Judge Moore accused of sexually assaulting/pursuing underage girls in his 30s

wakephan09 said:

I used to think this, but it's actually me just keeping fewer and fewer rubes in my life.

As the world becomes more and more progressive, rubes are becoming even more rubish.

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That actually works in our non-rube favor. Rubes have had at least a little standing in the last few decades regarding the jobs they were losing, the economy harming them, etc. Now, rubes are going full Trump and really showing that they aren't concerned about losing their own jobs as much as the fact that brown people have them at all. They're concerned that America is becoming more secular and that you can't scare kids into being super-religious anymore because any claim a preacher man makes can be instantly fact-checked with a Google search.

Information is the downfall of rubes. As they have gone more and more beyond the pale to prove their points, younger types are recognizing the facade of "conservatism" in front the racism, xenophobia, homophobia, etc. Rubism will never be fully eradicated, but once the older generation dies off (20 years or so), I foresee a sharp decline.

I disagree. Any claim that anybody makes can instantly be "verified" with a Google search. It's easier than ever for rubes to find each other and celebrate their rubishness. Trump has given them someone to rally around. Trump and his followers will make sure there's always a leader to take advantage of the rubes.

Yea, good information could be a remedy.

Unfortunately, the continuously connected society is rife with bad information in the form of misinformation and misinterpretation. And has made unwitting folks much more easily targets of their oppressors. And has exaggerated the ease and tendency for politicians to pose as saviors while merely manipulating voters, exploiting fears, etc. for their own gain.

I agree that the Pub (American right wing) ascendency could be fragile (vulnerable to education, fact checking, etc.) and probably not sustainable (due to continuing demographic changes). But it has occurred along with the rise of the information/data age, so nothing is assured.

I understand the vantage point that a lot of blue collar workers from small areas have. For the most part they've lived in a small close-knit community for the bulk of their lives. There used to be good jobs in the area, most likely decently well paying (interestingly, in a lot of areas this is/was due to unions but that's a different topic) where there was not a particularly high education requirement. As has been endlessly discussed, the globalized economy has shifted these jobs elsewhere (and they're just not coming back) and so a lot of these communities are experiencing economic loss as the towns become smaller and smaller.

For the most part these communities lack racial diversity, economic opportunities, and other opportunities to cause a fundamental shift in one's own worldview. As, at the least, the 2016 election highlighted, these communities are ripe targets for idealogues and/or populists tapping into the problems these communities face. Even if it's just providing a voice to these communities (with no real substantive policy), these people feel heard by Washington - an urban coastal area much different than living in rural West Virginia, Iowa, Montana, etc. - and latch on to the problems these politicians point out including "drain the swamp," blaming illegal immigrants for taking jobs, spouting off that the jobs will return, etc.

Without much in the way of racial diversity in many areas, it's much easier for people in these communities to blame a faceless group of people - radical Islamic terror (likely not many mosques or Muslims living in small rural Kentucky towns), Hispanics (same point), urbanites with graduate degrees living on the coasts and then latch onto religion, advantageous aspects of rural living (guns for safety from animals for instance), and other topics that don't make sense to someone living in an urban area. In many ways, it's the same way that liberals frequently group together rural areas and call them "rubes." Through this vantage point, I understand why someone like Donald was able to rise to power.

On the flip side, I don't know how to "remedy" this issue...at all.

True. One thing is that some people leave the rural areas and get an education and become successful. It doesn't usually work backward. The key is to make sure every single person has the same political power through their one vote.

This could be correlation and not causation, but there's a reason why urban areas generally have a lower percentage of people with "racist" tendencies and part of it is because they interact with a multitude of people on a daily basis. That's not to say that there still aren't plenty of people with biases, but it seems odd to believe that most Muslims are terrorists if you see people walking around in hajibs every day.

Wakeforest22890 said:

I understand the vantage point that a lot of blue collar workers from small areas have. For the most part they've lived in a small close-knit community for the bulk of their lives. There used to be good jobs in the area, most likely decently well paying (interestingly, in a lot of areas this is/was due to unions but that's a different topic) where there was not a particularly high education requirement. As has been endlessly discussed, the globalized economy has shifted these jobs elsewhere (and they're just not coming back) and so a lot of these communities are experiencing economic loss as the towns become smaller and smaller.

For the most part these communities lack racial diversity, economic opportunities, and other opportunities to cause a fundamental shift in one's own worldview. As, at the least, the 2016 election highlighted, these communities are ripe targets for idealogues and/or populists tapping into the problems these communities face. Even if it's just providing a voice to these communities (with no real substantive policy), these people feel heard by Washington - an urban coastal area much different than living in rural West Virginia, Iowa, Montana, etc. - and latch on to the problems these politicians point out including "drain the swamp," blaming illegal immigrants for taking jobs, spouting off that the jobs will return, etc.

Without much in the way of racial diversity in many areas, it's much easier for people in these communities to blame a faceless group of people - radical Islamic terror (likely not many mosques or Muslims living in small rural Kentucky towns), Hispanics (same point), urbanites with graduate degrees living on the coasts and then latch onto religion, advantageous aspects of rural living (guns for safety from animals for instance), and other topics that don't make sense to someone living in an urban area. In many ways, it's the same way that liberals frequently group together rural areas and call them "rubes." Through this vantage point, I understand why someone like Donald was able to rise to power.

On the flip side, I don't know how to "remedy" this issue...at all.

