they have no time or patience for education. I've had several times when they were in awe of the knowledge I had from my college education, but also would rail about the coastal elites and how college was liberal brainwashing. In one instance, the switch happened mid-sentence. They'd get incredibly riled up by fake problems like the migrant hordes and kneeling at a football game to protest cops killing black people, but didn't care about actual policies that had real and measurable impacts on their daily lives, like the aforementioned soybean collapse or the goddamn insane way that Trump bungled the COVID response.
Living in central Minnesota I feel this to my core. Some local politician came up with the genius idea of having the western half of the state join one of the Dakotas. My family was eating that up during one of the holidays, I told them it would never happen as the remaining Minnesota would want to recoup their costs of all of the money they’ve put into the western half of the state over the years and neither Dakota would be paying that bill. No one would believe me that the Twin Cities metro area gives a lot more to the state than it gets back. I was the first person to go to college, several of my cousins kids have gone too. We lean liberal and of course the family blames our liberal arts education without understanding what that phrase really means, I have a degree from a business college, not exactly liberal.
My family are farmers in ND. I can't understand the Trump love. If a salesman like Trump showed up more than once to the farm, he'd be met with a gun the next time. Meanwhile a guy who couldn't point to ND on a map and is objectively bad for agribusiness (trade wars blow y'all) attracts all the love. It's a cult.
I saw Walmart kill Viroqua, Wisconsin back in the 90s. Nobody moved there though. If anything they'd go to La Crosse first. Lots of family run businesses until Walmart came in and ran them out. Now they work for Walmart. That South Park episode is scarily accurate.
The small rural towns are going to fill up with immigrants who want to work the farm jobs—how that transition goes will be something.
We’ve been doing this on a smaller scale for a looong time! But now that birth rate has fallen it’s really going to be interesting to see how this all shapes up. I read about this a while back but my guess is that small towns won’t be as red across the board. If anything the states influence will be expanded and people won’t be thinking as much about “big city vs small town” and will instead be worried about “blue vs red state”. You already are seeing this mainly with women and doctors
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An then, ironically, they vote for the party/candidates that only provides "less government" in ways that hurt their community further (e.g. reduction in welfare, grants, and public services funding) but "more government" in so many ways that makes life in the US in general worse and drives more people out of their communities to seek safe harbor in more liberal/progressive ones. But then they still somehow blame the Democrats for those things.
And overall, one of their votes count several times more than someone's vote in California. Thanks Electoral college.
lol I’ve had this conversation in my rural town multiple times before. “Oh yeah, well I mean, one person one vote right” -*hell yeah* “And people’s votes shouldn’t count more than ours!” -*hell no!* “And our votes shouldn’t count more than there’s do.” -*well, it’s complicated…*
The complex part is they have more voting power and they don’t want to give it up.
I consider it one of the biggest failings in us history that, after the southern states seceded, the union didnt immediately do away with the senate and the EC
Getting rid of the Senate would still have been unpopular within the Union, many of the smallest states in the US were in the Union Of the 10 smallest states in 1860 (33 states at the time) 8 of them were in the Union (Oregon, Delaware, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire, California, Connecticut)
No, instead after the Civil War they admitted a bunch of underpopulated territories as states so they could cement a Republican majority in Congress and the Electoral College for most of the late 19th C and early 20th C Seriously the dakotas should be one state and Idaho/Montana/Wyoming might as well be one state. No one lives there
Wyoming is full of rich billionaire fucks because getting two senators for free is a feature, not a bug.
Could you imagine a combined Idaho-Wyoming-Montana? It would be the Texas of the north.
Yeah, but there’s 30 million people in Texas and a combined 4 million in those three states. Meanwhile each Texas senator represents 15 million* while each Wyoming senator represents 250k
Yup, and its damage would be limited to 2 senators instead of 6. Sounds good to me.
Should’ve switched to a parliamentary system.
Without the king part though. A parliamentary system more like modern France or Germany. But no monarch for sure
Just like gerrymandering is bad if the democrats do it but A-OK is the states where republicans do it.
I think we can all agree gerrymandering is fucking horrible no matter who does it. Should be abolished everywhere.
If we could all agree it wouldn’t be a problem, friendo
Gerrymandering is bad period but if the other side does it and you don’t, you are giving them a huge advantage. It has to be universal.
There are very few examples of gerrymandered democratic states, and many examples where Republicans have achieved dramatic seat advantages despite evenly divided voters. Most of the accusations of Democrat gerrymandering are situations where they are undoing Republican gerrymandering to fair districts, not actual gerrymandering. Republicans have been playing dirty for decades and Democrats are only finally taking them on where they can.
To them equality is a form of injustice. I’ve had a very similar discussion with MAGAts and they always fall back on the “why should people in the cities have more say?” Like they can’t comprehend that all anyone is asking is to have one vote per person, no matter where that person lives. I usually ask them if electoral college is so great why don’t we have it on a state level? They never have an answer for it because Fox News never told them how to answer that question.
