Merriam-Webster on the derivation of the word fiefdom:
A fief (/fi?f/; Latin: feudum) was the central element of feudalism and consisted of heritable property or rights granted by an overlord to a vassal who held it in fealty (or “in fee”) in return for a form of feudal allegiance and service, usually given by the personal ceremonies of homage and fealty.
There’s a PhD treatise waiting to be written on the modern American gated community as the latest form of fiefdom, where the vassals hold their perceived “rights” — to not be ruffled by the appearance or actions of anyone who isn’t exactly like them, mostly — in return for their fealty in faithfully voting for the local Republican overlords, however incompetent or venal. God bless the Squire and his relations, and keep us all in our proper stations!
Vox interviews the author of yet another study on the Forgotten American Heartlanders and their sturdy “moral values”. This guy, at least, seems to have some idea of just how shoddy and meretricious those “values” really are…
Robert Wuthnow, a sociologist at Princeton University, spent eight years interviewing Americans in small towns across the country. He had one goal: to understand why rural America is so angry with Washington.
Wuthnow’s work resulted in a new book, The Left Behind: Decline and Rage in Rural America. He argues that rural Americans are less concerned about economic issues and more concerned about Washington threatening the social fabric of small towns and causing a “moral decline” in the country as a whole. The problem, though, is that it’s never quite clear what that means or how Washington is responsible for it…
Sean Illing: In the book, you argue that the anger we’re seeing in rural America is less about economic concerns and more about the perception that Washington is threatening the way of life in small towns. How, specifically, is Washington doing this?
Robert Wuthnow: I’m not sure that Washington is doing anything to harm these communities. To be honest, a lot of it is just scapegoating. And that’s why you see more xenophobia and racism in these communities. There’s a sense that things are going badly, and the impulse is to blame “others.”
They believe that Washington really does have power over their lives. They recognize that the federal government controls vast resources, and they feel threatened if they perceive Washington’s interest being directed more toward urban areas than rural areas, or toward immigrants more than non-immigrants, or toward minority populations instead of the traditional white Anglo population.
But that’s just racism and cultural resentment, and calling it a manifestation of some deeper anxiety doesn’t alter that fact.
I don’t disagree with that. I’m just explaining what I heard from people on the ground in these communities. This is what they believe, what they say, not what I believe.
Fair enough. The title of your book, The Left Behind, rubbed me the wrong way. It seems to me that many of these people haven’t been left behind; they’ve chosen not to keep up. But the sense of victimization appears to overwhelm everything else.
I make it very clear in the book that this is largely a choice. It’s not as though these people are desperate to leave but can’t. They value their local community. They understand its problems, but they like knowing their neighbors and they like the slow pace of life and they like living in a community that feels small and closed. Maybe they’re making the best of a bad situation, but they choose to stay.
They recognize themselves as being left behind because, in fact, they are the ones in their family and in their social networks who did stay where they were. Most of the people I spoke to grew up in the small town they currently live in, or some other small town nearby. Often their children have already left, either to college or in search of a better job somewhere else.In that sense, they believe, quite correctly, that they’re the ones who stayed in these small towns while young people — and really the country as a whole — moved on.
What I hear from many of the people in your book is nostalgia for a bygone world or a world that probably never really existed in the first place.
It’s resentment that ultimately gets directed toward the politicians they don’t like, or toward people who look different from them. That’s certainly part of what’s going on here…
This is… not a new problem. Despite schoolroom mythologizing of the Bold American Immigrants, Breaking Away From Exhausted Older Civilizations to Forge A New Free Nation, most people most of the time are perfectly happy to live and die in whatever (real or perceptual) “small town” they grew up in. Tearing up roots and making a new start is hard work, and leaves real scars, on the leavers as well as the left-behinds. But one advantage of staying rooted in the old neighborhood is that it’s easier to weaponize one’s resentments politically. So, during the first Gilded Age, the “Left Behind” in rural areas and Midwestern towns punished the filthy, teeming hordes of big-city immigrants and their Tammany Hall machine politicians. The Civil War was fought at the behest of plantation barons, by their ‘poor white’ neighbors, to preserve a “god-given right” to exploit other humans’ slave labor rather than the pricy new-fangled factory machines of the urbanist North. Thomas Jefferson, and his “aristocratic” Southern cronies, inserted the notorious three-fifths compromise into the new Constitution specifically to cripple any undue democratic impulses among the nation’s “Founding Fathers”.
And the problem is not an American invention; at the start of the Industrial Revolution in Europe, all the Best People wrote laws to ensure that the minority of “gentlefolk” sulking at their country estates would not be politically “overrun” by the newly powerful businessmen (men with no ancestry, many of them immigrants!) and the filthy hordes flocking to staff their factories rather than stay safely tied to the farms where their fathers had been properly grateful to scratch a living. Classical Romans facing an influx of barbarians in “their” cities wrote reams of literature bemoaning the coarse leveling effects of mere money on witless hoi polloi… as had their Grecian role models before them, complaining about pushy money-worshipping Romans. From what little I know of Chinese history, a whole subset of the imperial examination system required would-be mandarins to properly extol the distinctions whereby The Best People had been ordained by Heaven to keep the masses in their place. I suspect things were not much different when the Egyptian Pharaohs were “corrupted” by Grecian merchants, or when the upstart chicken breeders of Mohenjo-daro failed to respect the traditional landholders whose serfs proved susceptible to the lure of the city.
And that whole train of thought reminded me of a recent voting map, and this related twitter exchange:
Fair bit of data wrangling but finally…a 1 dot = 1 vote dasymetric dot density 2016 Presidential election map from @ArcGISPro. 65,844,61 blue dots. 62,979,636 red dots. Count 'em! (note: this is just a rough screengrab, will webify & make pretty) pic.twitter.com/lb6899M1gh
— Kenneth Field (@kennethfield) March 6, 2018
4/These dense Republican bastions aren't really *cities*. They're not as dense as places with famous names, like "Dallas" or "Detroit" or "Atlanta".
They're vast agglomerations of suburban-style development, divided into a bunch of different small municipalities.
— Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) March 7, 2018
8/But there's a big problem with these non-suburbs.
It has to do with the very reason cities exist in the first place.
Economically, medium-dense sprawls like this just have very little *to do*.
— Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) March 7, 2018
12/The evidence seems to indicate that vast, uncaring economic forces are slowly crushing the life out of these sprawling, medium-dense non-suburbs.
I speculate that this is why a lot of these places are seeing declining marriage rates, opiate epidemics, and general anger.
— Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) March 7, 2018
14/There is a vast, mostly-white, medium-density Middle America in the center-East part of the country that we just don't really have a good name for, or good ways of picking out on the map.
And it's this other America that elected Trump.
— Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) March 7, 2018
I think there was also a lot of "white people not moving into the city because they didn't want to live near black people" – not white flight, but racially motivated non-urbanization. But that's just a hypothesis…
— Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) March 7, 2018
Butch
I live on a farm outside a very small town and I have to say it bothers me to see these areas repeatedly characterized in this way. We’re not all like that. I just hate cities.
Corner Stone
And the high tax basis to prove it! Oh, wait…
Corner Stone
Also too, it should not be ignored that many people who would choose to live *in* a city simply can no longer afford to.
Mark Field
Thomas Jefferson, and his “aristocratic” Southern cronies, inserted the notorious three-fifths compromise into the new Constitution specifically to cripple any undue democratic impulses among the nation’s “Founding Fathers”.
Jefferson had nothing to do with the Constitution or the 3/5 clause. He was in France at the time.
