Highland Deac
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Why is the media still writing these pieces? I don't think I've read one with anything new or original in it since a week after the election.
There have been a bunch of similar articles on white rural, small-town folk and their unwavering support for Trump over the past year, and they do tell a similar story: the sharp economic decline of many rural areas and small towns and cities in America, brought on by the outsourcing or automation of their manufacturing base, the subsequent collapse of social norms (high rates of drug use and addiction (especially opiods and meth), rising crime, abandoned factories, buildings, and homes, etc.), the rising anger (and envy) of these people at urban areas in their state and nation, which are still prospering and growing, and their resentment at anyone they feel looks down on them, like the professional classes, college students and professors, scientists, etc. I posted this article because it's one of the first I've read in which the reporter actually challenged some of these people regarding comments they made to him the year before, and their responses, I thought, were very revealing and eye-opening as to what these people are really after and what they're really mad about. They want jobs, but they want the jobs they had before, not to be retrained for new ones. They talk about "bootstraps" and minorities getting welfare, yet they expect Trump or someone to help them without doing the "bootstraps" thing, and they're often the largest recipients of welfare programs, like Social Security, Medicaid, food stamps, etc. It's clear that bootstraps and rugged individualism and all that is for someone else, not them. Basically, these are folks whose world has changed and/or collapsed, and instead of adjusting to that reality, they just want somebody to put it all back the way it was. And, as this article shows, even they know deep down that's not going to happen. So, they vote for Trump as their instrument of revenge, not because they really think he'll solve their problems. If they're miserable, at least Trump will make their better-off and better-educated (and, in some cases, non-white) enemies miserable too. And, as this article makes clear, they love him for it. How Democrats could win over these people, as some have suggested, is mostly fool's gold at this point. Suburban Republicans are a different breed, and the Democrats have a good shot at winning them (they did in VA and some other places this Tuesday). These rural folks? Not so much, I think. Just my two cents.
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