Why do the rural folk HATE city folk? What happened to cause all this hatred? Whatever happened to live and let live?

I thought it was the other way around.

No, r1. Us city folks don’t even think about you country folks

Which is one thing that pisses you off about us.

it's always been that way

vulgar and pagan originally referred to country dwellers, so it is probably the city folk who hated the rurals

I live in a city. We don't hate rural people. We're broad minded and less-judgmental. Rural culture THRIVES on judgment, mostly because of the Bible toting types.

This is the lie that Fox News constantly tells them. 'The liberal elites despise you!' Meanwhile, the people on-air at Fox are hugely wealthy and live a gilded life.

Yeah, right, city dwellers are so openminded--except about farmers and small-towners! Stop lying, bitches.

I grew up in a small town and many there identify with high culture, progressive values, etc. I lived in the 2nd biggest city in the U.S. and many there were small-minded conservative jerks.

Country mice hate city rats and vice versa. Each thinks the other is a gun-obsessed savage. Sadly they are both right.

r5 and they all live in either a big city or an outpost like Hudson, NY.

People don't like rural folk because they are unsophisticated, oftentimes undereducated, jingoistic, and boring.

Lots of psychological projection in this thread R6

Territory folks should stick together,

Territory folks should all be pals.

Cowboys dance with farmer's daughters,

Farmers dance with the ranchers' gals.

R5 I say the same thing all the time.

Maybe rural folk should stop sending food to the cities. Then the sophisticated urbanites might realize how tenuous and dependent their lifestyle is.

Everyone knows that the legacy media are filled with elites, R5. Judging from the fallout of the debate, Fox is becoming more and more liberal anyway. A rightwing family member says Fox is too liberal and he watches some other channel, I think it's called OWN.

Some of the best people I ever knew were from the South. And some of the worst, most racist/judgemental people I met were from the cities in the North. Go figure.

People in rural areas tend to be more religious and I think there is an explanation. When you work with real things, animals, the earth, the seasons, DEATH is in your face a lot. It isn't hard to imagine that humans need the comfort of religion to deal with all the uncertainty, too, of planting a crop and not knowing if the frost, drought or disease will make all your back-breaking labor futile. Plus, living in small places makes human nature more visible--everyone knows who drinks, beats their family, etc. You need some faith to cope with it all.

In cities it's easier to pretend all that doesn't exist and live a la-di-da detached-from-reality lifestyle. Which I, personally, prefer.

Rural folks tend to be religious fundamentals, and fundamentalism of any type is dangerous, stupid and destructive. The history of civilization proves this again and again and again.

I love you R10

The history of civilization? oxymoron?

i think history refutes any claim humanity has to 'civilization'

Yes, you're right, R18; we're still wearing loincloths and painting on cave walls. And no one can read or write.

[quote]In cities it's easier to pretend all that doesn't exist and live a la-di-da detached-from-reality lifestyle. Which I, personally, prefer.

At least you admit it.

[quote]I think history refutes any claim humanity has to 'civilization'.

Explain yourself, R18.

Yeah, why not, R20? but trying to raise the level of discussion/level of honesty on this thread is thankless, so....ignore.

Too bad, it could have been an interesting discussion.

A whole branch of my family are rural living Trump voters. They pride themselves on not reading, not knowing, not considering any ideas or people outside of the small town/small minded way of thinking. They really do distrust science. And for all their religious piety, they are not nice people. Very mean to each other behind their backs. Let them stay there.

Because most of the time people in the cities take the high road, R22. Or so they think.

Sounds like your family just sucks, R23.

I got away from them. All is good. That's another reason they hate the cities. Anyone with any real brains or potential or personality gets out of a small town as fast as possible and moves to a city. There's a total brain drain, and all that's left are the real dumb ones. I'm talking REAL dumb.

‘Cause city folk just don’t know how.

Its so funny but I lived in a few small towns and rural areas during my life and I never found people anything but nice. Considering Ive always been gayer than a Judy Garland festival it did surprise me. Of course that was decades ago . People in general have changed .

It's funny how many people throw the term "rubes" around but JO almost exclusively to types who come from small towns and the sticks.

My experience of a life being a city kid and man around many, many different rural (farm, town, ranch) people is there is a sense of lack of safety, lack of "morals," and lack of connection with the earth and land and nature. A lack of independence, too.

But I also have found it carries a bravado suggestive of pushing away the larger world because the people don't feel the measure up or that they lack the wherewithal to succeed. Country people living in a city tend to drop the bullshit.

I have been assaulted, shot at, and sexually attacked (!) in the country. I was assaulted once as a teen by the teens, had a gun pulled on me but have not yet been shot at, and not sexually attacked while living in any of the various cities I've had homes.

[quote]Why do the rural folk HATE city folk?

They clearly love the elitist, handed-everything-in-life, looks-down-on-them, fucks over the little guy, adulterer, corrupt-types...when they're racist and bigoted trash like them.

A lot of rural vs urban angst was deliberately created by politicians to score political points.

More Rural Americans Get News From Ben Shapiro - Than ABC, CBS, NBC & CNN COMBINED

Grew up mainly in California with some time spent on the east coast for college and afterwards. Grew up hearing people refer to the midwest and “flyover” with snobbish disdain

In a nutshell, it's about fat. Rural (fat) folk hate city (slender) folk and vice versa.

Rural vs city is an old conflict, but it used to be more of a quiet cultural difference.

When industrialization collapsed and tech was the only industry, it limited the recovery and earnings to people in those "elite" areas, and that's where a lot of the current divide gets its fuel, at least in economic terms.

What about outsourcing manufacturing jobs to China, R36?

This is sad. If you look at old '40s films (admittedly a lot were propaganda) it was like everyone appreciated the uniqueness of each background--whether you were from Buffalo or Kenosha or Wichita. Whereever.

Now bitches love to hate.

I grew up rural and lived in big cities for more than 30 years. Country folks are just not exposed to a broader range of ideas, topics, cultural events, education, etc. Their life is simple and that's what shapes their mindset.

Rural people tend to be more white, less wealthy, and less educated. That’s why they hate city folk

R39 hits the nail on the head - rural people are not exposed to as many differences as urban people.

That drives their conservatism and their mistrust.

I was born in a small town. Then I lived in a medium sized city, then went back to small town, then another medium sized city, then a college town, then a relatively big city, then back to my hometown, and now I retired in an area where the closest small town is twenty minutes away.

I don't judge people by where they're from; I judge them by their intelligence and friendliness. And I must say, now that I've been here four years, some people are friendly -- but they're all as dumb as a box of hair.

[quote]I thought it was the other way around.

Not quite. City folk may disdain country folk, but country folk are never more than a hair's breadth of fear away from hating city folk.

City folk come to understand that there are other people in the world doing other things in other orbits. Country people never do. Instead they grow ever more vexed, more bristly that the rest of the world, their country, their state, their community, their family doesn't think and do exactly as they do. They mistrust city people, seeing their curiosity, their interest in the larger world, their travel, ambition, fanciness as an affront to country people.

I grew up in a rural area, and I went to college and left. It's true that the talented ambitious people find better opportunities and move away -- and that leaves all the remaining untalented, unambitious people behind to build a community of sorts. They may not say it, but I have always thought that country people resent city people because country people simply don't have the resources or access to opportunities that city people do. And they resent the idea that they aren't "good enough" to make it in the city ... and they don't want to face the truth of that idea.

You all sound like your basing your theories on 100 years ago . Country people have the internet too you know. Cable as well . They arent living in the bubble of rural america of even 40 years ago.

R45 does not live in a rural area. The internet is no replacement for your face to face network.

