If only the Czar knew.
— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec.bsky.social) July 14, 2025 at 1:16 AM
There’s a lot to unpick in this piece. It’s clear that most of the ‘surely Trump did not intend to do this to *us*, his loyalest supporters’ crap is kayfabe (not least from the WaPo), but then there’s the wishful thinking about possible replacements by people who desperately need accessible medical care… “A clinic blames its closing on Trump’s Medicaid cuts. Patients don’t buy it” [gift link];
CURTIS, Neb. — The only health clinic here is shutting down, and the hospital CEO has blamed Medicaid cuts in President Donald Trump’s signature legislation. But residents of Curtis — a one-stoplight town in deep-red farm country — aren’t buying that explanation.
“Anyone who’s saying that Medicaid cuts is why they’re closing is a liar,” April Roberts said as she oversaw lunch at the Curtis Area Senior Center.
The retirees trickling in for fried chicken and soft-serve ice cream will be hit hardest when the clinic closes this fall, Roberts fears. Seniors who sometimes go in multiple times a month to have blood drawn will have to drive 40 miles to the next nearest health center. Sick people, she worries, will put off checkups and get sicker…
Curtis has become an early test case of the politics of Trump’s agenda in rural America, where voters vulnerable to Medicaid cuts in Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” law are reluctant to blame the president or congressional Republicans who approved it. Many people in Curtis have directed their frustration at their hospital system instead of their representatives in Washington.
Democrats and health care advocates are pointing to the town — population 806 in the last census — as a first casualty of Republicans’ health care overhaul. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and others have referred to the town on social media as a model of what’s to come for rural hospitals around the country. Close to half of rural hospitals nationwide already lose money, and analysts expect Trump’s tax and spending law to add more strain.
Community Hospital, the nonprofit that runs the clinic known as the Curtis Medical Center and a couple of other facilities in the region, plunged into the center of that national story when it announced on July 2 — one day before the bill’s passage — that a confluence of factors had made its Curtis outpost unsustainable. It cited years-long financial challenges, inflation and “anticipated federal budget cuts to Medicaid,” the public health insurance program for lower-income and disabled Americans.
On Thursday morning, 73-year-old Sharon Jorgensen was scared that the clinic had already shut its doors: She called and couldn’t get someone to pick up. She needed a blood draw, so she went to the health center to see if someone was still there.
It was open, after all. And now staff had a date for the closure.
“We have until Sept. 30,” Jorgensen told another local, 63-year-old Jo Popp, on her way out of the small brick building. “I have to find a doctor. I don’t have a doctor!”
Popp would have to start taking a day off work for checkups, because of the drive. But she said she would try to follow the clinic’s nurse practitioner — one of three people on staff — wherever she went…
The clinic has been here longer than many people in town can remember, and people are struggling to make sense of the shutdown. The changes coming for Medicaid are complicated, and some won’t take effect for years, which makes the timing even harder for residents to understand.
Many know that Trump’s bill will impose work requirements for Medicaid recipients, which seems reasonable to them, and some think — inaccurately — that the legislation was designed to end Medicaid coverage for undocumented immigrants. (An earlier version of the bill penalized states for using their own funds — separate from Medicaid — to insure the undocumented; that provision was stripped from the final bill on a technicality.)
Community Hospital was already losing money, and officials said they are trying to make sure they remain financially viable for the 30,000 people they serve throughout their facilities. But the timing of their decision to announce the Curtis closure has stoked suspicions in town, leaving some residents convinced their health provider is using the president as a scapegoat…
Rural health care facilities run on thin margins to serve small communities in far-flung locations. And they tend to have more patients on Medicaid, many of them self-employed farmers, small-business owners and seasonal workers more likely to need public insurance. Hospital groups and executives have warned that some rural hospitals that long operated at a loss won’t be able to stay open much longer, now that the Medicaid cuts have been voted in…
The idea that Republicans cleverly delayed all the pain in their megabill until after the election is untrue. As @whitneycwimbish.bsky.social shows, 1/3 of the Medicaid cuts are in place today. Several hospitals have closed programs, cut staff, or shut down. The pain is here.
Important story:— David Dayen (@ddayen.bsky.social) July 15, 2025 at 9:47 AM
Jerry
Lord have mercy, but I just want to scream my head off whenever I hear this bit of ignorance! A large majority of people on Medicaid already work.
kff.org/medicaid/issue-brief/understanding-the-intersection-of-medicaid-and-work-an-update/
JML
This is where the cult-like behavior of the MAGA crowd is so dangerous: they still refuse to believe that Dear Leader screwed them, screwed them intentionally, and doesn’t care how many of them die.
Rural America got the knife stuck in them, and they gave the weapons to their murderer.
Their response: “It must be a lie! Big Media is lying! The Democrats did it! Where’s an immigrant I can attack! Can I call a black or brown person a lazy criminal? Hello? Hello…is this thing on?”
u
These stupid rural Trump-supporting assholes deserve their suffering. Unfortunately, other innocent people including their own children) are suffering too.
Ramona
@u: Their children are likely adults now who have fled Curtis. They voted for Trump overwhelmingly. I feel no sympathy for them.
Baud
People believe what they want to believe.
Eolirin
@JML: Their core voters include the people who continued to insist covid was a hoax even as they were being put on resperators on the way to dying from it.
There won’t be the kind of fallout we’d hope from any policy direction the Republicans go in. Their voter’s rage will always be directed outwards, with no introspection.
They’ll still lose elections when they’re in power and everything is going to hell, but it’ll be a blind lashing out at incumbents and it’ll get turned right back on us the second we get power back because they won’t have changed their positions on anything especially not that Democrats are fundamentally evil and any kind of liberal agenda is a sin and threat.
dmsilev
These are the same demographic who spent 2010 holding up “Get your government hands off my Medicare” signs.
Mission Accomplished.
(OK, this bill gutted Medicaid, but I think we all know that the GOP would axe Medicare as well if they thought they could get away with it).
u
@JML: One of the core mythologies of the residents of “red” rural states (and of “red” rural counties of “blue” states) is that they are the Real Americans who are supporting all of those lazy black and brown people in the “blue” states and counties. In reality, the “red” areas are very heavily subsidized by “blue” areas. (My state, New Jersey, subsidizes more than a dozen “red” states.). Now that the “Big Beautiful Bill” has cut off much of the blue-state-subsidies of red states, the Good Intelligent residents of the red states will face not only physical suffering, but a challenge to their entire world view. Intelligent people would learn from that — but these idiots will probably find some way to lash out in destructive ways.
JML
@Eolirin: What percentage of GOP voters do you think are fully in the cult at this point?
Earl
As the saying goes, can’t help stupid.
When you refuse to draw a connection between your vote and things that happen later… dunno what to say.
gene108
I’m not surprised by the reaction noted in the WaPo article. These folks are in a cult of their own design. I doubt they’ll ever get the wake up call to figure who’s the one ruining their lives.
Melancholy Jaques
@Jerry:
White voters love “work requirements” because they are convinced that “those people” are living large off government benefits. Bigotry is the very heart of Republican dogma.
u
@JML: “Just my opinion”, but I think that EVERY SINGLE PERSON who voted for Trump in 2024 is a member of the cult. In 2016, at least for “low information voters”, Donald Trump was an unknown quantity, a shiny new toy. In 2020 and 2024 even illiterate Trump voters knew who and what Donald Trump is. They made a deliberate choice to voter for a racist, misogynist, fascist moron. They knew what they were doing. Fuck them.
trollhattan
@JML: My SWAG is they’re trapped in a box from which they auto-vote Republican because to elect a Democrat is to go straight to hell in a very gay handbasket.