Jefferson also, whatever his faults, was probably the most (white male) democratic of that generation.
efgoldman
@Butch:
Right. Some of you buy oxy instead of cooking your own math. //
I’m sorry, but it’s like dealing with Texas and Texans. No, you’re not all flying monkey mouth breather RWNJs, but that’s ultimately who your neighbors vote for.
NotMax
In my heart of hearts would like to believe that Hooterville voted for Clinton.
Not so sure about Pixley, though.
raven
Mose
If you’re up goin’ to the city
You better have some cash
If you’re up goin’ to the city
You better have some cash
With all the people of the city
Don’t mesh around with trash
Major Major Major Major
Sorry, but that Wiley guy (whose twitter bio calls him a “classical liberal/centrist” and who has 810 followers) is totally wrong. Why is he included?
BlueDWarrior
You know, one Barack Hussein Obama once called rural Pennsylvanians “Bitter Clingers” because of how tightly they hold a certain specific notion of gun rights, social order (centered around a conservative Christianity), and an economic model that started rusting over in 1970.
Perhaps we need a pithy name to these HOA serfs that cling bitterly to the old “gated community” mythos, since the actual ‘Bitter Clingers’ sound a little too rural for these guys.
Butch
@efgoldman: Sorry I commented here. I won’t bother you again.
Corner Stone
It’s funny when you look at the map and you see four “nukular” bombs of blue going off in TX. Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio. All swallowed up by a sea of red zombies around them. Dallas looks like a scene from The Walking Dead shot from satellite view. Then you have peaceful Laredo, El Paso, Brownsville and McAllen all swimmingly blue.
NotMax
@BlueDWarrior
Scaredycrats.
Nicole
@Butch:
But are the majority of those folk not like that? I think we white folk get very upset when we get stereotyped in any way, shape or form, forgetting that we are the gold medalists in stereotyping people whose skin color doesn’t match ours. It’s white privilege- the being seen as an individual and not clumped into a group and we get upset when we get clumped into a group of other people with the same skin color as ours.
Michael Harriot, writer for The Root, put it really well when he said, basically, if he makes a generalized statement about white people and it doesn’t apply to you, then he’s not talking about you and you should let it go. Did a great deal to help me work through my stung feelings every time “Majority of white women voted for Trump” came up. Because I didn’t, and lots of white women I know didn’t, but the majority still did. Now, when I get upset about a “Becky” comment I take in that what I’m really getting upset about is being stereotyped because I’m not used to it. And then I get over it.
Gin & Tonic
@raven: Man, I was just thinking of that song. One of the great philosophers.
KS in MA
Could we have that statistic, again, that says Didn’t Vote provided the margin of victory for Trumpov?
raven
@Gin & Tonic: I saw him in Boston in 71!
Well you don’t have to go to off Broadway
To see something played absurd
Everybody’s crying mercy
When they don’t know the meaning of the word
WereBear
There are some asymmetries. People who are fond of nurturing pets and plants tend to move out where the land is. Cities are not giving a sweet goddam about affordable housing when someone can make money on high-priced alternatives. Economic idiocy creates people who lean towards housing with roommates and public transportation because despite any actual preferences, this is what they can afford.
Schlemazel
@Butch:
If you are that easily hurt it probably is better you don’t.
Seriously, that was a very mild response compared to some I have seen around here.
raven
@Butch: Aw don’t mind him, he’s like that to everyone.
Gin & Tonic
@raven: Saw him there in 73 or 74. The Jazz Workshop was a great club.
Gin & Tonic
@Schlemazel: Go die in a fire, you syphilitic goat fucker.
raven
@Gin & Tonic: I can’t remember the joint, I know it was small. It was the same trip where I saw the Allman Brothers on the Common!
Corner Stone
@Gin & Tonic: ….but you fuck *one* goat…
marcopolo
I am about to start making dinner but just want to lay out an argument for if not watching the Stormy Daniels interview on 60 Minutes to at least have your tv on and tuned into the program. Here’s the thing: Trump will be watching the ratings for this spectacle. We all should agree that the more folks who are watching/tuned in the less happy he will be–especially if there is particularly salacious or damning information revealed.
Anyways, I haven’t decided if I am actually watching or just will have the tv on tuned to that program but I hope everyone will join me in making Trump as miserable as possible.
tobie
Thanks for linking to the interview with Wuthnow, AL. I’ve never quite understood the fixation with Washington in the rural communities I know. Looks like Wuthnow has a lot of interesting things to say about this.
Mathguy
@BlueDWarrior: I like naming them “Klingons”.
Chet Murthy
In lighter news, these young Americans aren’t takin’ prisoners, are they?
Schlemazel
@Gin & Tonic:
And I wish your mother as much luck!
Baud
I don’t get it. Can’t people code from anywhere?
raven
@marcopolo: oh whatever
Schlemazel
@marcopolo:
Had not thought of that.I don’t expect much from the show but I know the Mrs will insist on watching it as she is sure this will be the straw that breaks the Christianists back. I am convinced there is no straw that will cause that miracle .
Major Major Major Major
@Corner Stone: and you get the clap *once*…
raven
@Gin & Tonic: Wow, Marley played there!
Chet Murthy
@Butch: Butch, I’m sure you’re not all like that. I met some really decent folks when I was a grad student in Ithaca, NY. Farmers in the upstate NY area who were really decent, open-minded, and intelligent (for all that, none of them had an education past high school). And yet. And yet. I grew up in a small white, Texas town that I wouldn’t shed a tear if it were nuked off the map. Bloodthirsty, yeah. Then again, you didn’t grow up where I grew up, live with the racism I experienced. And, heck, the homophobia I experienced (and I’m straight).
These people [to steal a phrase from David Simon], when they see learning of ANY sort, heaved it away with great force. They cared about their sons on the football field, and that was IT.
Yes, you hate cities. Do you ensure that your children, the children of your community, don’t participate in that hate? That your fellow citizens understand and appreciate the value that cities bring?
B/c everything — EVERYTHING — you use to live your life, from electricity, to roads, to cars, to refined petrochemicals, to antibiotics, to … EVERYTHING, comes from “city culture”. All of it. Only with cities, and their concentration of -people- can division-of-labor and the economies that come from that, flourish. Even the age-old rant that all the -food- is grown in the countryside, is bullshit. Because without the science engendered by cities, the carrying capacity of even North America would be a fraction of what it is today. -Everything- depends on the massive capital investment embodied in cities.
You do have an alternative: throw away every transistor device. Throw away your cars that contain anything foreign in them. Throw away all medicine newer than pennicillin (I’m being generous here). Throw away basically all medical science. And see how you like it. I doubt you will.
Cities gave you all that.
Schlemazel
@Chet Murthy:
I think the ammosexuals are right to be scared. These kids are not going away and they will remain true to their cause.
The Dems who are the wrong side of this issue deserve to go down along with the GOP. Those will be acceptable casualties when the blue tsunami breaks over DC this fall
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
I’ve often wondered if Iowa’s whiteness is connected to the land grant program whereby many of the farms were given out. Many farmers today live on farms their family has owned for decades.
Baud
Trump wasn’t a rebellion or a cry for help. These rural areas are dedicated to the GOP cause.