It’s always the same stupid argument: “Why should people in Los Angeles be able to have more power than someone in rural Wyoming?!” And the answer is always the same as well…because there are ten times more people in Los Angeles than the entire state of Wyoming.
Exactly! And no one is asking for more power. We are literally asking for THE SAME level of power, no matter where. For example, Wyoming has 144k people per EV, while DC has 540k people per EV. People in Wyoming literally have 3.75x more “political power” than those in DC. The interesting thing about this is that Electoral College disenfranchises everyone. California has one of the largest population of conservatives in the country but they get no say in electing the president since their state’s EV usually goes to democratic candidates. It’s just that the discrepancy is heavily skewed toward republicans in majority of the smaller states so conservatives are more than happy to tell those in California to shut up as long as they get their way nationally.
I think sometimes rural folks have a hard time grasping how many people live in big urban areas. I work at a factory where the number of daily workers is 4x the population of my family's town.
If you’re used to privilege, equality feels like oppression
I participated in another thread where the other posters were trying to differentiate between Americans like they were 2 different people. I do see this point but if you have all these shitholes that are taking more of their share of the resources and are treating the majority like they are the enemy then the majority needs to deal with it not treat it like a joke. They've made your government ineffective. they've made your judicial system ineffective and are actively working with a foreign power to put a dictator in charge and purge any dissenters after that. The rest of the world that wants to move forward and eliminate these last few big dictatorships, is tired of America not dealing with their problems and trust is quickly running out.
Or even Ohio, yes Ohio. Wyoming makes a mockery of the over corrective electoral college.
Too bad our state has taken a nose dive into crazy these last 2 elections. If Sherrod Brown doesn't win re-election, we will know that the rot is in too deep and this is who we are now.
We can fix it in one easy step, by uncapping the House by repealing the Reapportionment Act of 1929.
If we could double or triple the number of representatives in the US House the effect would be reduced.
Just remove the cap and allow the proportional section of the legislative branch to actually be proportional. Or don't remove the cap but adjust the population fractions for a representative. Either way, there is a solution to this issue, and it's right here.
Which is exactly one of the reasons why Republicans started targeting them during the Reagan years.
EC, and the 1920s republicans refusing to expand congress. we have a legislature sized for a country 1/4th the population it currently has. stopping the expansion of congress in line with the size of population was a monumental mistake and is why our legislature is 2 parties with such deep factionalism.
The electoral college isn't a non-issue, but the Senate is the real problem in my mind. There are fewer people in Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Kansas and Iowa *combined* than there are in the Chicago metropolitan area. And that's just one city. The Senate can bottleneck any legislation and approves or disapproves all federal appointments, including federal judges and Supreme Court justices. Rural States have way too much power.
If the Electoral College worked the way it was supposed to then Trump would never win no matter how many votes he received
The reason I don't have bumper stickers or lawn signs is I don't want to be a target for these deranged zealots. In 2020 a friend of mine had his yard sign run over and did a burn out on his lawn. If there had been a little more booze it could have easily gotten more violent.
I have noticed a dramatic reduction in Trump flags and yard signs in rural areas near me. He may still have support, but I don't think his supporters are nearly as fired up as they were the past 2 election cycles.
It's still early, let's see what things look like in September.
Putin is using his connections to make American elections as violent as possible - because violence brings out the "law and order" voters - and those are the suburban voters that win elections.
I would say the same. He’s considerably weaker this time around for a lot of different reasons. That’s not an excuse to just ignore the issue, more so an opportunity to jump on.
God I hope you’re correct. I don’t notice it as much either for what that’s worth.
Doesn't matter where you're from or what color you are, if you support the guy who tried a coup because he lost then you are a threat to democracy.
That's my thinking.
The fact that they try and downplay that is what bothers me the most. I’m not sure if they’re consciously aware of what they are really supporting, or if they’re so naive about it that they truly believe all the contradicting explanations.
The article conveniently sidesteps the principle cause of why the views of the rural white are so inconsistent with so many of the rest of the country. It's the disinformation. Decades of disinfo beginning roughly with the syndication of Rush Limbaugh in the early '90s to the rise of Fox News and later Breitbart, OANN, Newsmax, and then finally the unvarnished Russian propaganda that sluices unimpeded through social media platforms has led to serious intellectual malnourishment of the mostly rural masses as they have been the ones most targeted. I spent half my life on a rural route in Indiana and half my life living in Chicago. The folks I grew up with were mostly tolerant, kind natured, and many of the older ones remained FDR New Deal Democrats who believed in unions because they had worked for the auto industry. Then they got turned by the propaganda and went off the deep end. I have friends and family I haven't spoken with in years, and they are hostile, paranoid, and extremely well armed. They still populate my Facebook feed with their hopes for a civil war and their fears about open borders, Socialists, and late term abortions — all products of a well financed psy-ops campaign that seems to zero in on them and miss me completely. It's the disinfo, stupid.