IOW not a lot of thinkin’ involved. That’s done for them already.
u
@gene108: These people WILL NEVER LEARN, because learning would mean accepting the fact of their own stupidity. They would rather die than that.
Miss Bianca
Oh, God – I read this article last week. The self-delulu in these Common Clay of the New West types was so off the hook I could hardly finish it.
And I dread what I’m likely to hear if the regional medical center that runs my local clinic decides they have to cut us loose because Costs.
Bupalos
I agree with this, though I think a lot of people in these spaces don’t particularly wish for it really. The online schadenfreude is too too delicious and people now organize their lives and identities off of hatred of the lowly dumbfuck rurals that deserve it all for being so ignorant, and basically for living there in the first place.
Is this clinic closing because of the medicaid cuts? It’s certainly playing a role, and just as certainly not the only factor. Of course folks who ended up wounding themselves with their own actions are going to tend towards talking about other real and unreal factors. Of course we’re going to emphasize their own agency as if they were some one monolithic thing. And of course the outcome of the dynamic here is going to be more desperate and desperately ignorant people that we’ll happily dehumanize from our more privileged perches.
Eolirin
@JML: No idea. We’ll find out I guess.
Baud
Deputinize America
I’m fresh out of fucks to give. They’ll be dropping like flies of preventible things in their early to mid 60s, even the ones with coverage – because the routine health care they need will be three hours away and appointments will be hard to get. That cheap nursing facility that Meemaw needs will close down too – leaving her and her pissy diaper in the living room of the double wide, making OANN harder to watch because she moans a lot with her pain.
artem1s
What all these rubes have in common is they refuse to acknowledge that the healthcare they are used to receiving is subsidized with federal money exactly like all those people they want to kick off ‘their’ healthcare. They all bootstapped their way thru life, dotchaknow. If only those awful brown/immigrant/sex-perve people weren’t using all the healthcare up, that center wouldn’t have to close.
It’s an austerity mentality that the GQP has fostered since Raygun. There is a limited supply of X and if someone else gets some, that’s less for you. They don’t want to acknowledge that there is a whole system of funding sources that keeps that kind of place going. No one can afford to pay for healthcare 100% and many only have access to basic services thru these kind of community funded and shared resources. Pull one card out of the pile and the deck ends up flat on the floor.
Donnie and Jeff’s rich playboy buddies are the ones who got huge tax breaks and are now stealing our healthcare so they can run sex clubs for their rich country club and Russian mobster pals (see how easy it is to keep the salacious headline in the story?).
Bupalos
@u: “They” will never learn because they’re in an economically, culturally, and socially impoverished environment that isn’t going to promote healthy childhood development. And we are continue to be perfectly fine with that. They are them and we are us.
JML
I mean, I don’t exactly disagree, but if all GOP voters are in the cult now it means there are essentially no persuadables out there and every election is essentially going to be based on whether you turn out yours and can persuade their to stay home. The GOP is attempting to depress Democratic votes through barriers to voting (and increasing numbers of people are expecting more active repression coming)…will disillusionment be enough to get these cultists to stay home, when they’re still refusing to see reality?
It’s why the Epstein stuff is actually a real flex point. While many Democrats don’t have any interest in continuing to litigate that scumbag and play conspiracy theory BS…if it starts to fracture the GOP base then you almost have to go all in on it.
Deputinize America
@Bupalos:
“Life always sucked for my hardworking white family. It should suck for everyone else, too.”
u
@Melancholy Jaques: In January (long story) I ended up in eastern Tennessee for a week. Mile after mile of extreme rural poverty — dilapidated shacks and trailers. Not-so-ironically, the only store I could see was a huge “Donald Trump Superstore” — selling posters, flags and other paraphernalia worshipping the great man. “Work Requirements” in that part of the country? What jobs? Work where? These fucking idiots have voted to kill themselves and their relatives (except for maybe their adult kids who have escaped that hellhole).
Baud
@u:
Manufacturing meth is work.
Bupalos
@Deputinize America: That’s pretty much the ticket, although I think you could work on your impression here. And maybe realize that this dialogue is increasingly conducted in Spanish as well.
This reminds me that my family has this thing where we do really deliberately implausible impressions that we preface with announcing who we’re supposed to be. “Oh I’m mama, and I say no one should ever have any fun!!”
u
@Bupalos: Well, “we” (i.e., blue state voters) have been subsidizing the education, medical care and other services for these assholes for about sixty years. I actually don’t mind doing that although, at this point, fuck them. The “Big Beautiful Bill” in effect ends a lot of the blue state subsides of these assholes. I did not choose that, but they did. They will get what they deserve.
Tom Levenson
@Bupalos: I don’t think we are fine with it. I’m not. And I think the mental image of everyone in rural America as that banjo kid in Deliverance (showing my age…) isn’t useful, or fair.
But we can’t do anything about the root causes here unless and until we get some help from those taking the brunt of the GOP assault on their own base. We lacked the votes in Congress to block the big monstrosity–because these voters sent Rs to Capitol Hill.
We do have to get that message through to just enough of the GOP electorate to reverse that, and that’s not just a question of finding the magic words or, simply, facts. The news/vibes/media environment for most of rural America is largely closed to what we need to say. Coming up with an approach to get past the bottlenecks there is urgent and the opposite of a trivial problem.
But to suggest a bunch of folks here venting IMHO hugely justified frustration and anger at the harm done to us are the problem, or in moral jeopardy? I don’t agree.
Deputinize America
@u:
Their adult offspring are simply moving to red exurbs and carrying their bigotry and stupidity with them.
The Thin Black Duke
These folks are junkies addicted to Trumpism, and it’s impossible to kick the habit when they don’t think it is a problem.
brendancalling
@u: can confirm, re: East Tennessee. And, for that matter, most of Tennessee.
I feel bad for the people who didn’t vote for this, but will be impacted due to their idiot neighbors.
Old Man Shadow
Maybe, and I know I’m some radical commie-socialist who hates mom, apple pie, and Jesus, but maybe we should all pool our money together in one single insurance fund that pays for all of our medical care and helps clinics and hospitals that don’t make profits off of sick people stay open?
But nah, that’s too social-communist. Let the free market sort it out and if you have to drive 200 miles to get health care, that’s just market efficiency.
Deputinize America
@u:
Rural electrification, flood control, tobacco subsidies, and massive irrigation projects were the greatest errors of the Roosevelt Administration……..
Chief Oshkosh
@JML: I can understand someone thinking that, since the ACTUAL cuts might not have happened just yet, closing now is not due to cuts. And, that is correct. The closures are due to the PENDING cuts that are going to happen with a near certainty. Some people do not understand that businesses make forecasts and act on them. Successful businesses have the best forecasts and act on them early enough to profit, or to at least mitigate losses.
This is not rocket science. To us.
To the total fuck-ups that vote for Republicans? Well, tides come in, tides go out — there’s no explaining that!
Suzanne
@Tom Levenson: There is nothing to be done about rural America. Or rural anywhere-else, really. The overwhelming pattern of economic development and migration all over the world is collection into urban centers and metros. We simply need fewer people working in agriculture and resource extraction, and more in services. Even in countries such as Japan that have a shrinking population, their cities are growing.
Bupalos
“The cruelty is the point” is wrong and stupid.
The point is degradation, the methodical reduction of the masses to manipulable desperation. It’s almost entirely rational. Closing rural hospitals will improve the prospects of oligarchs and post-truth populists, as surely as defunding extracurricular programs in schools did. There’s no “backlash.” There’s the new reality of a deeper level of basic unfreedom and ignorance.
u
@Bupalos: When Democrats have been president — from FDR and LBJ through Obama and Biden — they have always made support for rural residents a priority. The fact that those people are too goddamn stupid to appreciate it is not the fault of the Democratic Party.