Mnemosyne
@WereBear:
I think it depends on the state, too. SC has said that, in her experience, the exurban and rural people in Massachussetts that she’s encountered are mostly Democrats. It’s a general tendency, but not an absolute rule.
efgoldman
@Chet Murthy:
A lot of the RWNJs will just run away.
efgoldman
@raven:
I thought Marley was dead, to begin with.
cosima
Is it acceptable for those of us who can’t watch Stormy on 60 Minutes to beg for an open thread about it? Not sure I’ll still be up when it’s on (it is nearly 11pm here — not sure what time it is on). I would love the insightful commentary from the BJers to walk me through it — as it goes along, or, if it is airing too late, for me to wake up to.
Gin & Tonic
@raven: I saw Anthony Braxton there one time – he plays a lot of instruments, and he brought in a contrabass saxophone that must have cleared the ceiling by a couple of inches. He had with him a young trombonist named George Lewis, just a kid, who seemed awestruck and nervous. Lewis is now vice-chairman of music at Columbia and has won (been granted?) a MacArthur Fellowship.
Mnemosyne
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady):
One of my friends at work who is a native Angeleno is traveling to Des Moines this week on business. I’ve already warned her that Iowa’s largest city isn’t exactly what she thinks of as a “city.” ?
Gin & Tonic
@efgoldman: I think this may have been when he was alive.
Adria McDowell
I like to think this whole analysis is just explaining why Wilmer moved out of Brooklyn and up to lily white Vermont. :-)
mike in dc
Can’t imagine living in a small rural community where the only ethnic restaurant is the pizza joint 10 miles out of town.
SiubhanDuinne
A few months ago, I read a trio of books by the late Elizabeth Edmondson and her son, Anselm Audley — the books are collectively called A Very English Mystery — one of which introduced me to the word “feoffee.” It is pronounced fuh-FEE and shares an etymological root and historical context with “fief.”
efgoldman
@Gin & Tonic:
If you have to explain the joke….
raven
@Gin & Tonic: Sweet!
Gin & Tonic
@mike in dc: A couple of years ago I was in a small rural community in Ohio. Ate at a *really* good Mexican restaurant, where the tv’s were all tuned to the fútbol. Lots of agricultural areas have lots of Mexicans and Guatemalans. They like to go out to eat too.
gene108
Not talking about right wing media creating a narrative of persecution has to be mentioned.
Their religion is under attack because people say “Happy Holidays” during Christmas time. They are losing jobs to minorities because of Affirmative Action.
The list of how rural Christian white Americans are being put upon by urban elites is endlessly reinforced by right-wing media.
This is a major factor in the breakdown.
Gin & Tonic
@efgoldman: I guess that explains that whooshing sound I heard a few minutes ago.
Nicole
@Chet Murthy:
I feel you. I grew up in small-town Pennsylvania, where my excellent public school teachers did the best they could to try to counteract the huge prejudice we were fed by living on “the White Shore,” as the West Shore of the Susquehanna River was nicknamed. They had varying levels of success. In my high school, if you were a Democrat you pretty much just kept your head down. Football was HUGE, and there was no drama program. I do see a HUGE difference between my high school friends who went away to school and those who went to schools in the area, or not far from it (went to Penn State, for example). Even if they came back to the area. The good Doctor (Who) was right, travel does broaden the mind.
woodrowfan
The only small towns I’ve ever seen that Id be willing to live in were college towns. The others just seem dead.
efgoldman
@Gin & Tonic:
I figured you were one of the people who would get it right away, and groan.
And I’m pissed at you and Raven for not calling when you were in Boston.
Nicole
@gene108:
My God, is that the truth. I had a (former) very Evangelical friend in Orlando, who after the Pulse nightclub shooting, proclaimed to me in all caps via email that she God was great and she WOULD NOT BE AFRAID!!!! She was not happy when I pointed out as a straight white woman, she wasn’t exactly in any danger.
NotMax
@mike in dc
If English muffins are in the foreign foods aisle, you know you’ve moved too far out into the country.
;)
Aimai
@Nicole: excellent point!
efgoldman
@NotMax:
Chef Boy-Ar-Dee also too,
WereBear
@Baud: Of course they can. But there are always bosses who prefer butts in chairs to actual work done.
Chet Murthy
@Nicole: In my high school, there was a decent speech teacher, a decent English teacher, an not-awful history teacher, and a quite-decent math teacher. Nobody was excellent. Even in 1982, nobody even -knew- what an AP test was. Literally, I shit you not.
But that’s not the important part. The racism in that town. Fuck me, you could cut it with a goddam diamond drill. Nothing softer. And the homophobia, sheeite. And how do I know? B/c I learned to be racist from those kids. And I got attacked by my entire P.E. class for being gay.
I guess I should be thankful they didn’t string me up like Matthew Shepard. The fucks, they didn’t even realize that my fear of their “fear of a brown penis” was far greater than my fear of being taken for a gay man.
The fucks. Yeah, I wouldn’t pull a trigger. But I also wouldn’t shed a tear. Not one goddam tear.
So y’know, @Butch maybe you should look around your community, and see if a young kid like me (brown) would survive, would be welcomed. Or would learn to be bigoted towards all other brown/black/gay kids, as a means of protective coloration. B/c if you can honestly say that your community is like that, then maybe you have a case. Maybe.
Otherwise, y’know, I’m with @efgoldman: “fuckem”.
ETA: just to be clear, those teachers were “decent” compared to all the rest. I literally slept thru my junior year of high school (b/c working 1.5 full-time jobs in food service at night&weekends) and graduated at the end of that year with straight As. Nobody, no matter how intelligent, should be able to do that. Nobody. It is a *testament* to the uselessness of that excuse for a school.
ETA2: And I didn’t even get into the ridiculously over-the-top foaming stinking misogyny of the place.
SiubhanDuinne
Anne Laurie @ top:
As so often is the case, Gilbert and Sullivan pegged it (this from Iolanthe):
“Our lordly style
You’ll quickly quench
With base canaille
(That word is French);
Distinction ebbs
Before a herd
Of vulgar plebs
(A Latin word);
‘Twill fill with joy
And madness stark
The hoi polloi
(A Greek remark):
One Latin word,
One Greek remark,
And one that’s French!”
Major Major Major Major
@WereBear: meatspace meetings and co-location are often helpful, in moderation.
Shana
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): Well that and all the Lutherans.
Thoughtful David
@efgoldman:
Most certainly, Marley is dead.
RSA
@efgoldman:
Just like America and Americans, right?
Corner Stone
@WereBear: Preach it. Hate that fucking guy.
Elizabelle
@efgoldman: Scrooge you.
@ cosima: Yeah, I am up for a Stormy whatever thread. Will be the first time I’ve watched 60 Minutes since …. cannot even recall. Bo-ring!
Major Major Major Major
@RSA: the plurality of Americans did not vote for trump, unlike the vast majority of the people in these towns.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@Mnemosyne: LOL. I live 100 miles from Des Moines in what Iowans also call a “city.” To me, Des Moines looks great!
@Shana: No fooling. When we moved here, one of the things that struck me was how everyone assumed that everyone else was Christian. So my neighborhood association issued directions for how we were to display our decorations.
@mike in dc: You forgot Taco Bell.
John Revolta
Relevant (still)
SiubhanDuinne
@Schlemazel:
AND it had snark tags.
Chet Murthy
No prisoners: “f they refuse to show up just invite their opponent”
Magda in Black
With all due respect, I do tire of the disparaging of small town america. yes, I left. Those of us who left did so for a variety of reasons: big ag drove out small farming; Walmart killed small business; even the commuting jobs (Caterpillar, Allsteel) scaled down. There are few of us that dont love and miss the small town and the friends we left.