What I'm finding is that the people where I live now are deathly afraid of change -- that's why they don't leave. They're terrified to drive even two hours away! They like to stay put where everything is familiar and they know virtually everyone.

And they are on the internet -- but only to use Facebook. They barely know how to use it for anything else.

r1 exactly and I think you've answered the questions. "you dag-gum city folk think y'alls better than us rural folk" and voila, hatred is born!

I have always been a city-dweller, and I have never hated rural folks, nor have I generally felt unwelcome by them. Sometimes, I've envied the natural beauty they get to enjoy on a daily basis. Maybe some of them have envied what the city offers.

They’re Jealous, bitches!

Read the article. Majority rule, laws, and court rulings mean “things are shoved down our throats.”

In other words: civil rights laws, legal abortion, unions; interracial relations, pollution control, better gas mileage; just about any advances in the US since WW I have been “shoved down their throats” because the God-hollerers - religious, financial and political - with gullible followers don’t like it.

The opportunities to grow, whether personally, professionally, educationally or financially are greatest in cities and have been since the Romans. You also tend to meet people who’re different from you there and learn something from them. The smart kids leave as a result, make money and are more likely to live successful - however it’s defined - lives. Those who remain resent other’s success but somehow don’t seem to understand they’re the only ones who can fix it.

They hate city dwellers because they know that's where the coloreds live and anyone not smart enough to reject that must be insane! Also too much shared space and public amenities which they consider a loss of freedom.

White and Asian “liberals” in big cities hate working class white America and romanticize low IQ blacks, criminals and illegal immigrants who drive down labor costs. Somehow they’ve branded their cynical power grab as “progressive” - their biggest problem isn’t that people are figuring it out.

Some of the best sex I've ever had has been with closeted, married country men visiting the city for a weekend. Hot, hot, HOT.

R53 is a textbook example of why people hate rural folk.

EVERYONE HAS TO THINK LIKE ME OR THEY ARE GODLESS SLUTTY HEATHENS AND FAIRIES WHO LIKE BLACK PEOPLE BETTER THAN MY FAT IGNORANT WT ASS WAAAAHHHH! why don’t they like me?

Idiots.

No surprise I already had R53 on ignore. Clearly a shithead all of the time.

Rural folks tend to be protestant, and thus basically cavemen and savages.

People in small town and rural areas are fat, trashy and ignorant. There's nothing to like.

Who the fuck cares? Once we have locked down power we won’t even give them a second thought. They can disappear into their cultists religious hill towns for all eternity while we live out our reckless lives of debauchery.

Wow. What an amazing question on a site that almost literally drips hate for anybody less urbane or "uneducated. Self-awareness anybody?

[quote]Maybe rural folk should stop sending food to the cities. Then the sophisticated urbanites might realize how tenuous and dependent their lifestyle is.

City folk should stop subsidizing farms with millions of dollars and them sink or swim on their own merit instead of sucking on the city TIT.

[quote]Wow. What an amazing question on a site that almost literally drips hate for anybody less urbane or "uneducated. Self-awareness anybody?

Hilarious that you put uneducated in quotes when it is a measurable factor. They are uneducated. They don't go to college. They don't educate themselves outside whatever narrow lane they are born into. The way you know this is because those seeking to educate themselves and move outside their narrow lanes have all moved to the city.

Shithole provincial bumpkins always have the Tall Poppy syndrome against us metropolitan dwellers. First thing first, the accent.

r62 That's bullshit. YOU have NO idea.

I grew up in a small town and moved to "the big city." Even before moving I obviously visited big cities. Yes, there is diversity, tolerance, permissiveness [I think the greatest asset of big cities is simply indifference] - all good. But, what really struck me when going to and then moving to big cities is just how fucking "normal" it was - there's just more to do. People largely get up and go to work and try to pay their bills and fit in some fun and relaxation in between. The whole concept of "the city" as uniformly "backwards" is just so off. And, plenty of conservative people live in cities - even "liberal" cities.

I don't trust people who hate travel.

So the real answer in my opinion is that people who live way out in the middle of nowhere see themselves as rugged hard working individuals who can survive on their own. They resent the fact that they have to pay any taxes that go to "city problems" they don't live in. The same reason most of them tend to be Republicans. "Not my problem."

In reality, they fail to see that those "city folk" paid for their roads, power grid, water, internet, social security, bail outs, subsidies, national security, and all the infrastructure they take for granted. More money flows out of a city into a rural community that the other way around even if you compensate for the product they produce.

Hence you end up with douche bags representing them like Rep. Devin Nunes.

We hate you both.

We both hate you

I'm for cutting them off too, R61. No more city earned money to rural areas, especially farms. Let their own taxes support them if they're so superior.

Since they hate urban dwellers so much, surely they can live without the technological and medical advancements people in cities have developed - unless we upcharge them.

You know, stupid, food is grown in the country.

There are many huge agribusiness concerns that are corrupt and subsidized, but most food is grown by small farmers.

AND AGRIBUSINESSES CARE ABOUT RURAL PEOPLE???

Ahahahahahahahahaha(deep breath)hahahahahahahahahaahahahahabahahahahhahahahahahhaa

Thank you, I needed that laugh.

[R70] I love it how you idiot liberals - the self proclaimed geniuses of our time - have absolutely no idea where your food and water comes from. You will pay for your arrogance.

[quote] most food is grown by small farmers.

It's 2020 not 1920. Most food comes from huge industrial size farms Dear. Most little guys have been squashed by them too.

[R70] You are particularly loathsome.

They grow water in the heartland and ship it to the big cities?

Why so, R75? Deplorables hate people in big cities. Let's see how long they can survive without what we provide to them.

R73 thinks water comes from the country. The Great Lakes and all the urban areas that surround it where all the water systems originate for the entire Midwest beg to differ. Enjoy your contaminated well water currently being sucked dry and polluted by agribusiness and fracking.

R74 what planet do you live on?

As long as they can combine Disability, Social Security, food stamps and cheap housing... they think they're living the American Dream.

Exactly, R80, so I say cut them off.

All the most rural states are tax money takers. All the more urban states are tax money donors.

End of fucking story.

r77 Like what, Stockbrokers, Insurance salesmen, "bloggers". You guys are mostly just stupid and very ignorant.

[quote]Wow. What an amazing question on a site that almost literally drips hate for anybody less urbane or "uneducated. Self-awareness anybody?

They're the reason people like McConnell have all of the power. They're the reason Donald Trump is president. They're the reason our country doesn't believe in science and climate change and affordable education and healthcare. It doesn't matter whether city people like them or not, at least our fucking votes try to help them. Their votes reveal how incredibly arrogant, ignorant and selfish they truly are.

That's what it comes down to: The way they vote and the way we vote shows who cares more about everyone regardless of "rural" or "city"

Let's see how long you live for without your doctors, hospitals, advancements in science, medicine, and technology, for, R83. We pay for all of that.

[R84] You have no idea how silly you sound to those who know better.

[R85] What would be the basis of your moral authority?

R86, support your argument like R84 did. You know, with facts. If you can.

R88, I can't even see R86 since I already had that idiot on ignore before this thread. I'm going to assume he can't defend shit. Racist trash can't defend their racism, that's why they have to engage in hyperbole, not actual facts.

I don’t like the city folks or the country folks! I only like my suburban bubble where people mostly all the same and everything is clean and new. There is said it. Sue me!

They’re jealous of all the selection we have in our supermarkets.

I don't think there is much hate between rural and city folk because they are far removed from each other. We Americans are too self-absorbed to even think about people outside of our lives and our communities. Rugged individualism does that.