Eolirin
@Suzanne: We need more urban centers than we have, so we’re going to need to step up investment into at least some rural areas to turn them into urban ones. But boy are they not going to like that.
Bupalos
@Deputinize America: Don’t forget polio vaccine. The rural rats should have been exterminated. Instead we made their lives so much better, and now they will spread their vermin sickness throughout the land.
Tom Levenson
@Suzanne: Agreed that rural areas are likely to depopulate–which will make the geographical gerrymander of the Senate yet more egregious.
But that demographic change only ramps up the urgency to break the current GOP stranglehold on rural politics. Much easier said than done, I know.
Old Man Shadow
@Suzanne: But what about all those high powered career, big city women moving back to their small rural hometowns to marry the attractive farmer/rancher/lumberjack widower and run the town’s Christmas pageant?
Surely the Hallmark Channel hasn’t lied to us.
rikyrah
@Jerry:
The largest percentage of Medicaid dollars GO TO NURSING HOMES.
MEDICAID EXPANSION WAS ABOUT GETTING HEALTHCARE TO THE WORKING POOR.
THE WORKING POOR.
THE WORKING POOR.
WORKING MEANS THEY ALREADY HAVE JOBS.
rikyrah
@The Thin Black Duke:
NO LIE TOLD
u
@Bupalos: I don’t know. There seems to be something in the rural mentality that makes them kiss up to the plutocrats who harm them (while punching down to the people below them). I don’t pretend to understand it. My father (an immigrant from Italy as a small boy) grew up in real poverty and was finally able to carve out a halfway-decent life as a union electrician. For him being a union member was not just a means to an end but a major part of his identity. He knew that his enemy was rich people who wanted to treat working people like shit. Why do rural people seem to have the opposite instinct, of kissing up to anybody who’s more wealth than them? I don’t pretend to understand it.
Suzanne
@Eolirin: Yes, we will need to grow some new urban areas and expand/densify the ones we have. IMO, doing this in a sustainable way is the biggest challenge in front of this country. Our political system is not well-designed to deal with it. It’s going to be incredibly difficult and painful.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
There’s a great critique of Rebranded Reaganism (aka so-called ‘abundance’) in the LA Review of Books that provides a great counter to those who proclaim writing off rurl ‘Murka the way Ezra Broder Klein and his co-author and the rest of the MattY “liberals” (at-large and in here) do:
Also too, people who typically want to write off rurl ‘Murka have never lived in rurl ‘Murka. Sure, a lot of the broad stereotypes that get thrown about here in order to proclaim moral superiority over the ‘rubes’ do apply, lord knows I saw it in spades for 22+ years back in Central Misery, but they also ignore the political realities of building a broad enough coalition to enact a *liberal* agenda. Which is basically what Tom L said above in #41.
The entire piece is worth a read:
lareviewofbooks.org/article/abundance-is-not-the-answer/
Another good piece that provides detail and nuance and not poorly-informed stereotypes on this subject:
lpeproject.org/blog/the-political-economy-of-the-urban-rural-divide/
p.a
Why, they’re almost acting as if these medical providers and their buildings, equipment etc were public property. Sadly, no. All of a sudden they’re against property rights and owners’ right to do what they will?🙄
Bupalos
I don’t mean to suggest that. I mean to suggest that I want to throw up when I see the illiberal dehumanization and revenge fantasies that very privileged people engage in because their brains got sick on the internet. They’re lucky they got the early childhood, educational, and health resources invested in them that allowed them to understand enough to be “frustrated.” Though I guess I can turn the argument back on myself and lament that there must have been something missing.
Baud
@Old Man Shadow:
Or those big city socialites with foreign accents who follow their wealthy husbands to live out his dream to be a farmer in Hooterville.
Deputinize America
@Tom Levenson: Kentucky needs to consolidate a number of small population counties (from 120 to 70), but the overdeference to rural constituencies and the extent of the patronage controlled by local school superintendents, county executives, the county clerk, county attorneys and county sheriffs will never allow it.
The drain is going to accelerate as healthcare disappears.
matt
That’s the great thing about facts is that they don’t care if dumb idiots in Nebraska believe them. They’re getting the worse lives they deserve to have.
Baud
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
No one is writing them off. They wrote us off, and now they are paying the price. We are out of political power so we can’t help them. And we can’t help our own supporters because of them.
If we get back into power and someone proposes hurting rural areas out of spite, we can have that debate. That’s not the current situation.
Deputinize America
@Old Man Shadow:
Don’t forget the cupcake store.
Suzanne
@Old Man Shadow: LMAO. The girlbosses are not marrying farmers and plumbers!
One of the interesting social trends has been how, in recent years, the people who are marrying at the highest rate are….. educated people in cities.
XeckyGilchrist
See, it’s like the Republicans have always said – spending on the disadvantaged just makes them dependent on handouts. Tough love.
(I’m joking, ruefully, of course.)
rikyrah
WTFGOP
@doggintrump
I just saw a report on ABC News that the Trump administration is gonna take away subsidies for affordable housing. So what the fuck are they gonna do put everybody out on the street?
Cruelty is the fucking point.
12:37 PM · Jul 20, 2025
x.com/doggintrump/status/1946987834323472592
rikyrah
Senator Chris Van Hollen
@ChrisVanHollen
Trump has fired, bullied, and silenced independent watchdogs across the government. Now many are too afraid to do their jobs.
He doesn’t want to root out waste, fraud, and abuse — he wants to hide it. Shameful.
x.com/ChrisVanHollen/status/1946218626157043928
Bupalos
@u: You’re reacting to a particular phenomenon in time as if it’s some law of nature. Like “so why are all the Jews bankers and lawyers and landlords” in the 1930’s.
The answer is for particular historical reasons that have to do with the way European Christianity needed a kind of arm’s-length relation to economic extraction.
JML
@u: Rural voters were also good Democratic voters for a long time as well. It’s only in the last 30 years that rural voters stopped voting for Democrats; the plains states used to send Democrats to Congress in substantial numbers, and those Senators in particular really took care of them, while also being decent votes on a lot of other good legislation. (Tom Daschle was a great senator!)
the big realignment really shifted starting in the 90’s (it did take a while for them to get everyone out, but lots of them left via retirement over getting voted out) during the rise of Faux News & Rush Limbaugh. It’s literally been an incessant 30 years of propaganda that has infected these areas.
Can there be another political realignment? Will the closing of hospitals and system screwing of the elderly (and Rural America has a LOT of elderly) be enough to start turning the wheel back to people who actually give a sh!t about, well, people?
Opportunities for remote work makes living in rural communities more viable for an array of workers…but why would they want to if everything gets closed up?
Eolirin
@Tom Levenson: Idk. I think targeting the urban areas of those shrinking rural dominated states is still going to be more useful.
Cheyenne and Casper are over 20% of the population of Wyoming just by themselves for instance. Those numbers will keep shifting in favor of their urban centers.
rikyrah
Trump Seeks to Upend Civil Service Protections
July 21, 2025
The Trump administration is formally arguing before a federal oversight body that it has unilateral authority to fire many federal employees at any time, seeking to unwind decades of precedent and current federal law.
Federal workers are typically not considered at-will and current statute requires that agencies provide notice, cause and an opportunity to rebut allegations before a firing can take place.
https://www.govexec.com/management/2025/07/trump-admin-tells-judge-it-can-fire-least-some-career-feds-any-time-any-reason/406797/
Miss Bianca
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: ’tis true. I moved to rural CO from Chicago (and I mean the city of Chicago, not the suburbs) just before the turn of the century. And I’ve been in rural CO ever since.