To disparage these places as “shitholes” as Ive seen done (here) is to paint with a pretty broad brush, and if you dont think my nw chicago suburb doesnt carry the same resentments, anger and social problems as those shitholes, come spend a day with me. Quite frankly, I find the same small minded ignorance everywhere I go.
I’m from small town america, I get it. But please, enough with the disparaging. It doesnt solve a thing.
Nicole
@Aimai: The realization that I was reacting to being stereotyped has stopped me from sooooo many “But I’M not like that!” moments. Who cares? It’s not about me!
Which is not to say I don’t have plenty of “But I’M not like that!” comments in my past. Ah well. Know better, do better. ;)
efgoldman
@Elizabelle:
Thank you :::bows:::
SiubhanDuinne
@marcopolo:
I agree with your reasoning. I don’t own a TV, is there any way to stream it? Or live commentary?
Baud
@marcopolo: I’m going to compromise and watch a Stormy Daniels movie tonight.
debbie
@Chet Murthy:
Nice! I expect they’ll publicly shame those who refuse to hold a town hall.
Schlemazel
Just want to leave this here as it could be a perfect representation of todays NRA
https://imgur.com/gallery/ElO7Y
Chet Murthy
@Elizabelle: I would also very much appreciate such a thread. B/c I sure ain’t gonna watch. But would be happy to read others’ reactions, and maybe understand (in writing — only writing) the content of what was shown. As with Game of Thrones, I can’t quite bring myself to watch the damn thing, even if lots of smart people think it has value. The soft porn is a blocker.
RSA
@Major Major Major Major:
Sure. I think it’s too common, though, that I see “the South” or “Mississippi” or “Texas” or some other red region used as shorthand for “people there who voted Republican”.
JMG
@Magda in Black: Small towns come in all varieties, just like cities. Some are lovely places to live, others less so. There are places that I’d call shitholes that have hundreds of thousands of residents, too.
Chet Murthy
@debbie: Never get into a battle of side-eye with a teenager.
PsiFighter37
Are we going to get an open thread just for Stormy?
Thoughtful David
One other statistic that remember hearing that is relevant to this discussion, is that if you measure economic output by precinct, Hillary won precincts representing something like 70% of the economic output of the country. In other words, all those red precincts barely produce anything of economic value.
And yes, I know about agriculture. Which, I also seem to recall, accounts for something a bit under 5% of GDP.
If all of the blue precincts seceded, the red ones would have a standard of living like Paraguay. Which is fine if you like that. Paraguay is a nice country.
Schlemazel
@Baud:
“Forest Rump”?
“Shaving Ryan’s Privates”?
“Three Men In a Babe”?
I am unfamiliar with her catalog
Thoughtful David
@efgoldman:
Wha? I thought we were talking about Bob.
debbie
@Chet Murthy:
Yeah, learned that the hard way, what with all my nieces and nephews.
***
I hope basketball doesn’t delay 60 MInutes too much. Call the Midwives starts tonight!
James E. Powell
Is there a bill pending in the house or senate that includes provisions for each of the demands put for by this weekends Marchers?
If not, what say the Democrats introduce it in a short press conference this week? Give it a brand name. Start demanding it be enacted. What have they go to lose?
Ruckus
@Chet Murthy:
Well people living in cities anyway. And it’s not totally true. People in rural areas have added to the public total. Not all that long ago a lot of what today is nothing like rural was, in my lifetime no less. And I’m not the oldest around here either. Nothing wrong with rural area people wanting to hold on to what they consider their lives, it’s trying to make the rest of us live the same life. I’ve lived where cornfields were less than 2 blocks from my house and in ten yrs have seen those fields leveled and cities replaced them. I’ve seen the same thing in LA, just was longer ago that it happened. I went to elementary school next to a dairy, cows eating, shitting, mooing and being milked, all in sight through the fence separating them, one of my classmates family owned it. My grandmother raised chickens and vegetables in her back yard 2-3 miles from the march I went to yesterday, in downtown LA.
Life has changed, in my lifetime, a lot. I like it but we should respect those who don’t. But that’s a two way street, they, as a group, need to, and don’t respect those of us who live in cities.
The quoted and interviewed author didn’t look for or find any reasons for his ideas, only that he was minimally correct, life is different in cities and rural areas.
So why the hate? Politics. As it has always been.
There is I believe an understanding in rural areas that because cities have much more population, they will have much more political power. The way our system works and the way it’s been protected from the cities having that power, congress, has played into the hands of more rural/rural state politicians. Look in CA, most of the republican politicians come from more rural or older areas. And the city ones are extremely likely to lose come Nov.
I also question how many people truly like rural life over city life, it’s just that they can’t afford the buy in to move. And yet people give up living in other countries to move here. I have thought about it a few times, the first time I did was in the late 60s and a move to Canada was a real possibility/probability for me. But I couldn’t see swinging it economically, moving and starting all over, no idea of what to do for a living. You can’t imagine how much I admire someone who has done that, pull up stakes and create/attempt to create a new life.
Corner Stone
@Schlemazel: Any of the Ninja Nuns in Bondage series. Or if you’re into adult furries cosplay Play Panda for Me, or the classic AVN Award winning Lay Misty for Me.
Steeplejack
@cosima:
It’s scheduled for 7:00 p.m. Eastern time—midnight your time—but it follows an NCAA basketball game, which almost inevitably will run long.
tobie
@gene108: Please whenever you hear white people complain about affirmative action, remind them that the biggest affirmative action program in education is the “geographic distribution requirement.” That requirement beats just about every other admissions program by a long shot.
Magda in Black
@JMG:
Thank you
Doug R
@Chet Murthy:
FIFY.
Ruckus
@woodrowfan:
Isn’t that the attraction?
Didn’t someone make a movie, Night of the Living Dead? I may have misunderstood the story line.
Corner Stone
@Steeplejack: There is 12 minutes of game clock left. That means it may be over by somewhere around midnight CDT.
Steeplejack
@Corner Stone:
True.
hitchhiker
I grew up in northern Minnesota and upper Michigan, the center of whiteness. I never saw — much less met — anybody black, Hispanic, or Jewish until I’d left home at 18. Everyone was Christian, usually Catholic or Lutheran. There was always one public school and one Catholic school, and no other options. I could not get out of those towns fast enough, and it wasn’t because they were horrible or filled with bitter people.
It was because they were BORING. Even in 1970 it was obvious that there was a whole lot more going on than I was going to ever see if I stayed. My world was mediated through the 3 available TV channels and the newsweekly magazines my parents liked. There was no college; I didn’t even know what college was … I saw The Graduate as a teenager and I still can feel the sense of wonder I had, sitting in the theatre watching Katharine Ross walking through that campus with her hair swinging and her books on her arm. Was this a thing I could do? How?
I’m one of 8 kids. One of them followed me to the west coast, but all the rest of them stayed. I’m not interested in their political opinions, because I know exactly how they were formed and what they hardened around and how much space is available for anything resembling fresh air to blow through.
They don’t even want to visit me (and we do get along) — so it’s impossible to imagine them wanting to leave, or being glad to see their kids and grandkids leave. There’s definitely a bunker mentality going on, but I think it’s just them knowing that getting left behind (to borrow a phrase from the author) is inevitable.
They made their choice, and I think on some level it has to feel harsh that they couldn’t change it now if they wanted to … so they choose not to want to, and resent people (me) who did want to.