I grew up in a rural small town but everyone there loved the city and wanted to travel. There are a lot of townie types who will never move away from the dying town but aren't opposed to traveling to nearby cities for an experience. I know many city people who love visiting small towns and farms and envy that lifestyle. CNN and Fox News exaggerate the idea of this mutual hatred. Most people don't think enough about others outside of their bubble to even form a feeling of hatred.

Look, the reality is that the Bell Curve as it relates to say, poverty or education exists on both sides. A wise person will know this, even a less educated person. So neither side is really wrong (or entirely right. They used to say somthing like "walk a mile in another man's shoes" something to that effect ;)

There isn't much difference between poor rural people and poor urban people in behavior and outlook from my experience. However one advantage that the urban poor have is more opportunities due to living in closer proximity to government and social services and the wealthy who may sympathize with them. Poor rural people are more likely to suffer in silence. I think that films by Harmony Korine captured both sides, Kids (urban poverty) and Gummo (rural poverty). Poor NYers have far more rags-to-riches tales due to being in one of the biggest financial, arts and literary centers in the entire world.

I have a friend who lives in rural Wisconsin. When she visited me on NYC, I was so curious about what she would think.

She commented on all the various languages we heard as we walked down the street.

She really surprised me when she said, “This is where I should be living!”

This debate reminds me of the movie THE RURAL JUROR and its sequel URBAN FERVOR.

Politics also pushes rural and urban apart.

While the poverty of rural America and inner city America are similar, the GOP only mentions the inner city as somehow being lazy, welfare moms, etc.

Welfare and Medicaid are described as programs for poor blacks, when in fact most people in these programs are poor whites, often rural.

GOP ignores that throughout the country there is poverty in rural areas and growing poverty in suburbs. And many of those communities are just as diverse, rural West is very Latino and Native American and rural South has a lot of black. I also hate the idea rural=white and urban=black/Hispanic.

I'm sure many poor white people in Boston, Philly, Chicago, St Paul, Houston and Las Vegas are just as much dependent on government aid as their black/Hispanic neighbors.

All these divisions created for no good reason other than politics.

Isn't that what Biden is trying to say?

Next thing, I wish he would kick the predatory credit card companies out of Delaware or make them pay hella-taxes.

Tax the rich!

I agree with the above posters that 1 - the “hatred” is more created by politicians as a means to get power, and 2 - the real basis of the conflicts that do exist are personality and intelligence differences between people who are content (or too fearful) and stay where they are; and others who want something different, broader and more challenging - it doesn’t have to be an urban / rural thing since the basics of the conflict played out in my own life as an outer-boro kid who wanted to, and did move, into Manhattan while most family in the old neighborhood think that’s both crazy and uppity.

^Staten Island

You nailed it R102

[quote]Welfare and Medicaid are described as programs for poor blacks, when in fact most people in these programs are poor whites, often rural.

Who still stupidly vote Republican, and that's precisely why there is more disdain for poor whites in particular. They're delusional about who they are and feed off of the idea that by voting Republican, it's their way of looking down on other races. They deserve being treated with repulsion not for being poor, but for pretending they're not and voting to hurt other poor people because they're not white.

Nixon's hate for liberals stemmed from him being a rural guy.

Yes, and he was a hate filled twisted prick.

R94, as nice as that all sounds, the fact remains that the Democratic cities are filled with voters who vote for policies that help the people living in those rural areas whereas the Republican rural areas vote for policies that hurt everyone, including themselves, and they do it in the name of "owning the libs" and acting holier than thou. They fucking vote to hurt themselves to spite the rest of us. The Democrats don't do that. The urban voters don't do that.

Dump is driven by that same hate. He didn't grow up rural, but he never had access to the liberal elite of the country. They always ridiculed him. I always thought he planned to run for the democrats in the past, during that time when he was still a democrat. They then said 'No Way' and he switched to being a republican. Obama, a Black guy came along, became a democratic candidate was loved, won and Dump went berserk with hate and revenge.

A LOT what drives Dump is hate for and revenge towards democrats.

[quote]what planet do you live on?

This one, where family farms are dead.

[quote]I don’t like the city folks or the country folks! I only like my suburban bubble where people mostly all the same and everything is clean and new. There is said it. Sue me!

That's why I left the burbs as soon as I turned 18.

I don't regret it.

Yes, R101, people in Bev. Hills or West L.A. act like the Valley is Idaho. And people in the Valley act like Hollywood is Gomorrah.

[quote]They used to say somthing like "walk a mile in another man's shoes" something to that effect ;)

I tried that but...

I thought R15 had an insightful comment. I follow many English and Irish farmers on twitter, and the stuff they have to deal with--animal health, staying awake for several days in a row to help with sheep birth, etc--is exhausting just to watch. (And I never knew how fragile sheep were--everything and anything kills them.)

I think there must be a different between rural, southern people and rural people from other parts of the country.

There is rural, and there are trailer parks. There is plenty of intellect out in the expanse. Educated people who choose to stay in the country.

But that is not the rule. There are plenty of angry rednecks out there as well. So you just can’t paint them all with the same brush. My uncle went to Yale and teaches at an agricultural college in bumfuck Mississippi. But his dinners are spectacular.

I love how COVID mixed with Trump derangement has magically transformed the Dems into the party of “science.” Bear in mind these are the very same people who asset that a man who proclaims himself a woman IS legally a woman regardless of the undying genetics. Something is wrong.

And yet they regard themselves as sophisticated.

I love how COVID mixed with Trump derangement with 200,000 Americans dead and still act like its a HOAX.

There fixed it for you.

Trumpian Science

R115 is a textbook case of sweeping Conservative/Rethug generalizations based on few, narrow, tangentially related facts.

Because you make it clear that you look down on them.

Then Fox makes it worse. But mainly the first thing.

The party of science wins again! 0% proficiency in math in Baltimore schools - new Dems voters!

Bullshit R120 - we don’t look down on them, we honestly just don’t think about them much - there is a huge difference. As someone said above urbanites tend to be tolerant/indifferent.

How is not bothering to think about fellow Americans not the same as looking down on them?

You're saying they're not worthy of your oh so important city folk time.

Thanks for that 2016 fox article, It's 2020 are you still on dial up?

[Quote] drips hate for anybody less urbane or "uneducated.

Just goes to show the urbane and educated can be stupid.

[quote]How is not bothering to think about fellow Americans not the same as looking down on them?

One could ask the same question about other human beings. Do rural people think about the French, Italians or Africans? No? they must be looking down on them. I guess they don't care about mankind. See how that works!

No R123 it is being fine with them living their lives in a way I would never choose to live mine, because it is their life, not mine, and not judging them for being different than I am. It honestly doesn’t require eternal vigilance and introspection on my part I know you are trolling, but Jesus at least make a logically coherent rebuttal to what you “disagree” with.

No one in the city "hates" rural people. . Rural areas just don't like being called out on their glaring hypocrisy and their selfishness when it comes to the very reason there is disdain for them. Here's a clue: Nothing to do with being poor or simply white...and everything to do with a nasty streak when it comes to viewing others and voting in such a way to cement that nasty belief system.

Why do I get the feeling this is a debate between an American living in a nice place on the upper east side and a Russian Troll living in Norilsk?

Hamilton Heights actually R129

[quote] I love how COVID mixed with Trump derangement has magically transformed the Dems into the party of “science.” Bear in mind these are the very same people who asset that a man who proclaims himself a woman IS legally a woman regardless of the undying genetics. Something is wrong.

R115 Well there's the climate change thing as well. That also makes Dems the party of science. And the fancy science institutions are all in cities. So there’s that.