Democrats have never done well locally – or even regionally, with a few exceptions – during my time here. But at least where I’m living now, I hear tell of people who are staunch Republicans now who *used to be* Democrats – and were even elected to local office as Democrats.
I know it’s easy to blame Obama’s election for these defections in our county, but I would tend to blame Newt Gingrich, that fucker, and his Contract on America, as well as the right-wing filth these people seem to marinate in non-stop – even have a local right-wing rag that helps in no small measure to stir up the hatred and discontent these folks seem to need to live on.
But there’s a lot of other folks here too of more moderate political persuasion who are here because they love the scenery and the rural vibe – and they vote too…just not in sufficient numbers to give us anything but hard right-wingers in local government, currently.
rikyrah
Kyle Cheney
@kyledcheney
JUST IN: Trump’s lawsuit against Murdoch and the WSJ goes to Judge Darrin Gayles, an appointee of Barack Obama.
x.com/kyledcheney/status/1947270645554839581
Old Man Shadow
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Barack Obama tried to make sure they had health care they could afford and Joe Biden invested a majority of his inflation reduction act into red states.
We’re not ignoring them. They just fucking hate us and they probably hate us more intensely because we try to help them.
JustRuss
Still a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest
Lie la-lie….
tobie
I really don’t know what one can do about rural America and I say this as someone who lives in a rural zip code and enjoys the subsidies provided by the metro counties in my state for roads, electricity, and broadband here in the boonies. The problem isn’t a lack of federal and state funding for the region as far as I can tell. It’s the absence of any industry but mechanized farming which doesn’t require a large workforce. I have no clue how this can be fixed. Whenever I mention bringing a rail line or job training here, I’m told it will kill the country lifestyle.
Suzanne
@Baud: No one is writing anyone off. It is simply economically and environmentally unsustainable to maintain a large rural population. Urbanization is worldwide and the settlement pattern of hundreds/thousands of years of human development. With it has come increasing life expectancy, educational attainment, innovation, and economic productivity.
We could get ahead of this so that this transition can be dignified. Or we can sit in denial that it is happening and make it more painful.
Bupalos
“A cult of their own design” is completely incoherent. It’s amazing to me the degree to which people NEED this to be some version of “free will.”
WTFGhost
@JML: This isn’t cult-like behavior. This is surprise, shock, and grief. What’s the first stage? Denial – this can’t be happening!
Give them a month, and if they’re *still* blaming the hospital system, then call it a cult.
@u: They *bought* their suffering; that doesn’t mean they deserve it. They are more deserving than most, but, they are not over the critical threshold of “truly deserving”.
Every Republican who supported the atrocity, whether by voice or vote, deserves to be shunned at every medical center they go to, and deserves to be told “you have to wait until we see you – you have to wait as long as rural Americans have to drive to see a doctor. Then, we’ll give you a snack, and wait until you’ve waited as long as the *return* trip. Then, the doctor will see you, unwilling to treat you as a friendly person, just “symptoms? Okay, treatment = X, pick it up on the way out, or at your local pharmacy. Yes, there’s an oral route, but I picked the suppository, just for you!”
That would be just deserts, I’ll grant you. (Of course, no doctor would truly choose the suppository route when oral works, unless it’s for nausea meds – and not even then, if you say you can swallow! Still, you know, if they saw “supp” formulation, they’d look at it, think “cram it up your…” and then, they’d remember their oath.)
@Eolirin: I’ll say again: shock, and grief, always lead to denial. Even if you’re in the hospital with Covid-19, you can stay stuck in denial because you can still stream Fox, and they’re still telling you the vaccine is extremely risky.
@gene108: I disagree – they’re still in the “but he loves us, just like we love each other!” stage of grief, IMHO. “This was only supposed to trigger the libs!!!”
Now, some will never agree that the *TSAR* of all people ordered this, but some will eventually recognize the Tsar is, in fact, evil, and has been all along.
@trollhattan: I more or less agree – I think they see their choices as occurring during the primary, not the election. Obama tried to hammer on this when he was President – “you can’t go back to your town halls and say I’m a horrible person,” except, Republicans thought, “no n-word’s telling me I can’t dump all over them with lies and hate!”
(Hey, Repubs: prove me *wrong*. Can’t do it, can you? You’re just trying to pretend they’d never say the n-word in public. (mode=Nelson_Muntz) HA HA! (/mode).)
piratedan
when speaking with MAGA, I try to break it down like this…
Curtis is currently in business and employs people and have publicly said that they are dependent on Medicare matching money to stay open
DJT and the GOP have cut those funds courtesy of Big Backstabbing Bill
Curtis says that they will have to close
If they stay open and are not getting paid by the feds, that means that the patients have to step up and pay, yet if they are on Medicare, where does that money come from? Does the hospital simply eat those costs, okay… for how long, forever?
If you have a business model that doesn’t make money, how do you stay open?
So what does Curtis gain by closing?
We’ll wait….
The Thin Black Duke
@Baud: (mic drop)
bluefoot
@JML: This is why we have to keep hammering on reality. Basically taking a leaf out of the Republican playbook: just keep repeating the same message, flood the zone. The advantage is we have reality on our side. In any case, we shouldn’t cede the field to beliefs that are outright wrong. Will reality be ignored by many/most? Sure. But it will get through to some, though perhaps not for a long time. And even if it doesn’t, speaking reality is important.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Miss Bianca:
One sees the rurl/urban political divide really accelerate and emerge in the late 90s/ early 2000s, right when rural areas stopped keeping pace with urban areas economically due to free trade and “New Economy” policies which Dems had a massive hand in enacting.
And funny this, the culture wars picked up at this exact moment.
All helped along by a propaganda apparatus led by Faux “News” that would make Goebbels proud.
And while it’s easy for metro, entitled white professionals with no experience dealing with a rurl population to poop on them regularly and point to them as a problem in elections, another valid take is that it’s not them per se but it’s suburban and exurban white people. For a variety of reasons – infuriating reasons that we have discussed at great length – they do not connect their steady voting for Republicans with actual policy outcomes.
Eolirin
@WTFGhost: I’m not talking about people who were vaccine skeptics. I’m talking about the people who were insisting as they were being intubated that they couldn’t have covid because covid didn’t exist
Of course it’s denial, but a denial of reality that strong cannot be dealt with.
Bupalos
@Suzanne: We need a reverse cultural revolution?
How about this: There are no actual eternal rules about human nature, how society must be optimally organized, or any of the rest of it. It isn’t true that increasing consolidation in cities is optimal or advantageous for humans in all periods of history. Rules keep changing.
Baud
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
I can get behind expanding the groups of white people we blame.
Bupalos
@rikyrah: That’s actually Trump’s best case scenario.
Suzanne
@tobie:
Yeah this. The world economy doesn’t demand a growing rural workforce. It demands international airports and seaports and skilled trades and universities and specialized healthcare facilities.
And as much as some may want to imply that NAFTA did this…. again, this is a worldwide pattern. Africa and South Asia are rapidly urbanizing.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Baud:
Puh leeze. People here regularly will talk out of both sides of their mouth on this issue, one minute saying they are all backward, bigoted rubes who shouldn’t be helped or targeted for engagement and the next minute say oh, we’re not writing anybody off.
I want to tell rural and small town people that it’s a stereotype and that metro Dems, coastal elites, etc., don’t actually see them as backwards bigoted rubes but then I’m reminded people like Dave Roberts exist and I have to stop myself.
Baud
@Suzanne:
I blame Clinton.