Jager
I grew up in North Dakota (left at 18) I have a “Baby Aunt” a few years younger than I am,, she is a farm wife. Actually,she’s a retired school teacher and he is the farmer. A farmer in ND today is a farmer like my Baby Uncle, a guy who has consolidated what at one time were 8 family farms into one huge and profitable operation. In Baby Uncles case 7 other family farms disappeared. That’s happened all over the Midwest and yes, it has changed the small towns dramatically and they bitch about how it just isn’t like it “Used to be”. Meanwhile they write half million dollar checks for machinery, hire Mexicans to do the hard labor (work the sugar beets and potatoes) They go to Vegas a couple of times a year, spend 6 weeks in Arizona in the winter and have a lake home in Minnesota. My Aunt drives an Escalade 4×4, he has a classic car collection. Listening to her, you’d think her world has been turned upside down. It has been for the better. I was a town kid, kids I knew in high school who stayed have had shit jobs or they went to college and became teachers, accountants or nurses. Some got a good education and left for good. Others who stayed inherited businesses from their families and have done well. What they all bitch about is how things have “changed”. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard over the years, “I don’t understand how you can live in a place like Boston.” Now they’ve switched it to California. I just got an invite to a high school reunion, I’m not going. Fuck ’em Last time I went the only people I talked to were the ones who left, the locals spent their time bitching how things have changed.
woodrowfan
my cousin from Dayton came to DC for the March. She said she stopped for gas in some little PA town off the turnpike for gas. When she asked to use the restroom she was told that they closed the restrooms because people kept ODing in them. But that the Dunkin Donuts had one she could use.
PJ
@Ruckus: With emigration, or just moving to another place in this country, it helps if you’re young, without dependents, and it helps if you do not have land or possessions you are attached to, and it helps if you are emotionally independent of your family. These are not necessarily virtues, but neither are they hard to come by for everyone at some point in their life.
I think the biggest thing that keeps people from moving is the unwillingness to live with uncertainty. What if things don’t work out? What if I fail, and am broke, or sick, or jobless, or homeless? These are realities in this country, because there really isn’t a reliable safety net. Youth helps, because you are less likely to have been beaten down with the experience of all the things that can go wrong, and you believe that, whatever happens, you’ll figure something out, and you have more energy to put to the tasks you’ll face. But you can have that attitude at any stage in life.
cosima
@Steeplejack: Thanks. I’m +5 from ET, and have an early a.m. doc apt (besides having to get Little C sorted & off to school), so definitely going to have to hope for a Stormy open thread (or even a thread w/ongoing commentary if that’s all I can get). Hope it lives up to the hype. Part of me is very cynical (okay, most of me) and thinks there will be very little of substance discussed, and this is all really a ploy on the part of SD & her attorney to get as much money as possible from that garbage person. And of course that large payday would necessitate an ironclad NDA. But I hope that when I wake in the morning I’ll be proved wrong.
Magda in Black
@PJ:
It takes a lot of courage to pack up and leave home for “parts unknown” and you are also correct that not everyone had the means to do so. We can’t all live in the city/suburbs. Nor do we all wish to.
I’m here because the money, I will not be staying when I retire in 3 years.
Jeffro
Off to go see IN THE HEIGHTS at the Kennedy Center…back in a few, folks!
E
I not only live in a small, rural town, I’m it’s mayor. and let me tell you, the sociologist quoted above, at least from my fairly panoramic, fairly well-informed perspective, hits the nail squarely on the head. One big factor here is that people who choose not to go to college or learn a trade can usually find a way to stay in these communities, and cannot find a way to make it more or less at all in a city. This leads to a high density of unskilled, uneducated, and unemployed people living with their families or scraping by in immense poverty. They are then seen by both themselves and those fellow community members who do have some form of income as “victims” of Hillary Clinton etc. I just ordered the book.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
I just printed a bunch of “evil” level sudokus to do as I watch TV. I have coffee made and chocolates by my couch. I am ready for Stormy.
PJ
@hitchhiker: Despite all the energy and innovation this country has developed, boredom is our number one product. I’ve never been bored in my later life the way I was in the rural/suburban area I grew up in. Any culture that existed had to be purchased from the mall or seen on TV. Thankfully, my parents subscribed to the NY Times and there were books in the house. Everyone I knew who wanted to do something more with their lives left.
Schlemazel
BTW – when 60 Minutes hits a new ratings high tonight expect Dump to tweet that it is because everyone loves him & was tuning in to hear more about him.
Zinsky
People who live in small towns and rural areas have fewer real-life encounters and interactions with gays, people of color, artists and other people on the fringe of society, so it is easier to demean and marginalize them via repetitive, incessant messaging on FoxNews (TV) and hate radio. The human imagination conjures up much worse villains than exist in real-life. These people need to get out more and visit other cities and countries. As Mark Twain noted, “travel is one of the greatest antidotes to bigotry “.
Omnes Omnibus
And yet people are moving from cities to the country and opening wineries and wood fired pizza places that serve pizzas with ingredients grown with 20 miles of the oven.
DissidentFish
The red places on the map? That’s where racists live.
If we presume racism is a problem without a solution, then it really will be civil war. As person of color, I feel like I’m willing to work on educating persons who are racists. But then again, I’m Asian and that’s a fairly privileged group economically and socially — even to the point that there are more prominent Asians in the Trump admin than African-Americans and Hispanics put together. I do understand why people say “it’s not my responsibility to educate whites out of their racist attitudes and behaviors” but if not us, who? And if the core of Trump supporters — the red on that map — can’t grow from their current state, what happens next? Nothing good.
zhena gogolia
@Jeffro:
I still haven’t seen it. But I’ve just been listening to it in the car for the zillionth time, and it really is a masterpiece.
japa21
@Magda in Black: Also living in the NW suburbs, I know what you mean. Also grew up in a small town and have relatives who still live in them. They can be nice, but on a percentage basis, I think you will find more bigotry in smaller rural areas than suburbs or big cities. No place is immune from it just as no place is completely devoid of good people.
WereBear
What do they have to complain about! I don’t get it!
Magda in Black
@Omnes Omnibus:
And the city folk drive out, drink wine, eat pizza and drive back, having had a picturesque day in the country.
Chet Murthy
@Magda in Black:
Not to diminish the courage it requires, but: for some, it isn’t a matter of courage. It’s a matter of self-preservation. I have a friend who grew up in Texas like me, went to college in Texas, and came out the first week we were at grad school in
TexasIthaca, NY. When in Texas, he had girlfriends. There’s a guy from my high school like that, too. Both left Texas for …. safer parts.I used to have compassion for the people of Weatherford TX — the town I fled — until they decided that I was less of an American than they were. I should have given up that compassion years ago, but I kept it until Nov 9, 2016. Until they learn compassion for those who look different, love different, worship different, why -should- anybody have any compassion for them?
Until then, I don’t give two fucks about them. They didn’t give two fucks about me, and hell, the ONLY difference between me and them, was the fucking color of my skin. In *every* other respect, I was a red-blooded Texas child.
Corner Stone
@Omnes Omnibus:
John Revolta
@Ruckus: So why the hate?
Well, in large part because for 40 years we’ve had people making good money by using (mostly) the public airwaves to tell people that one group are saintly and good, and the other group are Hell’s own emissaries, just fucking everything up for fun.
Ruckus
@PJ:
All true. I was actually young with no financial attachments. What I had was a decent start on a career. I’ve had 2 other careers in this life and I’m back to using those job skills that I’d learned and honed in the next 20 + yrs. It was the emotional side that I had no skills to change. That and the unknown. The how, the what, that’s the practical side of moving that far away. And why it’s so difficult for so many to go. If it’s actually bad and you’ve seen others go and be successful I’d think it would be easy to leave. If it’s just slow, you’ve never seen different, and don’t know anyone who made it work, the level of hesitation would be far different. I have distant cousins in the midwest who lived on a farm. Had never seen the ocean, came out for a family visit, 55 or so years ago. They were astounded by the ocean, by the big city, by everything. I never did find out if the kids all left but I’d be some of them did. And I think that’s another reason that a lot of rural people don’t want to lose what they consider a better life, their kids will leave and never look back.