But your point about genes and genderID is good, and Democrats' plank on that issue is inconsistent, and anti-science.

Cities have been having a party for the last 30 to 40 years. They have thrived with innovations in technology, and the world is built for them. City people get the latest technology, have the fastest internet, best cell phone service, have gotten rich in the stock market, etc.

Rural areas, meanwhile, have largely declined. Manufacturing has left, Main Street is dead, people are too poor to invest in the stock market, and their kids leave to move to urban areas. We don't value anything that rural areas produce.

This is precisely the schism that Trump took advantage of. Some rural people believe that Trump gives them a voice (even though he is the epitome of a city asshole), what others support him simply because he makes city folks miserable and mad. If you can't join the party, then ruin it.

The truth is that cities cannot survive without rural areas to support them, and rural areas would never develop without cities.

[quote]The truth is that cities cannot survive without rural areas to support them,

Whatever. NYC is not dependent on Tupelo, MS. It's the other way around.

Who cares about these rural rethugs. I get most of my fruit from out of the country.

The USA lost its way when the middle class got thrown under the bus along with taxes on the rich, good public school system, affordable health care NOT from HMOs (they were Nixon's brainchild), unions, and free state higher education systems. Not to mention people in prison being able to study for degrees.

I think the elite bear a lot of the guilt for accepting larger and larger salaries while laboring/farming people got less and less--if they could work at all.

The oligarchs correctly assumed that if they got the professional classes to embrace greed as a lifestyle, they'd drive a wedge in society to their benefit.

Just how much food does NYC grow, r133? How much oil does it produce? Where is the NYC water supply coming from? Where is its electricity being produced? The pulp that the Times is printed on? Where are the raw materials coming from that produce the merchandise in all of its stores?

Not Queens, that's for sure.

Furthermore, covid has taught us that we don't NEED to attend conferences all over the world, or drive to work all the time, or take lavish vacations, or find other ways to ignore our families and feed our egos. All of a sudden we realize that teachers and nurses really are worth more than the pittance they get paid. Maybe college professors and lawyers and stockbrokers aren't exactly as "essential" as their salaries suggest. Wow! What a revelation.

Will we go back to our greedy, thoughtless ways? ASAP.

R135, it is those rural people who voted in the people who put all the policies in place that did all those harmful things. The Democrats have been fighting to fix it for nearly 50 years at this point but every time they make some headway, like the ACA, the rural voters fuck it all up by voting for people who roll it all back. They literally vote against their own interests. How are we supposed to respect any group of people stupid enough to vote against their own interests in order to spite "those uppity libruls"? They are either ignorant or spiteful and stupid. Neither of which makes me respect them.

Well, if the elites are so enlightened, why haven't they been able to 'raise up' the ignorant or make their own case? Oh, I forgot, they were too busy managing their money, swilling chardonney and yammering on about how stupid rural types are.

The Democrats have been fighting to fix it?

Uh, not exactly. Don't they get their campaign money from mainly the same sources as the Republicans?

I think you'll find they do.

R139, they literally vote against their own interests all the time. You can't make logical arguments to the purposefully ignorant.

R140, no. The answer is no. Social Security. Medicare. Medicaid. SNAP. The ACA. All from Democrats. Name all the programs that helped people en masse that Repugs have championed over the last 50 years.

[quote]Just how much food does NYC grow, [R133]? How much oil does it produce? ..... The pulp that the Times is printed on?

As I said before it's 2020 not 1920 Graps. No one buys newspapers anymore its all online. Oil has been on it's way out for the last 20 years and most of what we get is not domestic, it's bought for cheaper prices on the global market like Saudi Arabia.

[quote] Cities have been having a party for the last 30 to 40 years. They have thrived with innovations in technology, and the world is built for them. City people get the latest technology, have the fastest internet, best cell phone service, have gotten rich in the stock market, etc.

Not really.

A few main cities have been exploding in the last twenty years--since NAFTA--and life for most people there has become infinitely harder. Mid-sized cities that used to have manufacturing--especially Detroit, but once-nice cities like St Louis--have lost numberless people who had to move to the big cities--NYC, San Fran, LA, NYC, etc--to get shitty jobs, the only ones that exist, and fight in the housing market, which is now brutal.

The only people having a party are the 1%--and they are rooted to nothing and move among their homes whenever bored.

Division is the bread and butter of politicians. We should be better than it, but we’re not.

And the fool who talks about farmers feeding cities...who buys the damn crops, and who pays taxes to the government that subsidizes your “business”?

If you didn’t sell food outside rural America,, you’d be left with a lot of crops and no money. I haven’t lived in a rural community in many decades, but I’m pretty sure you can’t trade a truckload of corn for an iPhone.

Until they figure out why they hate rural folk, American democracy is fucked.

Between them, Wyoming and the Dakotas have a population of about two million people and six US senators, all of them Republicans.

Between them, California, New York, and Illinois have about seventy million residents and six US senators, all of them Democrats.

Rural states and voters have a ridiculously disproportionate influence on politics in the United States. Do any of the rural apologists here want to claim that Wyoming and North and South Dakota contribute as much of anything - people, production, jobs, education, advances in medicine or technology, taxes: anything at all - as do the people of California, New York, or Illinois to the United States?

It’s not a question of hating people in rural areas. It’s a question of “who pays?” for what we get for our taxes and how we live - governed by the will of the majority or of a tiny minority of Americans?

^^ So learn to be nice to them. Win them over. Make them vote democratic. Make them vote in their own interest.

It is, in fact, the liberal leaning urban dwellers who have contempt for suburban and rural communities. "Flyover states" "redneck country" "stupid country" . . .

Guess where most liberal leaning urban dwellers come from? FLYOVERSTAN. There is a reason young people leave the rural community and there are reasons they are justified in their distaste for the community they had to escape from.

Our founding fathers never intended rural America to have this much power. When they were deciding to give each sate 2 senators no one lived in California except native Americans. They never would have done that had they realized how disproportionate the vote would become 40 million in just one state alone bowing down to a couple rednecks in flyoverstan.

[quote]^^ So learn to be nice to them. Win them over. Make them vote democratic. Make them vote in their own interest.

Some years ago there was this article (I wish I had bookmarked it) about rural people being offered IT classes because their mining and coal jobs are just not coming back. They weren't interested, flat out rejected any alternative career prospect other than what their father and grandfather had done.

That's the difference between city and rural folks. Urban populations are way better to deal with change and adaption because cities move with the pulse of time, often dictating it. Rural folks are always behind.

[quote]Our founding fathers never intended rural America to have this much power. When they were deciding to give each sate 2 senators no one lived in California except native Americans.

California only became part of the U.S. three-quarters of a century later in 1848 with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

Rural folks began to hate city folks in the late 60s, when James Paley decided that CBS needed to cancel "The Beverly Hillbillies," "Mayberry RFD," and a bunch of other Top 10 shows because they were too "low brow." That was the beginning of the real culture war.

You still really don't get it, r142.

If rural areas ceased to exist, every city everywhere and all of the inhabitants therein would quite literally DIE.

You're provng my point: you don't value anything that rural areas produce.

So they'll continue to stuck their fingers in your eye by voting for idiots like Trump.

R153: First of all, it was William Paley, the Chairman of CBS and husband of Babe who finally axed the shows his network had created and which had been profitable because they were becoming a drag on revenue: rural audiences in the US didn't have as much $ to spend (and now have less, hence the rise of Walmart and the Dollar stores) then nor were there as many of them as in there were in urban areas. The network's advertisers wanted a younger more sophisticated demographic with more money to spend as an audience.