Suzanne
@Bupalos:
That isn’t the question. It is inevitable that it will happen. Whether or not it is a net positive or a net negative moving forward is the question. If we want it to be a positive, dignified, sustainable future….. we plan for it now and develop a growth strategy. If we don’t plan for it, it’s slums and disorder and probably collapse of American government.
Omnes Omnibus
@Bupalos: A cineplex worth of projection there, kid.
Old Man Shadow
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I mean, it’s not like rural and red state folks are shy about telling us how much they hate us and wouldn’t mind if someone killed us and how we’re not real Americans.
Nor did I miss the positive glee when Los Angeles was burning or when Donald Trump sent in the military to invade California.
Is it helpful when folks on the receiving end of hate turn around and hate those people back? No. But it’s human and understandable.
jlowe
@Deputinize America: Heh heh. When I’m really feeling the hate, I recall my reading of “Dying of Whiteness” and imagining it as a counterinsurgency manual. I don’t think Dr. Metzl would approve, though.
Anne Laurie
There’s a weird socioeconomic effect… couples think they *can’t* get married until they can afford a giant social-media-worthy wedding. So ‘educated people in cities’, who are more likely to have savings (or parents with savings) are the ones who make their partnership *official*. But, meanwhile, the can’t-afford-the-giant-party couples, intentionally or not, have kids… who suffer disproportionately if their parents decide to split up.
We chose not to have kids, but the people we’ve known since we were all in college are grandparents now, and there’s a real divide in the next generation, between the ones whose kids finished college themselves before starting families, and the ones who… did not wait.
Miss Bianca
@Suzanne:
Except a growing rural workforce – or, at least, a workforce rooted locally that would then sustain a broader local economy – would be possible if, say, we had actual working broadband out here. All those remote-worker types who haven’t been forced back into the office, for example. But despite all the grant funding dangled in front of us by various governmental agencies, state and federal, somehow it’s still not happening.
Lack of political will/competence? Certainly seems to be part of it from where I’m standing.
Omnes Omnibus
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Do you think it is possible that different people are saying different things? Contrary to some people’s beliefs, there are a number of different viewpoints on a lot of things here.
Belafon
@Bupalos: I know college graduates who grew up with everything you’re describing those areas lacking, and they will never learn either.
tobie
Judge Emmet Sullivan speaks again! I haven’t read the 60-page opinion he’s written enjoining the Office of Management and Budget to disclose how they are spending the funds appropriated by Congress. OMB claimed that Congress has no right to tell the Executive how to apportion funds. Joyce Vance has a good thread summarizing Sullivan’s ruling as well as a link to the opinion:
Does anyone know which 3 judges are currently serving on the DC Circuit’s motions panel? Last month it was a Trump trifecta: Rao, Katsas, & Walker. Hope there’s a more balanced panel moving forward.
Eolirin
@Anne Laurie: There’s also a pretty big divergence on economic stability broadly.
If you need benefits, you are strongly discouraged from being married by the way those benefits programs are structured.
Waiting longer to have kids will tend to result in greater economic stability, and having better base earning potential helps a ton for starting a family. Those things all matter a lot.
Bupalos
@Suzanne: No, it isn’t inevitable, and there aren’t any endpoints. There are directions. It’s actually probably not even true that the population is more congregated today than at earlier points in history, and as population grows and radically less location-dependent means of cooperation emerge we don’t know what the future looks like. We don’t know what disease looks like. We don’t know.
But my real reaction here is probably to the way this may play into narratives of a disposable or inconvenient people that just need to get with the times.
Bupalos
@Belafon: Sure. I know virulent MAGATs in NYC. I know UU regenerative farmers working in rural Ohio.
My point is to not give in to dehumanization. If we do it will come for us all.
Suzanne
@Anne Laurie: I think wedding pressure is part of it, but I think the larger reason is that young people are increasingly economically precarious. Much has been said about needing two incomes to support a modern family, and it’s all true. And increasingly, women are the ones earning those college degrees, and they want an equal in earning power.
I’ve shared here before about ex-Mr. Suzanne, who is brilliantly intelligent, never finished college, and could never get his financial life together. He was not supportive of me and my aspirations to get advanced schooling, because he thought it was a waste of money. I met the real Mr. Suzanne in graduate school, and he has told me that he would never have dated anyone without a college degree once he was an adult. Many such cases, probably.
rikyrah
Christopher Webb (@cwebbonline) posted at 6:44 PM on Sat, Jul 19, 2025:
They’re chasing quotas, not criminals!
The former head of Chicago’s immigration court, fired by Trump, is finally speaking out. A new lawsuit accuses the administration of unlawfully targeting documented immigrants who were already showing up to court, just so ICE could hit arrest quotas.
Immigrants are being detained not because they broke the law, but because they were easy to “target.”https://t.co/wDUIBtKlof
(x.com/cwebbonline/status/1946717779236954303?t=6GHxtyTm_T3A5vjGY7-WoQ&s=03)
rikyrah
Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) posted at 6:49 PM on Sat, Jul 19, 2025:
What if boys and men are lonely and disassociated in America because it’s profitable for the right to make sure boys feel/are lonely and disassociated?
(https://x.com/shannonrwatts/status/1946719056268013642?t=6CeCl2gjpJFhMZFC3p4nHQ&s=03)
tsquared2001
@Bupalos: Bro, seek some help. “Rural rats”? “Vermin”?
Suzanne
@Miss Bianca: Agree, but a digital-nomad future is a lot different from agriculture-and-resource extraction economy. Digital nomads will demand stores and schools and services, and pretty soon, that will be…. a city.
Booger
@Deputinize America: Will we see another surge of teary facebook posts of meemaw and peepaw asking for prayers over pics of peepaw in his Oakleys, wearing an American Flag wife beater with a bald iggle on the front, holding up the last largemouth bass he murdered? Cause that was quite the thing back in COVID days…
WTFGhost
@Bupalos: I’ll grant you that. It’s a very carefully designed cult. In fact, the cult said that evil Democrats were all over Epstein.
And now, the cult is freaking the eff out because of Epstein. Tough break, live by the pedophile, die by the pedophile. They knew what the Epstein files had to say, and now, they’re told there’s nothing there, just a mash note that the Tsar never would have written, he doesn’t do sharpie drawings… except on weather maps, I mean. And he doesn’t sign his name… so it looks kinda… not unlike pubes. Okay, this is bullshit, just because his signature is funny! And besides, HE had NO SECRETS! Except… maybe all the women he probably effed while hanging with Epstein, some of whom ight have been underage.
I mean, I do *get* the freakout.
@Suzanne: I’m not convinced a rural population is unsustainable. I think, with the right infrastructure, and the right amount of sacrifice, it could be done, but you’d probably have something like the Post Office delivering groceries and pharmaceuticals, and you’d probably see the smallest towns dry up, with the larger towns (and cities, naturally!) absorbing them.
It’s not possible today, in the current political climate; I’m not convinced it’s impossible.
@rikyrah: They’ll probably let him do it, while they decide whether or not it’s illegal, and then “oopsie! It was unlawful, well, too late, can’t unbake a loaf of bread!”
@Bupalos: I’d heard it said that Jews became bankers because Jesus said not to charge interest, so, there was no money to be made in money lending for Christians. Later, they decided that it was okay to charge interest, but, Jews were already enshrined as everyone’s most hated people, because, when you’re cash-poor, no one likes the moneylender or landlord.
Some folks need to say “they deserve this!” and others need to say “no, they really don’t.”
Tomorrow, I won’t remember who said “they deserve this!” because I’m just trying to speak my piece, not trying to force someone to live by my code.