Magda in Black
@WereBear:
We used to joke about the “rich farmers” who work 6 weeks a year: 3 in spring, 3 in fall.
They complain out of habit, no thought involved.
Seems to be a human condition.
geg6
I live in one of those not-quite-dying areas in Wesren PA (we’re close enough to Pittsburgh to not be complete dead) and it’s the same place I grew up. I didn’t leave permanently, but I went to college in the city and lived there for several years. I also travelled a lot, as much as I possibly could, especially when I was young. I saw much of the US, explored various spots in Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean and Canada and visited England and France. That city living and travel, plus parents who were liberal and insistent that we always be open to learning and new experiences, are what made me different from my peers here who didn’t do any of those things. I like living here. It’s lovely country that is close to the city with all its culture. But I could often do without my neighbors, who are mostly the angry ignorant assholes you read in those Trump voter profiles. Not all of them, but a very large percentage. Racist, misogynist cowards and whiners with a toxic case of privilege.
Jager
@E: Those uneducated “Left Behinds” I went to high school with stood around at the last reunion and bitched about those of us who had left for a better life, they said things like, “just who the hell does X think he is?” The guy they were talking about is a prominent eye surgeon in the Bay Area. Mrs J’s home town in western NY is just as bad or worse in some respects.
Omnes Omnibus
@Magda in Black: Which city do people drive back to from Athens, WI after a nice day in the country?
RedDirtGirl
So I signed up for a free week of CBS to watch 60 Minutes, but the live feed is showing college basketball! Where is she?
Ruckus
@John Revolta:
Yes, that part I answered with the one word, politics. I should be more clarifying though. Not just the thing we label politics, which is governmental, but the entire human encapsulation of the concept of politics.
A definition: the assumptions or principles relating to or inherent in a sphere, theory, or thing, especially when concerned with power and status in a society.
Jager
@WereBear: Neither do I. My grandfather the Judge would told to quit her whining and told her a story about getting paid in chickens, hams and cabbages as a struggling lawyer during the depression.
Brooklyn Dodger
@Butch: I grew up in the suburbs and stayed in love with living away from urban places. Although I mostly stayed just outside of them. That went well for a few years, then the siren city won me over permanent. Now I work and live in a semi-dense, and (to me) interesting downtown area, which is what my grandparents did in the 30s/40s. Go figure. Guess those turmeric lattes ain’t gonna drink themselves. Welcome to BJ!
JR
Jefferson was a deep hypocrite, to be sure, but he was (ideologically at least) a radical democrat. Hence his involvement in the French Revolution.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@RedDirtGirl: Apparently there is a basketball event going on this month. And it just went into overtime. Patience. She will be there.
efgoldman
@Thoughtful David:
Some of us were. Some of us look at everything sideways and that’s how we post.
Corner Stone
OT for the NCAA!
RedDirtGirl
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): Whew!
raven
@RedDirtGirl: CBS always has sports run late into 60 minutes. It’s not like the interview is live. And this is a great game!!!
Steeplejack
@Magda in Black:
Where do you think you will go?
Magda in Black
@Omnes Omnibus:
Not sure, I’m familiar with the phenomenon known as “day trips” and they generally involve “rustic wineries” and various other artisanal foodstuffs……as to specific geographic locations…..I’ve not done the research.
It ain’t the locals supporting wineries etc.
Mnemosyne
@WereBear:
They complain because American culture no longer revolves around them and people like them. They are no longer big fish everywhere they go — they’re only big fish when they stay in their little pond. And that bugs them.
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
Some transcripts (?) from the interview. Brad Moss says he’ll live tweet, but it’s apparently delayed.
raven
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): goddamn it I’m a few minutes back and you just wrecked it for me.
Elizabelle
@Mnemosyne: And the oxygen is getting sucked out of their ponds. Not enough to sustain life …
Magda in Black
@Steeplejack:
Small town in western Illinois.
A small patch of dirt, a house, some chickens and my home based internet business.
Elizabelle
Who are you guys rooting for, Kansas or Duke?
Cermet
Unless one lives in a rural (and I mean distant so low population density) area, then you overlook a lot of what is wrong that they see but you miss entirely. The largest issue are schools. Most rural areas have no AP courses nor internet and offer limit facilities. Cable is three of more times more expensive and internet service rare or extremely difficult to even access unless one can drive. Also, heath care access and economic aid for such is hard to obtain – again, long drives and limited state offices. In cities or larger communities these are readily available – not so for these rural areas. They see inner city poor get access to schools with AP courses (and to further increase their resentment – they often see that this doesn’t help these ‘people’ which makes them think these people don’t deserve this – a thing they do want for their children but can’t get meaning their children will never get into the better colleges) and again, inner city people have ready access to health care and a host of state/city public assistance via local/nearby gov agencies. Also, city people have high end internet and cable and both are easy to get and far cheaper. Yes, that is the price rural people have to accept but in the case of say, Appalachia, this region has experienced this type of not being part of the economic advantage given via gov for cities/suburbs for now, almost 200 years but it is getting much worse; not better. Yes, this is very much part of what one has to endure far away from services but compared to the 1950’s, the gulf has increased by an order of magnitude and they see that now, their children are caught in this death spiral since schools have really fallen behind in these areas compared to the coasts and big cities. Just saying.
PJ
@Ruckus: It’s a perennial problem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgqVCJpRqWQ
How ya gonna keep ’em down on the farm
After they’ve seen Paree’
How ya gonna keep ’em away from Broadway
Jazzin around and paintin’ the town
How ya gonna keep ’em away from harm, that’s a mystery
They’ll never want to see a rake or plow
And who the deuce can parleyvous a cow?
How ya gonna keep ’em down on the farm
After they’ve seen Paree!
Lyrics by Joe Young and Sam Lewis, Music by Walter Donaldson (1919)
stinger
@Butch: Thank you. Same here.
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@Elizabelle: I would never root for Duke. Except against Cheeto Mussolini.
RedDirtGirl
@raven: Sorry for my culpability in that!
efgoldman
@Ruckus:
You kind of elide over the hate, spite and fear.
And the irony is, the most racist/xenophobic people live in areas where they hardly ever encounter the minorities they hate.
Corner Stone
@Elizabelle: As much as it hurts. Any one but fucking Duke.
JR
@Corner Stone: ding ding ding
Mike G
Yeah, don’t we all remember when Obama’s Black Panthers rolled into god-fearing white Sisterfuck, Alabama and forced them into rampant meth addiction.
Mary G
A few snippets of Stormy are coming out, nothing that sounds that exciting:
eclare
@Corner Stone: Same here.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@raven: I’m sorry. You mean because I said overtime? I am sorry.
Gin & Tonic
@Elizabelle: I want both of them to lose.
Mary G
raven
@RedDirtGirl: Nah, I should know better.
SiubhanDuinne
@efgoldman:
Heh, well played, efg.
raven
@Magda in Black: Forgottonia! I used to fish at Keokuk/Hamilton.
hitchhiker
@WereBear:
What the people left behind in my family complain about is simple: they feel judged.
I blame this on the Limbaughs et al who have been telling them for decades now that people like me look down on them. What’s sad is that I never did, until they started telling me that Trump was okay.