Nothing to do with culture wars; everything to do with money.

I read that the main reason rural areas lean Republican is due to the fact that many people there don't vote. Think about it, if you are young and able, you will have to work to support yourself and usually that involves a lot of hours of work. If you have kids then it makes it even more difficult to have any free time. Reading and educating yourself on politics also takes up time. The only people who have that free time are elderly retired people or wealthier people. Most old people skew conservative and wealthier people are a mixed bag but a wealthy man who owns a factory or a business will likely vote Republican to avoid paying more taxes. And contrary to popular belief, many poor whites are Democratic especially the ones who are pro-union and pro-welfare and young people everywhere lean liberal.

Also the Electoral College's model is outdated. It either needs to be overhauled or just done away with. 80% of Americans live in or around metropolitan areas now. Why should states with low populations have more power over the states that are the financial and commercial powerhouses of the US?

I think the Democratic Party needs to campaign harder to rural locations. Maybe set up workshops to help register voters and provide more education on the process. Politics are a local affair for a lot of people too. The issue is Republicans have a strongly devoted fanbase who will show up and vote as much as possible. Democrats need to work harder in that field and they definitely need to appeal harder to rural white populations.

If you have a home in town and a place in the country, you must get along with everyone. I was always taught that only inferior or insecure people are rude to others without strong reason.

Society is breaking down in general.

Farmers love to remind us that they feed city people but ignore the fact that our taxes finance all the gov't welfare they collect.

Rural people are very aware that anyone who wants more out of life leaves: so they bully them and call them nerds and create an environment where the local courthouse gang has absolute power over everyone.

R154 You still don't get it: rural areas in the rest of the world are shrinking. In Russia about a third of the rural areas in the country are becoming overrun with poisonous plants, making agriculture impossible. People who no longer have jobs migrate to the cities as a consequence, but Moscow, Vladivostok and St Petersburg are still there and their residents are still eating. Because they're adaptable, urban areas will find a way to continue to prosper. Rural areas, resistant to change, are failing by comparison.

Changes in dietary habits are making rural areas less prosperous because they make products (milk, for example) that people aren't buying: co-ops all over the country are going broke and farmers are dumping milk. Crops that used to take hundreds of workers to harvest - think cotton - are now harvested in less time by two people with machinery. Processing and trading companies like Archer, Daniels, Midland and Cargill, not family farmers, control the sale of most of the staple commodities in this country. I'm not for a minute suggesting this is a good thing - it's not - but the bulk of those increasingly few family farmers still working ultimately work for them, not themselves, because it's the processors who set the standards and the prices farmers are paid.

There's a lot of despair out there, too: from an NBC News story first broadcast on September 6th, 2019

[bold]"Suicide rates are rising, especially in rural America. Rates among people in rural counties were 25 percent higher than those in major metropolitan areas."[/bold]

"From 1999 to 2016, the rate of suicide among Americans ages 25 to 64 rose by 41 percent, researchers reported in JAMA Network Open. Rates among people living in rural counties were 25 percent higher than those in major metropolitan areas.

A number of factors appear to be driving suicide rates up in rural America, including poverty, low income and underemployment, said lead study author Danielle Steelesmith, a postdoctoral fellow at Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center. “Those factors are really bad in rural areas,” said Steelesmith."

Sad as this is, rural life just isn't as sustainable as it once was. In 1900, half of Americans were employed in agriculture. Today it's less than 2% and the percentage of GDP from agriculture, while still significant, has fallen from 7.7% in 1930 to 0.7% in 2000.

[quote]It is, in fact, the liberal leaning urban dwellers who have contempt for suburban and rural communities. "Flyover states" "redneck country" "stupid country" . . .

No where near the contempt they have for their fellow human and themselves when they vote for a party that only serves 1% of this country.

r163 Sooooo ignorant. Stunningly.

Dems and liberals are forced out of rural areas because there are very little opportunities. Most people who leave rural areas as young adults for jobs in blue states, may not even know they’re progressives yet. What they are is curious and want new opportunities. Those opportunities come, and they settle down, and are suddenly voting as democrats. Some discontinue attending church. Those who don’t, find churches in their communities that value progressive values such as education, philanthropy, human rights, etc., while moving away from the messaging from evangelical churches of homophobia, xenophobia, and immigration policies that are broadcast on a news network as a “good thing”, when panning across little children in outdoor detention camps in blazing temperatures.

Unfortunately, once that person leaves their hometown, they can never really return, due to the FOX News messaging that is echoed via their churches, as God’s will, which is another way of telling the congregations in these communities, who to vote for.

Interestingly and not coincidentally, FOX News never tells them to vote for a Republican who is a moderate pandemic demonizes the Democrat who is. That’s not news. That’s political campaigning via 24/7 media brainwashing and reinforced in churches.

That’s why liberals have forgotten many of their family and friends or even run off from them to never return or barely see them.

Imagine being Bill Gates. You grow up in a small southern town that has more churches than schools. You leave, and make it. You offer your family a different life, but your Christian parents say no thanks. Respecting them, you say that if they ever need anything, just ask.

Now imagine going home for thanksgiving or Christmas, decades later. You’re one of the richest men in world. You have changed the world, actually.

You go home to see the family, and on the way from the airport to your folks’ home, you stop at the local restaurant to pick up some of this pies your dad loves so much. You pull up, walk in with your CoViD mask on and baseball cap, and no one recognizes you and you look around, and the restaurant is actually pretty busy for the day before a holiday.

As you wait for the pies, you recognize an old friend from high school, and as you are approaching his table, the news is on in various TV sets in the diner. Suddenly, a story comes up about how you have just resourced a CoViD treatment that is 98% effective with one dose, and you will be offering it free, to every American who wants it.

With your head down as a self effacing reaction, your forget that you have on your mask and hat, and no one really recognizes you anyhow, when suddenly you hear booing throughout the diner. People yelling about conspiracies and calling you a faggot or a sissy or corporate sell out or your friend who you have now decided to not interrupt, yells that you’re probably going to shoot them with a microchip and mark them with the mark of the beast. And then, the waitress says loud as can be, “We just need to pray for poor little Billy. He’s still one of us and he just lost his way out there in Seattle and Canada with all of those elites and limousine liberals.

So I ask: how can anyone help or affect change for these communities? We want to. We think we can and when we try, there’s an entire news network, a religion and a misused bible, to stop us. And now these obstruction are also the POTUS.

We do not hate rural folk. The GOP and corporate interests, specifically their favorite news network.

No, R164, it really isn't. There is a difference between mocking and outright "hate." No liberal has contempt for "flyover" for any other reason than how they vote.

You've literally watched every stereotype of an elitist from the city who was handed everything in life, who has fucked over the type of people for whom you weep and who *actually* has contempt for flyover/south/rural people WORSHIP him. Not merely support him, CULT-LIKE worship... and you think the negativity from liberals is because they're merely "flyover"?

Wake the fuck up. We are the ones who've paid for every natural disaster that happens in those places. You know what representation from "flyover" and the south does? They vote AGAINST us "liberal city dwellers" getting money for something like Sandy. THAT is contempt. We've been told by reps from "rural" places to "go bankrupt" in the face of covid. Told to go bankrupt by people who only survive because of *our* money.

You whine about some "contempt" liberals have for certain parts of this country. Where is the palpable evidence of that? Because I have more than enough proof of it being the other wya around in how things actually work in this country.

way*

R164: the reason people call 'em Deplorables. Arguing with no evidence at all. None. Zed. Zero.

Want to see evidence of an empty mind or a closed one? You've got it, right there in that reply.