And I don’t think anyone is going to decide they hate the Grumpy Old Peckerheads any less, because of anything I said, nor do I think they’re going to stop venting. They might notice if I’m around, and decide to tone it down, or pump it up, but that’s their choice – not mine.
Over the long term, yes, it’s a problem to hate the folks who voted for chains and servitude, because we need them to vote for freedom, but I do agree, in the immediate term, people are angry, they will vent, and sometimes, they might even say horrible things like “I hope person_X dies in a fire!” and no, it doesn’t make them *bad people*.
Still, if I see a good person, say a bad thing, I’m probably going to say something, to try to educate. Meh. It’s what I do, when I have the energy. Plus, it makes me feel human to discuss things, and even disagree with people to the point of mild anger.
(Hm? I’m the brain gimp of the crew.)
Bupalos
@tsquared2001: This is supposed to be performative parody. Though one can’t actually amp this stuff up to the point that it doesn’t look like something that might actually happen in this space.
Suzanne
@Bupalos: The UN and the World Bank disagree with you.
Eolirin
@Bupalos:
It is. It was 10% in the 1800s, it’s over 50% now. People were spread out much much more in the past because most of them were farmers and there were few alternatives to that. If population density went up too much, and to many people were doing other work, that population would starve without an adequate amount of farming land and enough people on those farms to support the larger population.
You only had the big cities in Rome or China because they could conquer territory and move agricultural product from the subjugated areas across their empires.
Mechanized farming broke that dynamic. That’s relatively modern, but it’s still well over a hundred years.
rikyrah
Boring_Business (@BoringBiz_) posted at 5:39 PM on Fri, Jul 18, 2025:
Male college grads are now just as likely to be unemployed as people who never went to college
Same is not true for women, who are much more likely to land a job once they graduate college
The data is just eye opening. We are leaving young men behind like never before t.co/JTnEgO1Vls
(https://x.com/BoringBiz_/status/1946339034126533065?t=JNGL2GdB1-AMev57vQ-igQ&s=03)
rikyrah
Amanda Goodall (@thejobchick) posted at 2:57 AM on Sat, Jul 19, 2025:
This should be front-page news.
– 1 in 5 jobs? Fake.
– 22% never meant to be filled.
– 1 in 3 companies admit it.
And yet the blame still hits job seekers.
Ghost jobs are a deliberate strategy.
Why do we never hear this on CNBC?
(https://x.com/thejobchick/status/1946479370291593504?t=rPmd9Z5D0-kMZDOYm3k-RQ&s=03)
Anonymous At Work
What gets me about the article is the disconnect between the voters and the fact that their local clinic is NONPROFIT. Yes, a non-profit can use profits to pay better salaries but there aren’t shareholders or distant persons demanding more profits or else. The company was losing money and going bankrupt, so it closed. What’s nefarious there?
Suzanne
@WTFGhost: The rural population will never be zero. There will always be some percentage of people living out there. But the vast majority of the growth will be in cities/metros for the foreseeable future.
Bupalos
This is related to the actual history. The newly Christian nobles of course were not going to give up usury or any of the other economic venalities that their power depended on just because they had to become Christian. So they employed Jews as arms-length mercenaries in economic extraction and peddling of vice.
Interestingly, one of the mercenaried vices that did not make it out of the Middle Ages was Jews as tavern owners. But in much of Europe, the person most likely to be handing you your cup of liver disease would be disproportionately likely to be Jewish. Christians nobles wouldn’t do that. They’d just pocket the money behind the scenes.
Bupalos
@Suzanne: Bad time to be in the prediction business.
rikyrah
OMG
RIP
Malcolm-Jamal Warner, Who Played Son Theo on The Cosby Show, Dies at 54 After Drowning on Family Trip
The actor died while on a family trip, a source confirms to PEOPLE
By Julia Moore Updated on July 21, 2025 01:34PM EDT
Malcolm-Jamal Warner has died. He was 54. The actor was in Costa Rica on a family vacation and drowned while swimming, a source confirms to PEOPLE. A rep for Warner did not immediately respond to a request for comment
https://people.com/malcolm-jamal-warner-cosby-show-dead-54-11775980
Bupalos
@Eolirin: History started in the 1800’s??
Seriously, we’re talking about civilizational direction. I think we all know Industrial Revolution patterns and the way more recent technology emptied out the countryside. I’m just arguing against this as a universal law instead of historical contingency.
Shalimar
@Melancholy Jaques: It’s funny. Something like 20% of rural residents are on disability. Some of that is people moving back to rural areas because they’re cheaper. My grandparents did this after they retired. But we’re still talking about a lot of white people living large off of government benefits.
Suzanne
@Bupalos: Their projections have largely held up thus far. And FYI, the U.S. is far more urbanized than 50%.
JiveTurkin
I feel bad for the children in Curtis (under 18 when the last election occurred) and the few adults who voted for Harris. The rest got what they voted for. A rapist filled with hate and desire for revenge who has the mind and attention span of a six-year-old. The people in Curtis who voted for Trump deserve everything they get.
JustRuss
@Suzanne:
This. I’m skeptical about rural broadband solving everything. For one, running it to low-density areas is expensive. And most people want the conveniences and amenities cities offer. People didn’t move to coal country because they wanted to live there, it was because that’s where the jobs were. And if your job can be anywhere, most folks won’t choose the hinterlands.
Anecdata: I know a retired couple that live on a beautiful property near Hood River, OR. They’re selling it, because it’s too far from everything.
rikyrah
Cabot…as in..
The Cabots only talk to the Lodges, who only talk to God…CABOT.
THEM.
The allegedly jilted husband touts his family lineage as the sixth-generation owner of the longstanding rum brand, founded by the “original” Andrew Cabot.
The Cabot fortune has spanned generations, and was estimated at $200 million in a 1972 New York Times profile of the family. That’s $15.4 billion in 2025.
[…]
The Cabot family is one of the original “Boston Brahmin” clans that controlled New England for centuries — a club so old, WASPy and distinguished that the Irish-Catholic Kennedys are left out in the cold.
The family made its fortune in soot, known colloquially in industry circles as “carbon black,” a key ingredient in car tires, and dates back to New England for 10 generations.
nypost.com/2025/07/20/us-news/kristin-cabot-coldplay-cheating-scandal-exec-married-into-bostons-weal…
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Bupalos: Rural America has agency and they have a big say in the Republican party. And the Republican party moving to a rural party makes sense because Rural verses Urban is a big divide policy wise. Maybe the Democrats should stopping giving a shit about rural America simply to force to the Republicans to represent them, instead of this constant Republicans are opposed to anything the Democrats are for.
rikyrah
Christopher Webb (@cwebbonline) posted at 0:58 PM on Sat, Jul 19, 2025:
The official CBP account is now just a troll account. They publicly mocked a detained migrant for wearing an American flag shirt.
Reminder: Tom Homan told agents to hit 7,000 arrests per day. That’s more than double current numbers. t.co/AqFchh4w87
(https://x.com/cwebbonline/status/1946630627975188718?t=xX1bqR5RKodY7QkaaF-KCA&s=03)
trollhattan
@Bupalos: Coincident with invention of the vowel.
Steve Paradis
FAFO: 86% red.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontier_County,_Nebraska#Politics
Soprano2
@Jerry: I think we should argue that if there are going to be work reporting requirements, they should be simple. A picture of your latest pay slip uploaded to a Web site with your basic information should be sufficient, rather than pages and pages of crap that has to be filled out every six months. I think saying there should be no work requirements has become a losing argument, because the vast majority of people think this is reasonable. I think their logic goes something like this – “If so many people on Medicaid are already working, then it should be easy for them to continue qualifying”. Most of them don’t understand that they make the paperwork so onerous that people give up. We should say that it should be easy, and I think the majority of people would agree with that.