After the election it became painfully obvious that this was a key thing I’d missed … people who knew and loved me STILL were persuaded that I believe they’re shit, but was just too polite/politically correct to say so.
Right up until that moment, I was a lot more fine with their choices than, as it’s turned out, they were. Now, I could not care less. If I live out my last 20 years without restoring a meaningful connection, that will be okay. Not ideal, but okay.
Corner Stone
@Mike G:
Too soon, man. Too soon.
raven
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): No, no, don’t worry about it.
John Revolta
@Ruckus: Well, people can and do have political differences without the levels of hate we’ve got going.
And frankly as @WereBear: says, many of us don’t have that much to complain about and still bitch the loudest.
What’s to complain about? Ask Rush! Ask Hannity! They’ll get your blood flowing for you!
Chet Murthy
@Cermet:
Sorry, Cermet. I’m callin’ bullshit on this. If they were serious about this, they’d be pushing for laws forcing big companies to provide universal service, better pay for teachers, and a host of other progressive measures. ALSO, this bullshit about “inner city poor get access to better schools” my ASS. What rubbish. Maybe they *believe* that bullshit, but it’s false, and yet another example of racism at work. The best schools are typically in rich white areas in the ‘burbs.
Now maybe you’re saying that this is what these pig-fuckers believe. I can understand that — they’re lied to all goddam day by Fox news, so sure, maybe they believe these things. But it’s false. And in their imagined paradise, they wouldn’t get these things redressed. They’d live in their neofeudal paradise, with the Big Man On The Hill lording it over them. But yeah, the darkies would be even worse-off, so Huzzah?
Corner Stone
Man, that Bagley Three Sticks for Duke is a beast.
RedDirtGirl
@raven: I’m not a sports ball watcher, but i can see this is a good game!
Mnemosyne
@Cermet:
If that was the problem, they would have voted for the presidential candidate who promised to fix all that stuff and had a detailed plan for bringing the internet and cellular to rural areas while improving education and healthcare.
Instead, they voted for the white supremacist who promised to put all of the uppity Blacks, Browns, and Feminazis in their place, because the other stuff just wasn’t as important to them.
They shot themselves in the foot and now they’re bitching about not having healthcare nearby? Elections have consequences, assholes, and you made your choice.
Elizabelle
Jayhawks for the win; Duke out.
Corner Stone
@RedDirtGirl: Sportsball!!
raven
@Elizabelle: I dislike both teams but great game!!
Elizabelle
@RedDirtGirl: Yeah. I was kinda rooting for both teams’ players. They worked so hard, and looked so good.
Don’t got a dog in this fight.
rikyrah
Uh huh
https://twitter.com/JuddLegum/status/977952442657726464?s=19
E
@Cermet: Do you live in such a place? Almost nothing you said here sounds familiar to me, other than the fact people in these areas have to drive further to get to various services.
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@Elizabelle: Yay!
@raven: As so I, but I could never root for Duke.
WereBear
I appreciate the feedback from all. I live in a small town, but we went for HRC, there’s high speed Internet, culture, and good restaurants.
Corner Stone
Time for some porn stars. And I may also watch 60 Minutes for a little bit as well.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Ruckus: Over at the LA history thread that I read, one of the regular commentors was decrying how LA has changed(he remembers LA in the late 40’s pretty well) with bars on the windows and metal security doors and HOMELESS folk. None of all that existed back in the 40’s and 50’s. He ended with a rant about “sanctuary cities, you know what that means”. I’m thinking(I held my tongue), yeah I know what that means…means that grandpa’s been watching too much Fox.
Jager
Back in the 90’s I went to a H S reunion. There was a woman there, she’d been a cheerleader, the homecoming queen, super cute girl with good grades. She married a local shit heel, he drank, beat the shit out of her for years. She looked like 40 miles of bad road. He’d finally died drunk in a car accident with her in the car, she spent 4 or 5 hours in the car with his dead body on a country road. She recovered only to find, he’d refinanced their dump of a house and she was penniless at 52, her kids were as bad or worse than their dad. The locals, all thought it was just a terrible thing to happen to what “used to be” such a nice girl. They did nothing. A large group of us who left, created a small pool of money for her to get a fresh start, she moved, learned how to be a lab tech in a trade school is happy as she can be. As one of my high school pal’s wife said, “I dated that bastard before she did, I could have been her.”
mike in dc
@Gin & Tonic: That’s good to hear. A lot of people who live in or near cities do so for the “culture”, by which they can and do mean many things, including cultural diversity, good restaurants, museums, theater, live performances, bookstores, libraries, universities, specialty stores, art galleries, et al. Some of that is upper middle class/lower upper class elitism, I suppose, but some is just a desire to be able to meet people and talk about the larger world out there. The perception is that the opportunities in more homogenous, smaller and more isolated communities will be by definition more limited in scope and diversity of viewpoints.
Elizabelle
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Do share the LA blog, if you would. I am fascinated with the area.
Plus, all those Michael Connelly and Walter Mosley detective novels … and Raymond Chandler, and ….
Ooh, 60 Minutes up.
SiubhanDuinne
One of the (muted) TV screens has Steve Mnuchin on FOX being interviewed by Chris Wallace. Between the dyed black hair and heavy round black glasses frames on both, it’s hard to tell them apart.
Magda in Black
@Chet Murthy:
Wow.
Yup. Pretty much done with this discussion thread
Davebo
@Corner Stone: Think I’ll spend the night watching porn supporting actors. Not sure I’m ready for the stars yet.
Elizabelle
We can haz prono star thread?
Ruckus
@PJ:
It’s been going on a lot longer than that. It’s just that it’s raising it’s ugly head, again, and in a big way right now. Actually I think it’s going to come to a head politically in the near future. Politically too much has been rigged in favor of rural over cities and it leaves people, living in a democracy, without equal representation.
@efgoldman:
I sort of thought that the line you quoted said that. “but it’s a two way street.” That respect is in no way, shape or form going both ways. Look at the stories being told here of people having left that rural life and glad of it. Along with the stories of people liking or moving back to rural areas. But like everything involving people, it’s never 100% anything except death. There are bad people every where on the planet of every color, age and gender. And there are good people every where on the planet of every color, age and gender.
Chet Murthy
@Gin & Tonic: That’s the other “tell” about these rural bigots. The people who are trying to revitalize their communities look wrong, talk wrong, pray wrong, so hell, they must *be* wrong. When I read ten years ago about Latin immigrants repopulating the interior, I gave a huzzah! B/c maybe someday, due to their good work, I might be able to visit Texas without that undercurrent of fear for my life. Not to speak of visiting Georgia or the rest of the Deep South.
RedDirtGirl
@Elizabelle: Seconded! I don’t want to watch alone!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Elizabelle: It’s not a blog, just a VERY LONG discussion thread(it took me about 6 months to catch up), but here’s the addy: noirish Los Angeles.
Baud
Porn thread up.
Schlemazel
Nice to see that they stuck an ad for a wingnut movie at the start of 60 Minutes. “Chappaquiddick – the true story” should be a treat for the whole family
Mnemosyne
@Magda in Black:
Magda, if you really think that inner-city schools are getting AP classes and rural schools are not, well, you need to get out more. Sorry. I live in a large urban area (Los Angeles) and I can tell you that it ain’t true.
Elizabelle
First up: the spanking.
It happened.
He kept his undies on. Boxers or briefs, we don’t know.
But she shut him up from talking about himself.
You remind me of my daughter. Beautiful, smart, a woman to be reckoned with.