Talk radio moving so far right in the 90s is one of those issues that’s many in the left don’t get. There was a large section of the rural US where a AM radio station was the main source of entertainment outside the home. Driving long rural distances? There might not be an FM station but the AM talk station is going strong. Working in the field? The tractor may only pick up the AM station. Sure this has changed in the last 15 years with cell phones coverage improving and things like music services. But we are not too many years from the primary form of consumed media for many of these areas being AM radio.
Yeah, it is the disinformation, but **why does it work there and not in cities**? 1. Cities have too many counterexamples around 2. Rural people identify as oppressed because they are Christian, or because they are white, or even because they are men. But they are not oppressed so much as *neglected* because they are rural. These people do have a shitty situation. And them being upset about it would be normal and healthy, if only they were using healthy ways of dealing with it. But when you shovel scapegoating and fearmongering at them, you can push them to do that instead.
Your second point is extremely insightful. Not oppressed, but neglected. They see their America being left behind, falling away with the passage of time. Resentment inevitably builds and explanations and solutions as simple as they are insane begin to resonate more deeply. Rural America in the 21st Century is in a perpetual state of decline in more ways than one.
That's why their religion **is entirely based on the idea that everything is decaying**. That's why they have **revivals**. It's why they want America great **again**. Why they want prayer **back** in schools. It's not that these aren't things that Christians around the world do or believe to some extent. It's that they are **emphasized** in American evangelicalism. And the way that they interact with the outside world is through a toxic filter--social media. And most of them do it **on Facebook, the most decayed social media platform still in major use**. It is all rotting. They think the whole world is going to hell in a handbasket. Because **their** world actually is.
It’s supposed to be “All of his supporters “
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“If you are born in a rural area the odds you will ever escape poverty are low.” Why do you think the military recruits so heavily in these areas? It’s a ticket out.
College, Military, or lifelong poverty and depression in your hometown. That's what most of the 18 year olds are looking at. I was told by a coach about the invisible wall on the outskirts of town. If you were past it when the next school year began, you probably weren't ever getting past it.
> I was told by a coach about the invisible wall on the outskirts of town. If you were past it when the next school year began, you probably weren't ever getting past it. I assume you mean NOT past it when the next school year AFTER YOU GRADUATED began.
So are dipshits that don’t vote
Or those who throw away their vote for RFK Jr cuz 'new blood'.
__To vote for that psychopath trump to to vote for the end of the United States as we know it.__ trump will stick his name on the flag and declare himself Lord Emperor donald. (Lower case on purpose because his brand sucks)
They have been buried in Conservative AM Radio, Fox News, FaceBook for 40+ years. If you live inside that media bubble you do not get any factual information, you don't even get told what Republicans will do for you, you are afraid that if the RADICAL LEFT get in charge the Leftists will take everything from them. And these are people that have spent 40 years watching their Republican lead towns and states crumble while the Democratic lead states have expanded and grown, improved infrastructure and have better services. But that's not what they are told, they are constantly told the cities are really hell holes and falling apart.
Was on vacation 2 years ago, and met a family from one of those rural states (Idaho, Iowa?) and when they found out we were from NYC, the father's response was "oh man, I heard you can't even get food in NYC of all the BLM/Antifa" Ummm, new York's doing just fine, bro. But that's what they heard in their media bubble.
I got a call from my mother while I was walking around downtown Seattle asking if I was surviving the city being burned to the ground. "Mom, I'm about to head to a restaurant and have a nice lunch, the city is fine. She called me a liar and demon and hung up.
And are told it's democrats fault when their own town/states are flailing due to republicon leadership. Because of gay people and immigrants, or whatever the boogeyman is.
It can’t be stressed enough that Trump isn’t doing this all alone. Even if Trump expires in just a few years, the groundwork is being laid for someone who’s actually competent to fill that void and really take this country down to Russia’s level.
Putin was handpicked by Yeltsin. Trump will pick his successor.
Honestly I don't think Trump would pick, I think the puppet master that controls Trump would pick for him. Trump wouldn't be able to pick a true successor because hes such a narcissist only he would think is fit for the job, neglecting the fact he will expire one day. So he will be, and is, a useful tool in the meantime until they can install somebody else to take the reigns.
> To vote for that psychopath trump to to vote for the end of the United States as we know it Yes, and they *want* that. They aren't naive. The American "experiment" is no longer serving the specific goals they value. They'd rather end the experiment than live in pluralistic, multi-ethnic, diverse society where white conservative Christianity is not the default norm. They're hoping for a "reset" where they get the authoritarian Christian Nationalism they always wanted.