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The remedy is simple: stop blaming others, get a job, don't have kids you can't afford, begin relationship with Jesus, and show personal responsibility by not doing opiods.

Or, like, education

No, no...no. Looking to government to fix economic problems is wrong-headed and such efforts will always fail. Entitlements are bad. Except when Trump promises people who feel entitled to coal jobs (etc.) that have disappeared due to FREE MARKET forces that he will DELIVER them (if elected). Then government is good and necessary.

The divide in America now more than ever (that I can recall or tell from history) is urban v. rural. Or perhaps it’s the same divide simply manifested more dramatically due to systemic issues

Yep.

But not just in 'merica.

See somewheres vs anywheres in Britain. The somewheres finally had enough and produced Brexit. We got Trump.

Senate candidate Roy Moore's accuser: I was a 14-year-old child



The girl and her mom about the time of the "meetings" (not a date as she says she was too young to date--and Moore did NOT have consent of Mom, fwiw)

Quote:
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...Newspaper editorials in the Deep South state have been urging voters to reject the Republican candidate.

The editorial board of AL.com wrote on Sunday: "A vote for Roy Moore sends the worst kind of message to Alabamians struggling with abuse - 'if you ever do tell your story, Alabama won't believe you.'

"Or, worse, we'll believe you but we just won't care."
-----------

Pretty hot 14 year old

harmoniousmonk said:

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It was early 1979 and Moore — now the Republican nominee in Alabama for a U.S. Senate seat — was a 32-year-old assistant district attorney. He struck up a conversation, Corfman and her mother say, and offered to watch the girl while her mother went inside for a child custody hearing.

“He said, ‘Oh, you don’t want her to go in there and hear all that. I’ll stay out here with her,’ ” says Corfman’s mother, Nancy Wells, 71. “I thought, how nice for him to want to take care of my little girl.”

Have any Alabamans used the “she smokes, she pokes” defense yet?

Wakeforest22890 said:

I understand the vantage point that a lot of blue collar workers from small areas have. For the most part they've lived in a small close-knit community for the bulk of their lives. There used to be good jobs in the area, most likely decently well paying (interestingly, in a lot of areas this is/was due to unions but that's a different topic) where there was not a particularly high education requirement. As has been endlessly discussed, the globalized economy has shifted these jobs elsewhere (and they're just not coming back) and so a lot of these communities are experiencing economic loss as the towns become smaller and smaller.

For the most part these communities lack racial diversity, economic opportunities, and other opportunities to cause a fundamental shift in one's own worldview. As, at the least, the 2016 election highlighted, these communities are ripe targets for idealogues and/or populists tapping into the problems these communities face. Even if it's just providing a voice to these communities (with no real substantive policy), these people feel heard by Washington - an urban coastal area much different than living in rural West Virginia, Iowa, Montana, etc. - and latch on to the problems these politicians point out including "drain the swamp," blaming illegal immigrants for taking jobs, spouting off that the jobs will return, etc.

Without much in the way of racial diversity in many areas, it's much easier for people in these communities to blame a faceless group of people - radical Islamic terror (likely not many mosques or Muslims living in small rural Kentucky towns), Hispanics (same point), urbanites with graduate degrees living on the coasts and then latch onto religion, advantageous aspects of rural living (guns for safety from animals for instance), and other topics that don't make sense to someone living in an urban area. In many ways, it's the same way that liberals frequently group together rural areas and call them "rubes." Through this vantage point, I understand why someone like Donald was able to rise to power.

On the flip side, I don't know how to "remedy" this issue...at all.

Click to expand...

I grew up in rural, blue-collar NC, and still have many relatives who live there, so I see and hear most of this every time I go back to see them. Whenever I do, you can visibly see how sharp the economic decline there has been over the last 20 years or so - lots of really old cars, the numbers of people at grocery stores using food stamps, the empty and decaying homes in the boonies (not just old farmhouses, but modern brick homes, sometimes covered in graffiti), the once-cleared farmland steadily returning to wilderness, the mostly dead downtown business district with empty storefronts or former stores now being used as office space, etc. One demographic change has been an influx of some Hispanics, which the local natives definitely notice, along with an influx of "outside" whites, mostly wealthier retirees from places in the Northeast or Midwest, or Florida, who have bought old farms and homes via the internet. That has created some resentment, mainly because they have money. I understand their views and can grasp their resentment at the changes that have reduced my hometown to this, but I have lost much sympathy for them otherwise. They complain about blacks and other minorities who "live off the system", yet I see plenty of them on welfare, and the truth is many of them wouldn't survive, or would be in far worse shape, without that government assistance, or without older relatives who retired with money giving them handouts (family welfare) to help them. They aren't really opposed to welfare and food stamps - they just think it belongs to people like them, and not to minorities or immigrants or people "different" from them. I've heard them talk up the GOP's mantra of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and relying on yourself instead of the government, yet many of them refuse to help themselves, such as getting retraining for new jobs. I remember growing up listening to people there talk about all the "drugs and gangs" in big cities (and by big city they meant Charlotte and Greensboro as well as NYC, Chicago, etc.), yet the county has serious problems with opioid abuse and meth labs - people with drug arrest records are not uncommon. Basically, those who left, like me, are doing much better than those who remained.

GOP has done a great job of selling the American dream to folks. Instead of poor and rich it’s “rich and those who will be rich some day” - makes taxes on the rich disgusting for everyone that way.

MysteryMen said:

Oh, so you mean like this?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/18/opinion/sunday/blue-states-red-states-values.html

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Yep. Pretty much.