Broaches going on The Apprentice. You’re gonna shock a lot of ppl.
Fair Economist
@Ruckus:
They certainly think so, although the reality is that our system favors rural areas and few states, probably not even 10, are controlled by urban voters. Even NY still has effective split government due to turncoats in the legislature.
The irony is that economics (efficiencies possible with metropolitan concentrations of people), culture (the desire to have something to do on a Friday night), and healthcare (good hospitals need substantial populations) are what’s crushing rural/small town American, and the political system is propping them up with transfer payments and politician interest. But the large majority of small town residents blame the political system for their troubles and are attacking precisely the one thing doing the most to help them keep going.
Steeplejack
The 60 Minutes Stormy Daniels transcript that Mary G mentioned above is verbatim accurate, based on the early going. Fast readers may want to zoom ahead.
PJ
@Elizabelle: I read the interview, and everything in it was completely predictable. Who is this going to shock?
Brachiator
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Sounds like history with a bad case of amnesia. The homeless, especially hobos, arrived in LA in large numbers with the rail roads in the decades after the Civil War. And as always, they were looked down on and degraded.
Link:
https://la.curbed.com/2017/12/14/16756190/skid-row-homeless-history
Ruckus
@John Revolta:
That’s the politics that I’m talking about. People bullshitting for some stupid reason, in an age of instant communications about how picked upon they are, for monetary reasons. Limpdick makes a living on being an asshole, they all do. All the hate leaders have power because of the hate they spread. Without the hate, they’d have absolutely nothing. Without the hate they are at best fourth rate carnival barkers. With it they make lots of money. They are going to keep that up as long as it pays or until they die. Unfortunately the hate leaders have created a profit center. The players may change but the con will go on.
Fair Economist
@Chet Murthy:
Which isn’t rural areas. It’s certainly true that rural schools tend to be bad schools, for a lot of reasons – less money from local taxes, small schools sizes causing inefficiencies, and the better teachers’ preference to live in the cities, like most better-educated people.
It’s also true they are blaming the wrong people for their problems, but the problems are real.
Ruckus
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Yep.
Hate leaders. They lead with hate, they pontificate hate, they pay others to hate, it’s their business model.
Ruckus
@Fair Economist:
Exactly.
Mnemosyne
@Fair Economist:
As I understand it, the problems of rural and inner-city schools are very similar: difficulty retaining teachers, a lack of resources, crumbling school buildings, broken families that are dealing with addiction and domestic violence, etc.
That’s why conservatives have deliberately pitted rural whites against inner-city minorities. It means that Republicans don’t have to solve either side of the equation since they can get rural whites to vote down additional school funding that would have helped both groups.
James E. Powell
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
LA History thread?
Chet Murthy
@Mnemosyne: [to follow on from your thought] And yet one of those two groups (rural left-behind folks, poor urban folks) reacts to this with progressive ideas that help everyone, while one reacts with regressive ideas that hurt everyone.
Steeplejack
@James E. Powell:
He put a link here.
Thoughtful David
@efgoldman:
I know. It all got a little too subtle, being one moment about Old Marley and the next about Bob. One of whom is dead. Without a doubt. As a door-nail.
Oh, and the other one is too.
Mike G
@Chet Murthy:
You forgot the secret lucrative welfare system that only illegal immigrants have access to, with free housing, healthcare and groceries no doubt including t-bone steaks and lobster. So they can simultaneously live a life of idle luxury on the Murkan taxpayers’ time AND steal jobs from hardworkin’ Murkans.
Gelfling 545
@WereBear: Here in Buffalo we are experiencing this now. Friends who have happily lived in the city for years are needng to move as their buildings are being gutted and turned into “luxury” housing so they sre now living less contentedly but more affordably in suburban areas. I wonder where the tenants for this “luxury” will come from.
Mike G
@Omnes Omnibus:
Don’t get me started on those hifalutin’ Wausau people with their sophisticated ways. Or the big-city slickers in Abbotsford.
Elizabelle
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Thank you. You’ve linked to that blog before; recognize it. Will give it a spin.
@Brachiator: And thanks for LA Curbed, too.
cleosmom
@Schlemazel:
You know they’re getting desperate when they start talking about Mary Jo.
Ruckus
@Gelfling 545:
A lot more people are living in downtown LA than did 30-40 yrs ago. Lots of new buildings and refurbished ones, along with things to do and places to eat. Look at Boston, I think it’s called the wharf. Was a few years ago but it’s been redone as a place for food and nightlife. Or Roxbury, 50 yrs ago it was close to a slum, it has, as far as I could see a few years ago been completely rebuilt into an urban environment that is rather nice. 50 yrs ago the part of Pasadena that I live in, Old Town, was pretty run down. The building I live in was finished around 2007, across the street is even newer. There are dozens of night spots and restaurants within walking distance.
Ksmiami
@Chet Murthy: gate them up – throw away the Advil and let these places and their hateful minions wither
Another Scott
@Jager: Wow. That sounds like something out of a Dickens or Dostoevsky novel.
I’m glad you were able to help her.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ksmiami
@Cermet: they chose spite over progress: ignorance over education:hatred and indulgent self pity over love and self improvement- and improvement for their kids. Sorry – they are my enemy and I’m out of fucks to give
lynn
The old rust belt was convinced that ear marks represented waste/abuse of their tax dollars. In reality those ear marks put a roof on the H.S., paved main street., or kept the YMCA open on the weekends. The GOP control of these states have eliminated home rule. Some states limit the taxing ability of counties to even raise taxes to fix a bridge. In sum, the GOP has effectively removed the relationship between of the tax payer and the taxes collected. The rust belt only see their tax dollars when they file a tax return at the end of the year. Finally, there is poor transportation infrastructure between and in these states.
Ksmiami
@woodrowfan: ding ding ding – we need to stop supporting them through our taxes and welfare
Enhanced Voting Techniques
“Left Behind” is the defining book for the Christian end times right now. I think the writer didn’t chose that phrase in the book title by accident.
PIGL
@Butch: Oh don’t mind the Captain. He makes everybody cry. He’s a monster.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@Cermet: I grew up in such an area. They could have had much of what is missing there – reliable and VIABLE internet access, AP classes, etc. Want to know why they don’t? THEY DON’T WANT IT IF BLACK PEOPLE GET IT TOO. That’s right. They have “private” schools in 2018 (where “private” = “whites only”) and they will not fund any infrastructure that will benefit anyone other than themselves. So they can miss me with their insincere lament for social programs for whites only. Besides, that’s been done already.
schrodingers_cat
@Schlemazel: I saw the ad at the end of Snooze Hour on Thursday.
Don K
@BlueDWarrior:
Actually, large parts of Pennsylvania (the anthracite belt in the Northeast and the railroad towns) began their declines long before the 70s. For the anthracite belt it was the playing out of the seams as well as households converting from coal to oil or gas for heating. In the rail towns there was the general decline of the rail industry and the specific decline of the Pennsy and Penn Central, but also the fact that thousands of jobs were shed in the transition from steam to diesel, primarily because diesels required much less maintenance than did steam engines.
I once read that Scranton and Wilkes-Barre are unusual because settlement stops with houses built in the 20s and then come the woods. There are no substantial number of houses built after that. As a point of reference, PA reached its largest number of representatives after the 1910 census. Since around 1930 it’s been in decline relative to the rest of the country.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Chet Murthy: Will Hoggs reign of terror never end? Teenagers going to open meeting and asking their betters thoughtful questions, this is just as a bad as Stalin’s purges.