Eolirin
@Bupalos: Prior to the 1800s agriculture was a hard limiter on population density.
It could not have, at any point, been higher than it is now, unless you want to make absurd comparisons against very tiny populations
I was responding specifically to that claim that it may have been more than it is now in the past. That is false. It has never been close to this, and moreover could not have been. Everyone would have died.
I don’t particularly care about the rest of the discussion you’ve been having which is why I didn’t address any of it.
Chetan Murthy
@Deputinize America: Oh hell, why stop there? Rural mail delivery! Ha!
robtrim
@u: I visit southern Indiana frequently. Same story there. There are a few (1 or 2) rural hospitals. When they are out of business there is nowhere even close. They can drive a hour to Louisville to an emergency room. As for any kind of care for poor people – those without insurance – the Dollar Store has band aids and first aid kits.
rikyrah
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
I don’t know anyone, before now, who was really serious about rural areas were to be abandoned.
But, now?
Yeah, they should phucking be abandoned.
WE PAY FOR THEIR LIVES.
WE, IN THE CITIES, SUBSIDIZE THEIR LIVES.
ALL we ask for, was to be left the phuck alone.
And, they couldn’t even do that.
So, when I tell you that I don’t care what they lose. What services go away for them…I mean that.
u
@JML: Yes, the shift to the right did roughly coincide with the rise of Rush Limbaugh and Fox News (and their clones). But that can’t be the root cause. As far as I know, nobody was ever forced at gunpoint to listen to and watch that fascist propaganda. The real shift I think was the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act sixty years ago. A lot of white people are still freaking out about that. Right-wing media was successful because they told their listeners and viewers what they already wanted to hear and see. Ultimately those people had a choice, and they chose racism, misogyny and fascism. They made their fucking choice. (And, no. I did not grow up in great privilege. Blue-collar union father, small dilapidated house, run-down used car, highly mediocre public schools. My big advantage was having parents with no college education who valued reading and thinking. There was a small local library and we used it.). My father died before the advent of Fox News, but he would have despised it.
Eolirin
@Soprano2: We could try making the argument that work requirements are a tax that everyone has to pay for.
They don’t catch very many people and they cost a whole lot of money to implement. This is particularly sneaky when the cost burden of doing these checks falls on the states and not the federal government. Every dollar spent on administrative costs to do employment checks is a dollar being taken away from reimbursement for services.
If the federal government wants to pay for the work requirements, it’d be one thing. But this is going to further degrade care because state budgets don’t work like federal budgets. They’re all zero sum.
trollhattan
FAA would like you to know they have their best men on this. Top men, all.
In conclusion: B-52s are fucking huge.
Chetan Murthy
Uh, wut? Why are these legitimate? Did anybody care about the armies of bank tellers, call center operators, factory workers of all kinds, and on and on, whose jobs were rendered obsolete by automation and trade liberalization? Hell, let’s go back to Ned Ludd: was the Luddites’ desire to keep their way of life and jobs legitimate?
Here’s a deal I’ll make for those people: they can keep their 20th-century way of life, their 1980s way of life, if they’re willing to live with 1980s cars, medical care, comms, etc, etc, etc. Oh, want your cancer cure? Too bad. Want an iphone? Too bad.
What these people want, is to have their cake and eat it too. And that ship sailed around the time the first Datsun B210s and Toyota Celicas rolled off the ship.
Suzanne
@JustRuss: Most of all, people want to make money. Unless you are literally a landowner, it is very difficult to do that in rural areas.
Which is why people leave.
prostratedragon
@rikyrah: Just saw this. Awful.
trollhattan
Germans quipping about war has never led to anything, so let’s just move along.
Chetan Murthy
@rikyrah: Oof. I didn’t keep up with him, but in grad school, we watched that show religiously. [OK, we didn’t know Cosby was such a …… rapist] Theo was great. Rest in peace.
E.
@Chetan Murthy: What? Do people who choose to live away from cities harm you in some way? I lived for some years in a town of 1000 people. Even served a term as mayor while running the bakery. It was a nice life. I don’t think I was hurting anyone or deserved to have 1980s level care or should have to drive a 1980s car just for choosing to live there.
Eolirin
@Eolirin: Though obviously you don’t campaign on doing away with them, you just quietly make it so states can decide how to spend their money on work requirements specifically, and then put in a provision that prevents them from doing anything that would reduce enrollment rates beyond a reasonable baseline.
Of course none of this stuff is necessary if we end up with a proper universal insurance system, no matter what shape it takes. If the policy goal is complete coverage work requirements don’t even make sense.
Chief Oshkosh
@Suzanne: As you note, the emptying of rural areas is going on in many places worldwide. Italy is a clear example, where they seem to be having trouble giving away houses and (some) land. Nextdoor neighbor France seems to have dealt with this better. I’ve read that they have more effective policies for maintaining rural “lifestyles,” but I’m no expert. Do you have any thoughts or experience on the differentials in policy and in possible outcomes? Maybe we can learn from both.
Chetan Murthy
(1) these are the people who vote for “The Market Uber Alles” for me, but not for themselves. They vote to impoverish cities and transfer that money to themselves.
(2) these are the people who vote for Fascism.
So yes, they vote to harm me and mine.
My point about 1980s-level life, is that if you don’t want the -harms- of technological progress, you cannot ask for the -gains- of that progress. They come together. Or as I used to (want to) say to my classmates back in the 1980s: “you don’t want furriners comin’ here, you’ll have to stop drivin’ Toyotas”.
Belafon
@WTFGhost: The right infrastructure could save a lot of these towns. I know a lot of people that live in the DFW area that would rather live in a small town, and would if companies had more incentives to let people work remotely or if public transit extended out that direction. Companies don’t want to do the first because it would require them to change, and rural areas don’t want to do the second because “They’re going to take my car” and “It’ll just bring crime from the cities.”
Bupalos
@Eolirin: This is true. I should have made a better claim and more germane to the argument so as not to bait you in on a technical correction in an argument that doesn’t interest you.
I’ll correct it to this: over particular stretches of time longer than the entire existence of the United States, regional populations and probably the entire world population has moved away from urbanization. Though obviously it’s been much more common at any given point to be moving towards it.
This just to establish that we don’t actually know what the world is likely to look like in the age of global warming and full IT saturation.
Kathleen
@rikyrah: That’s impossible! Everyone knows Democrats haven’t done anything for working (white) people! ss//
Chetan Murthy
There -is- a way of maintaining a rural population: it is to subsidize them to produce agricultural products the old way — that is, less automation, less monoculture. It seems like that’s what Europe does, and it produces all sorts of regional foods — really good stuff — but for that to work, rural people will have to give up on their neofeudalism and accept a level of government intrusion (to maintain food quality standards, pollution standards, etc) that they’re never going to accept.
Suzanne
@Chief Oshkosh: I have read about some of the things France does from a policy perspective, but I’m certainly no expert on that. I’ve read that it’s largely about preserving cultural heritage around things like cheese-making (blessed are the cheesemakers, I guess). Definitely an interesting thing to study.
But according to a quick Google search, 82% of the French population lives in cities. That might be even a smidge higher than the percentage of the U.S. population that lives in cities.
kindness
So….rural red America doesn’t believe these medical groups are/will close their hospitals because they are losing money. Those people are in a cult. Verses our side who doesn’t believe Paramount is shutting down The Late Show with Stephen Colbert because it is losing money. Are we a cult? No, we are accountants looking over balance statements and there is no way in hell the top late night television show is losing money. That is called bullshit, not actual accounting.