[quote]If rural areas ceased to exist, every city everywhere and all of the inhabitants therein would quite literally DIE.

Like a telephone, the scheme only functions when there are two parties in two places. A farmer's 600 acres of soybeans put food on his table indirectly, in the same way a job in the IT department of a bank puts food on the table; and both individuals are not dissimilarly removed from any idyllic notions of self-sufficiency.

To go with this premise, you'd have to believe that all that is required for contempt is being rural or flyover. How stupid must you be to believe that a liberal city dweller has more contempt for a flyover liberal than fucking Donald Trump, Mr. big city, golden tower elitist dickhead? This whole premise is ridiculous.

I loathe conservatives around me and I'm in Brooklyn and in fact, I admire rural/flyover liberals a helluva lot more than the liberals around me because to be liberal when you're outnumbered is admirable. I think some of you have an inferiority complex. Sorry, but it's true. I see tons of people bashing NYC. and I couldn't give less of shit. The fact is as I said earlier: We can see who tries to punish whom in this country. It isn't those of us in places like NY and LA who fuck with rural areas.

If you leave a job to go onto something else, if you leave a circle of friends, if you leave one social status for another...

If you leave, they hate you a little. And if you leave the country for the city, they hate you a little and mistrust you a lot.

I grew up in a small woodsy town and moved to a small city for school and work. I see the same amount of stupidity in both however I must say that at least in a city there is more tolerance and apathy towards others while in a small town everyone knows your business and can be vicious in a passive-aggressive way.

But there are plenty of conservatives in cities and metropolitan areas but they certainly aren't the same as Evangelical types from Southern/Midwestern states. I'm from NJ and despite our liberal reputation it is pretty conservative in most areas especially in South Jersey and many parts of Central and Northwest Jersey. The Italian-American population in general tend to lean heavily Republican. And many of the ultra-wealthy lean Republican too. The Democratic strongholds are in the cities like Jersey City, Trenton, Hoboken, Newark and Camden or in middle-class suburbs where most of the diverse and/or educated population is confined to.

Rural/midwest/south gravitated to a city dweller who was every bad stereotype of one to the point he literally mocked Jeff Sessions' accent and called him a "dumb hick." They know this and still worship him. Why? Because he's a racist and bigot. No one in the city "hates" someone for being from a rural area. Any disdain that exists is based in politics. Period.

City people have a fascination with the country. You see a lot of Southern style barbecue, soul food restaurants, Creole and Cajun restaurants, etc. Country people have adapted things that originated in cities like pizzerias, Chinese restaurants, Mexican taquerias, etc. The only way I can see rural areas even surviving is if they adapt technology and allow construction of high-speed internet and more computer and engineering jobs. Rural locations may lack a lot of what cities have but they are still attractive due to being cheaper and many people love the scenery of nature.

Read the Old Testament.

R148, have zero contempt for the southerners in my community, but I cannot say the same goes them towards me.

These folks are generally not bad people, but because people are highly complex and easily persuaded via highly sophisticated algorithms that are used to collect their data, and them exploit that data in order to keep them online in a vacuum, as well as “news” programming that now mirrors and amplifies the information they receive through the online vacuum , and conversely, their online vacuum does mirrors and amplifies what they hear via one news source, they are not very evolved people.

Throw in the church aspect, where they get more messaging that amplifies the messaging that they picked up online and on FOX, and it’s a done deal.

They believe they’re good Christians, and some undoubtedly are doing their best to serve God as they understand him, however, they unknowingly or knowingly also submit themselves to ideologies which are inherent selfish and hence, self defeating.

Some of these ideologies which they are taught to believe, are antithetical to the entire foundation upon which Christianity rests: charity, compassion, love, helping the less fortunate, etc.

Republican ideology is no longer about defining exceptionalism as a way of achieving true democracy in order to advocate for the progress of all Americans, rich, poor, white, and it was never this for African Americans. As a result, we are here and cannot even agree that that these are not only good values to strive for regardless of religious beliefs, the GOP now attributes fundamental human decency and the behaviors that are employed in order to advance that human decency, as liberal hoaxes and a constitutional threat upon the American people.

That’s not normal, R148.

When the POTUS is positive for CoViD-19, and decides to charge ahead with rallies and fundraisers that have attendees worth BILLIONS in potential donations, in lieu of isolation as is expected of others, that is not normal.

When over 200-250K Americans have needlessly died of this virus, and the POTUS jumps into an SUB to be driven around like a chimpanzee in a circus act in front of television cameras when he is still hospitalized at a hospital that is funded by our taxpayer dollars, including the taxes from those who have been significantly and profoundly impacted by a pandemic that he refused to address for political expediency, that is not normal.

Not only are these things not normal, they are IMMORAL, so for you to blame progressives for the chasm that they are ALSO standing on the other side of, while opposite to their counterparts on the right, remember this:

We are the ones throwing out the rope ladders to them and asking them to join us. Because we know that while that chasm is there and is steep, it has become increasingly small, and if anyone from either side were athletic enough, a running start and a jump, is all it would take to get folks on the same side.

However, these offerings of unity have been refused and thrown back in our faces as of though they’re poisoned tipped daggers targeted at their backs. They refuse to turn around and look at what we’re offering, yet are pissed off as duck, claiming we left them behind.

If they turned off the 24/7 hateful rhetoric coming out of their TV sets, highlighting Sean Hannity and the other blowhard, night after night, screaming -literally, into their mix about Hillary Clinton and AOC and Joe Biden’s personal and family tragedies that NO DECENT PERSON OF ANY PARTY OR NEWS NETWORK WOULD POLITICIZE FOR A FEW HUNDRED VOTES, GIVE OR TAKE, they would turn around to find a group of people who are not out to scam them out of the little bit they have left via taxes, layoffs, elimination of the ACA via the SCOTUS, or whatever it is that some very evil and fucked up people come up with from day to day and hour to hour and day to day, literally

This is a fucking disgrace and I have lived all of my life around white, Jude-Christian conservatives as well as progressive liberal of all stripes, and I have never in my life seen the indecency I see now, other than when viewing footage of black protesters being savages by billy clubs on the 1960s, viewing footage of a president getting his head blown off on TV, footage of George Floyd being murdered on a live Facebook stream, or the repeated assault on common human decency that began and was captured in the senate when Roy Cohn and the McCarthyism he championed, all the way to now, when I turn on the television and watch the man Roy Cohn himself advised and mentored, only to see that the president of the greatest nation on earth has reduced us to a nation of dunces who eschew masks in the midst of pestilence as he mocks democracy and the world laughs, thinking that we actually deserve it, because he is the mirror of our national and collective consciousness, over AND misrepresented to them by a group of Americans who haven’t lost their way, it found it.

Go wherever the fuck you’d wanna go, dude, but this is not just your country and you do not get to legislate shameful, deplorable, unethical and immoral behavior on the American public again and again just because you got yours and the rest of them and us, (the conservatives who are also poor whites, and the impoverished black communities), can go fuck ourselves.

We can be the greatest nation and bring other nations into greatness. We just have to figure out how to reach out fellow Americans in these rural communities on ethical formats, while still allowing pieces of lying shit like you, to continue perpetuating your lies as is your free speech constitutional right.

Someone is gonna give on and I have a feeling it will not be those who believe that we can all do better because that is the only thing that is valuable enough to do while here on God’s green earth.

R174 they are cheaper because they lack what cities have

[quote]We can be the greatest nation and bring other nations into greatness.

No, that opportunity has passed and won't be had again for a very long time at least.

R177 Preach!