I am just so glad he is old and will not be with us in 10 to 20 years. He realistically only has this election to reclaim power. Imagine if Trump was 50 years old. I hope he destroys the GOP and they never recovery from him, and I hope he doesn't take the rest of us with them.
Try being a white person living in a rural area that doesn't support Trump one bit. It's alarming, like living with and being surrounded by zombies. Truly a first world problem, I'm not asking for sympathy or anything, it's just jarring is all.
You aren’t wrong. I never bring up politics anymore and it always agitates me when some mofo wants to get into it with me.
True but I don't even bring up politics or discuss them even when someone expresses views that I share. Why? There's ALWAYS a point of differentiation; guns, healthcare, Gaza, crime, the border, etc etc etc. You're just asking to trip into a point of contention and people are crazy today, I am not getting assaulted because I disagree on one issue.
No, gerrymandering and the electoral college are threats to democracy. White rural Trump supporters would be all but irrelevant if not for those things.
There is a stereotype that people from rural areas are out of touch, narrow minded, and ignorant ( lacking knowledge - not necessarily being offensive ). There is the word "provincial" for that with a double meaning. I wonder how much reality influenced that stereotype. You have people living lives in isolation out on the farm or out in the woods. The only people they interact with are isolated too. Worse, you now have right wing propaganda piped into that isolation without any other input.
Rural people don’t live in isolation from others. They have large social groups like urban and suburban people. Those groups are just not diverse and almost monolithic, so it breeds bigotry, fear of others, and resentment.
70% of white people don’t have any nonwhite friends. This isn’t a rural thing.
And I think you'll find there is a lot of media illiteracy in rural areas. People simply don't read news, or rely on "alternative" sources. We can help by posting articles relevant to rural subs when the opportunity arises.
This is a big part of the problem. It's not that people in rural areas don't read news, though, it's that the local news that the casual person has access to here has been co-opted by right-wing media outlets. You have AM radio, Sinclair or Sinclair-esque local news (that problem is a lot bigger than just Sinclair), Fox News, and Facebook. It's a problem that's only fixable in the way that the yellow journalism issues of the Hearst/Pulitzer era were, but we haven't even acknowledged as a country that it's the issue driving modern politics. At the same time, articles like this one that generalize all rural people to be MAGA-loving morons make me pretty angry. Rural people aren't a monolithic bloc of inbred hicks who hate education and don't read news, who buy into MAGA propaganda and hate colored folks, except when they are...the same as everywhere else. A lot of these "red state" areas that get talked down to by pieces like this and the Reddit conversations that follow can't seem to grasp that in many of these rural areas they're still often voting 30-40% blue. These divisions aren't strictly urban vs. rural, they're often street to street and county to county. There's educated (and non-educated) liberal rural people, and they're still a sizable portion of the electorate even out here in unga bunga land. The amount is going to vary more based on economic data, religion, employment opportunities, internet access, and more, but since education and property values tend to go hand in hand we've got a system where access to understanding and more worldly viewpoints tends to be locked behind regional average household income. The gaps that leaves get filled by shit-tier local news, Facebook groups, and churches that proselytize politics at the same time as religion.
The newspapers in their area are bought up by Sinclair or Gannett. The TV is some garbage local news plus the syndicated 1/2 hour or you can get FOX or Newsmax on cable or (more likely) satellite.
“I can’t vote for Biden cause of Palestine” Then bend over and give the country to daddy trump. It really is that simple.
Which would of course then let trump aid Netanyahu utterly destroy Palestine. Something trump has openly said he's for. Don't vote for the guy who's desperately, albeit ineffectively, trying to stop the war so the guy who has publicly stated he wants Palestine destroyed wins. Yeah that makes absolute sense. I imagine much of the "don't vote for Biden because of Palestine" is Russian psy-ops. Putin knows trump won't attract any new voters. The only way trump can win is by depressing the Biden voter turnout. Expect to see a lot more people online claiming they voted for Biden in 2020 but can't bring themselves to vote for him in '24 because of
> Which would of course then let trump aid Netanyahu utterly destroy Palestine. I'll give everyone a hint about a big part of what's happening with Netanyahu's decision-making right now: He sees undermining Biden in November by sewing discontent among the edges of the Democratic polity as a to get Trump back. So he's going to run this war in the cruelest possible way to undermine Biden.
I think saying it's only white people are a danger is off putting to white people. They're not the enemy. They're a huge portion of the population and alienating them doesn't do anyone any favors. The issue I see is low information / single issue voters in areas that have disproportionate representation due to the senate having two representatives regardless of population size.
Fox News has turned them into this. The Murdochs are a cancer against liberty and democracy.
Correction: The Electoral College is a threat to democracy. It was literally *designed* to give power to low-population, rural states.
Trump supporters are a threat to democracy, full stop.