Elite city dwellers hate rural so much that there's a NYT fluff piece every five fucking minutes ignoring the reality as to why they really supported Trump to portray them as a fucking Normal Rockwell painting.

Good God, your all delusional. I live in what you'd consider "flyover". I skydive, my family are pilots. We ski all the time etc, (i.e. Lots of fun). My friends are: Psychiatrist, M.D. or 2, Dentists, Plumbers and electrical engineer. I know 4 guys who own their own Citations.....Jeeeez.. Most of us have a great time. The whole concept you all have that rural flyover is a big drag is Whoeee! Man, if you're going to kabitz about it, at least know a little something about it. God!

How far are you from a large city, R182?

We don’t look down on rural people, we look down on people who for whatever reason don’t listen to reason, science and act in ways that are harmful to not only themselves but wider society. The Hassids in NYC couldn’t be more urban, or be acting more stupidly and selfishly - most of their fellow New Yorkers do indeed look down upon them because of their current idiotic behavior.

As the kids say, check your privilege.

R176, you laid it out well and pretty much described the rural half of my family.

r182 Yeh r183, about 45 mi from moderate <500,000 mid-atlantic. Seriously, it's a great place to live. Costs are relatively low on everything. You can: Ski, Waterski, rockclimb, kayak, 4x4, camp, a lot of people fly or sailplane. sailboat, powerboat, divebar food :)

R149 - Most urban dwellers come from other cities and suburbia. Many others are simply born there. Rural areas are dying because the focus of modern life is distraction, entertainment, clean work, and excitement. It's the same in China and India.

And your post is the illustration of the answer to the OP's question.

Liberals love diversity: except diversity of opinion.

r176 Hey, I'm calling Bullshit on the 250,00 needlessly dying. That's so stupid I shouldn't even have to elaborate.

R187 because conservatives LOVE different thinking

[quote] If rural areas ceased to exist, every city everywhere and all of the inhabitants therein would quite literally DIE. You're provng my point: you don't value anything that rural areas produce.

Poor Gramps, cant accept it's not 1920 any more. Is it Dementia? Covid? You failed to respond to my points, which is we get our oil from OUTSIDE the US and MOST of our produce comes from other countries. No one said we are going to blow up rural areas, they just are minor irrelevant players compared to the other options we have in a GLOBAL ECONOMY Gramps.

[quote]Liberals love diversity: except diversity of opinion.

False. I am always open to a diversity of opinion, that DOES NOT mean I have to embrace it or accept it as factual or based in reality.

In contrast, notice how no one ever say Conservatives are open minded?

[quote]about 45 mi from moderate <500,000 mid-atlantic. Seriously, it's a great place to live.

That's not sounding like you live in a rural community, it sounds like you live in the burbs. Is there a store of any kind within 15 minutes of you? If so you live in the suburbs.

Rural is when it takes you 60 minutes to the closets grocery store.

Ok r192, I'll buy the we're burbs, but the really rural areas, not rockin' the vote AT ALL. Too few people involved. The real populous, voting people are the actual burbs by your definition. When you talk out west, whole different type in rural areas. They're rugged and try to be self-sufficient. Not left voters (generally).

[quote]Liberals love diversity: except diversity of opinion.

Your opinion would be that if someone non-white or non-Christian commits a crime, then you get to blame every other person of that group - so your opinion is garbage. Don't pretend that the difference in opinion is merely over how to pay for a bridge. Trump is the head of the GOP specifically because he expressed vile "opinions" right out of the white supremacist playbook, so spare you attempt to treat the "opinion" you're defending as if it were innocuous.

your* attempt

The only rural people who are open-minded are the weed growers. The rest are bitter anti-intellectual Christian fundamentalists who don't understand why their hard work isn't celebrated by everyone. Anyone with any brains or potential gets out of those towns as quickly as soon as they can.

Ive lived in rural areas and have family that still live in rural areas and I dont know why everyone thinks church is a big part of their lives. They dont go to church much more than your average city dweller does .

r196 And you were blessed with this wisdom......where?

R172 - "But there are plenty of conservatives in cities and metropolitan areas but they certainly aren't the same as Evangelical types from Southern/Midwestern states. I'm from NJ and despite our liberal reputation it is pretty conservative in most areas especially in South Jersey and many parts of Central and Northwest Jersey. The Italian-American population in general tend to lean heavily Republican. And many of the ultra-wealthy lean Republican too. The Democratic strongholds are in the cities like Jersey City, Trenton, Hoboken, Newark and Camden or in middle-class suburbs where most of the diverse and/or educated population is confined to."

Thank you for supporting what I posted some while ago about American friends reporting a startling number of Trump signs in northern NJ, Westchester, and Rockland Counties - for my pains, I was told to stick to discussing British politics. As if, you know, my British DNA completely nullifies years spent living in America and retaining close contact with my many American friends.

From Rockland County, in an area south of Nyack, in adorable Piermont, just, what, 20 miles from NYC: a cute white house on a corner flying: an American flag, a Trump flag, a "blue line" flag, and a "don't tread on me flag" on a tall flagpole in its tiny front yard.

Similar scenes in Pleasantville, NY; Old Tappan, NJ; Harrington Park, NJ; Rivervale NJ; Northvale, NJ; and Norwood, NJ.

For those who don't know, the NJ reports come from a friend who lives in one of the above and thus is often out on the Tappan Rd., Old Tappan Rd. Rte. 340, the Schrallenburgh Rd. If you are from Bergen County, you will know the area and roads in this couple's neighbourhood. There are also, they report, literally hundreds of "Blue Line" lawn signs saying, "We support our law enforcement police!"

Their point wasn't that there aren't also Biden-Harris signs, but that people who assume everyone in the urban northeast is liberal and everyone in rural areas is an Evangelical moronic automaton from a flyover state is wrong, and making the same mistake as seeing things only through one lens.

These are areas close to major metropolises like New York City, Newark, White Plains, with large minority populations (Bergen County has a very large Korean population, who tend to be extremely conservative), not rural communities in the Ozarks.

Liberals fall into precisely the same mistake they accuse others of: stereotyping. Only, as they're stereotyping white people, it's just fine.

I don't doubt that Biden

^*I don't doubt that Biden will win the election, but the further damage done to anything resembling a cohesive country by the unrestrained contempt each group has for the other is already done.

Everyone supports diversity: as long as it isn't diversity of opinion.

[quot]The only rural people who are open-minded are the weed growers

Not the ones I know, they are all Republicans. All of them seem to be former hippies (boomers) turned business person. They like to pretend they are open love flower children who dress bohemian but when they talk if you close your eyes they sound just like Trumpeters. All about their money and how he is an outsider taking it to the man. In reality they are just greedy fucks that don't want to pay taxes.

Haven't met a weed grower yet that is Liberal and generous with their money, pot doesn't count, that literally grows on trees.

R182 No you don’t and apparently you know it too. You live in suburbia, not in rural America.

And you can’t spell for shit, sophistimacated r182. Jesus H.

Rural people are just limited in their world view, and cling on to what they understand the past to be. It's just who they are.

Q: Why do farmers in Iowa only get buried two feet underground?

A: So they can still get a handout.

Agriculture is heavily subsidized in the United States. Who pays those taxes? The 0.2% of the US population who work in agriculture or the 99.8% who don’t?

Maybe because we urbanites are allergic to smelling hay.

They are jelly of our penthouse view.

Let's get a Democratic House, Senate and Oval Office, and cut all those fuckers out...

Right on, r208. I know I sure want creatures like you in charge of me.

You and your types are such dumbasses R209 you should be grateful to have some adults in the room.

r210, Thanks anyway. I'll pass that on to my accountant who's sorting out my FUCKING ^ FIGIRE TAX BILL. Asshole.

By the way 210, is this where you say I'm stupid. can't spell poor education. I predict life's gonna get a lot tougher for you bucko.

Having lived in both situations - each about 30 years or so - I can attest that most of it is born of ignorance due to a lack of cultural exposure. We are a diverse, multi-cultural country, but you wouldn't know it if you went to upstate NY or the sundown towns of the Southwest.

I found that rural, small town people are insular and judgmental because the 'outsider' is not 'one of us' and cannot be trusted. This impedes any kind of assimilation or sense of community and creates little fifedoms of white privilege where just a few families control the whole of a town. Corruption is rampant in these situations and not limited by geography anywhere in the US.

During my earlier life in cities, I found the more crowded conditions created a 'live and let live' attitude. There's just too many people being active to keep up with who is moving in or what color/race/morality/religion, etc., they are. The rural people who moved in were the biggest offenders of the civil code essential for living in cities and then wondered why we all thought they were ignorant rubes for defending themselves and their 'freedom' to be assholes at 1am or asking questions they had no business knowing the answers to.

HOWEVER, I witnessed the most racism and divisiveness in the 'elite' suburbs where 'class' was determined based on material wealth. It was immediate, rigid and final....for everyone in your family. The country club set wanted nothing to do with the local 'working' class who picked up their garbage and more than likely lived in the small enclave of 'affordable' housing they were forced to incorporate into their new construction projects. NIMBY came out of that scene and it's the granddaddy of our wonderful, libertarian movement of the 80's with all the jits screaming for a tax accounting only when it came to Head Start.

My entire family lives in a very small rural town, and they do indeed think that "city folks" are all stupid and "don't get it". They constantly shake their heads at city folks.

City folks talk funny, and they don't really understand how things work. They've got all that education but they don't have any street smarts whatsoever.

That type of thinking. It's very real.

R214 what do we "not get"?

R215, you're asking the wrong person. I live in the city. My family lives in the country. You'd have to ask them.

R214/6, I barely talk to my own rural family. I figured you'd had those discussions.

Agreed, R214. While both camps share some guilt in the fallacy of composition, the country folk are the worst by a country mile.

I bet those city folk don't even know...

...how to hook a milking machine up to a cow

...how many bushels of soybeans prime farmland can produce

...how many acres are in a square mile

...the difference between field corn and sweet corn, [bold]so all city people know nothing about anything.[/bold]

BLACK PEOPLE.

[quote] I thought it was the other way around.

This is hilarious. City people don’t give two fucks about country people. The obsessively petty shit R214 describes is never encountered among city people. We really couldn’t care less about small minded rubes.

The extreme forms of homophobia, racism and sexism found in rural communities is not coincidental.

Blm personifies city dweller. Old stock real Americans are found out n rural areas

After living in the city for the last fifteen years, I kinda hate city folk now, too.

The media diet of rural Americans is very heavy on Fox 'News' and OANN. This is self-selection that keeps viewers in their own world.

The default format on small town radio stations is hate talk downlinked off of a satellite dish. Rush Limbaugh alone has 600 affiliates, literally 'across the fruited plain' as he likes to say. In my home state of Arizona, Limbaugh has 13 affiliates, which cover virtually every square inch of the state. Hate makes tons of money, the audience is loyal, and it's much easier and cheaper than local programming. It's also a cancer.

Note: the link below states that stations pay a fee to air Limbaugh. Actually, to most stations it's available as a 'barter', free in exchange for playing the show's national spots.

The only time I think about rural people is when they try and force their Bible into the government.

Homophobia is in our genes so people only become tolerant to a degree as they become more prosperous. Trump isn't going to make people more intolerant. He does what pleases his base.

I live in Chicago and my work requires me going to many small towns and rural areas. Uniformly in these places, everyone is nice enough on the surface, but as soon as they feel they can trust you, all their bias, Fox News bullshit comes flying out, and they are then relentless on trying to convince you/convert you to their very warped ways of thinking. I told my boss after COVID ends, I won't go to these shitholes anymore. The people are awful. And stupid.

The Irish congregate in cities spreading disease

I had no idea they dug up Cromwell/R228!!!!!!. Don't you have a Duchess, or two, to roast?

Simple. Rural folk are jealous and upset that their children are abandoning their small towns for less constricting lifestyles and locales. They are not returning to raise families or buy homes. They believe that the cities 'broke' the American dream and refuse to understand that the dream was never a reality for people choosing to stay behind in rural enclaves where the economies of family farming, lumbering, mining, and general land-grabbing are OVER.

The stereotype of the family farmer, btw, is dead. If you sell corn from a farmstand, chances are you're just some hobby farmer. Mega-farms are subsidized and the rule in this country. Organic exists on the margins (despite demand) of federal approval and suppression.

Rurals now have to put up with retiring boomers and Covid refugees fleeing into their 'havens' and demanding better wireless connections, better roads, cheaper schools (or shut them down, ffs, if you only have five kids attending) with better curriculum no longer focused on dairy farming, etc. Welcome to the Twenty-first century, bitches.

R213 summed up what I witnessed living in a wealthy mid Atlantic suburb. It was really just a shallow faux liberalism. Very classist, conformist and racist. Don't let anyone fool you that a blue suburb is the same as a blue city. It's definitely not. I think some of these young urbanites that I hear are (supposedly) fleeing places like NYC for the suburbs are going to run back once they realize how constrictive even "liberal" suburbs are.

You know, there’s a general reason why people live in very rural, isolated areas. The amount of plain psychopathy, untreated alcoholism, religious mania, and lack of any real education keeps there, and TV keeps them afraid. AIDS, Covid, homosexuals, people of color, freeways, tall buildings, everything from these down to elevators and escalators (I shit you not) simply terrify them. That guy in the article greasing the tire’s doing that because he has difficulties handling anything more complicated than a phone, most likely. He believes his ill-informed opinions are, or should be, natural law, or scientific fact. He has never been able to listen to anyone whose opinion differed from his own before shutting his brain down and taking a mental nap. I live in a mid-sized college town in a very rural state, and go back to the banks of the Mississippi every chance I get because I was raised in a river town. The more wealthy people from Chicago that move into those towns the more tax money gets poured into the riverfront and the better job the local garden club does on providing gardens, walks, streetlamps, and and flood walls. Locals need the tourism and the infusion of money that comes with it. If folks don’t line it, I guess they move to towns like Liberal, Mo.

[quote]everything from these down to elevators and escalators (I shit you not) simply terrify them.

I live and work in a large city surrounded by rural Appalachia under an hour away. I once got on the elevator at work (our high rise has a lot of small law firms and medical offices), and a man who looked exactly the part of "yokel" straight from central casting trailed behind me. He "whoah!"'d and giggled the entire 20 floors, looking me dead in the eyes like he couldn't understand why I wasn't reacting the same way. He was in hysterics by the time I exited at my floor. It was genuinely creepy to encounter someone so backwards in an urban setting. I was struck by how people like him see people of color as the sub-human ones.

Let's not forget Hee-Haw ran for 20 years in this country...

Maybe the more people work from home, the more they’ll move into less populated areas and force the hillbillies to join this goddamn century.

The ones that won’t like those coal mining dipshits? I don’t know. Drown them like cats in a roaring river maybe?

Rural folks in Hooterville liked New Yorkers Oliver and Lisa Douglas.

[quote]Rural folks in Hooterville liked New Yorkers Oliver and Lisa Douglas.

Rural folks in Hooterville like New Yorkers Donald and Melania/Zsa Zsa.