Eolirin
@E.: They do, actually.
I think it’s not in a way that’s worth depriving them off support, but the money that gets funneled from taxes in more populated areas to less populated areas is being taken away from investments in those communities. When you do the comparison at scale, it’s a huge amount of money being pulled from overwhelmingly blue areas to prop up failing infrastructure and compensate for the loss of jobs in redder areas.
That could be going into blue area infrastructure instead. We’d have nicer cities with better schools if the money was being used locally.
I’m not a fan of atomizing where money should be spent like this. I think wherever there’s a need there should be help. But it’s worth noting that this is exactly the mentality behind Republicans aversion to taxation and the racist dog whistles against social programs; money should stay with the community or individuals earning it.
WTFGhost
@Bupalos: Ah, thanks for the additional info – that helps clarify things a lot more.
@Bupalos: True that. I once tried to write an insanely angry screed toward a friend of mine who was a web comic artist about his comic being 6 hours late, and he very cautiously said “Uh, ‘Ghost, you haven’t gone crazy have you?” No, I was just trying to be so over the top, that he’d realize it was all in good fun, and wow… a *web comic* being *late*, and you can no longer parody the anger.
@u: I think you’re wrong about the right wing propaganda. People had long assumed that broadcasting hate wouldn’t be popular, but it was. People like to get angry at nasty people, and, come to believe the people were were joking about are horrible people. After all – people like Rush keep saying that they do all these horrible things, that they hate America, that they’re really terrible people who want to destroy America.
Now, me, I have to admit, I saw this TV show, Evil, and it included one episode where a woman is trying to get revenge on a comic who joked that Tutsis were all cockroaches, that deserved to be squashed. Did that happen? Would that really work? Well… I think it *did* work, well enough.
I’m probably ignorant of the history and so forth, but, that is one reason why I’m unwilling to discount constant hate being broadcast, as an enraging factor.
Chief Oshkosh
@Chetan Murthy: Your “deal” is kind of a dick statement, but hey, this Balloon Juice, after all. I think that these are legitimate ambitions, but that they come with various costs. These costs vary with circumstance, but they certainly need not be socialized. And there’s the rub. So far, they have very much been socialized. The decision to socialize them was made almost 100 years ago and was based on realities back then. Much has changed. Some people can afford to live in rural areas because they are rich enough to assume all costs that they can’t force from local and federal socializing sources (and they do force a lot of socialization of their lifestyles). As for the rest of us, well, we probably can’t afford it.
A fulsome, honest discussion to reconsider all of the players and factors is needed. Too many monied interests don’t want that to happen, so it hasn’t and probably won’t for some time.
ETtheLibrarian
I get why they don’t believe it. However. They would have kept going if they thought money would still be coming in to pay for what was done, but that won’t happen so they are cutting their losses now instead of incurring even more debt. Its called capitalism.
Suzanne
@Bupalos:
We have every reason to project, based on some of the best social science in the world, that urbanization will continue for the foreseeable future.
If we’re going to be all NUH UH, NO ONE KNOWS WHAT’S GONNA HAPPEN, MAN about it, we can be. But if we accept that argument, and turn away from the social scientific consensus, then let’s lean in. Maybe climate change will stop and reverse itself. Maybe the Rapture will happen tomorrow. I bet there’s a Mayan calendar conspiracy. Who knows?! Anything is possible!
I’m going to live in data-land, if you don’t mind.
Chetan Murthy
I’ve read that it’s also about preserving rural landscapes (which can be very touristic) but that means that farmers end up as caretakers of the landscape, and can’t do things like set up CAFOs and pollute like all-get-out. Which, it seems, is becoming a real flash point in Europe these days (of course in the UK too: they’ve thoroughly (literally) enshittified their rivers).
The problem with these policies is that they require rural folk to actually accept the modern world and the modern world’s assessments of the state of nature and humanity’s impact on it. Whereas, what these American rural folk want, is for things to go back to when basically you could do anything you wanted on your land, and nobody could tell you different.[1] I mean, even back during Adam Smith’s time, the oh-so-rugged-and-invidualistic fur trapper in oh-so-remote Canada depended for his sustenance on the market for furs for the decadent ladies of Paris.
[1] Heh, you could say that that’s some of what Brexit was about: I remember all the howls when Brexiter farmers in the UK realized that they couldn’t sell their products to Europe b/c the UK refused to ensure compliance with EU phtosanitary and sanitary regulations. Suuuuch wailing.
E.
@Chetan Murthy: So you want all people who live in rural areas to suffer, regardless their voting history, and you want the savings to accrue to the people in urban areas, regardless their voting history, and you proclaim this is your desire because, generally speaking, rural voters elect people you don’t like. Ok.
Chetan Murthy
@E.: No, what I -want- is for rural dwellers to stop making war on me and mine.
Bupalos
@rikyrah: This is compellingly put. I’d slightly redirect in that the dude who ducks off the jumbotron at the Coldplay concert is one of the poster-children for how WE IN THE CITIES SUBSIDIZE etc.
His software that he’s a salesman for is just proprietary capture of open-source software, accomplished with Bain Capital money. He makes a couple million a year so pays a bunch of tax, and that money buys the medicaid for the guy in the window-tint factory in ButtFuck Oklahoma, while the proprietary software captures a chunk of profit from that window-tint factory that maybe could have stayed there and kept him off of Medicaid.
I mean, I’m not claiming this exact tick-tock, but I do get a little leery of the way the left is going to this unthoughtful depiction of productivity and dependence when a lot of that flows through financialization, foreign trade, and frankly totally bullshit corporate capture that happens to be definitionally urban. The money from the corn crops end up in the cities. People should be a little careful or at least more open-minded about how they talk about that.
Chief Oshkosh
@Suzanne: Eh, I’d have to see the breakdown on that 82% (I’m not saying you need to provide it!). Watching the Tour de France, I was surprised that what is called a “city” would be considered a town in the US. The numbers are all pretty gray to me; I’m not even an armchair expert on this topic.
Suzanne
@Chief Oshkosh: Agree. I am not going to make a judgment on whether or not their aspirations are “legitimate”, whatever that means. But, like, why would we try to economically prop up their lifestyles? They can give it a try and see what happens.
Miss Bianca
@Chetan Murthy:
@Suzanne:
You know, I hope I only have to say this once:
I get mighty tired of people who *don’t live in rural areas* sounding off about what the people who *do* live in them should or shouldn’t need or want. I understand the temptation, but Jesus God, enough. We are NOT all the same. We do NOT all vote the same. Some of us are actually trying to work on making a better part of the world where we live. And some of us are managing it despite the lack of loads o’ money to be made or any other reason you can throw at us that Urban Living is the only way to go.
ETA: And no, despite my own level of peeing and moaning about my neighbors, I don’t think they all deserve to fuck off and die because of their shitty belief systems or voting patterns.
Belafon
@E.: I figured we’d get to a “You want everyone to suffer?” at some point. No. Literally the arguments are that rural people shouldn’t suffer, but so many make their choices based on not mutually exclusive ideas:
We will not fix things until all of that gets fixed.
Betty Cracker
@Chetan Murthy: And fuck all the people who live in those areas who DON’T vote or think or behave in the way you insist they all do, amirite? Jesus, you sound like my right-wing uncle, who knows jack and shit about living in a city in 2025 and yet will confidently explain to a person who DOES live in a city why she shouldn’t believe her lying eyes.
p.a.
As a retired employee of a Baby Bell, ATT, the RBOCS etc paid into a trust fund to build & maintain rural telephony, because actually charging them the value of build/maintain would have been $$$. The same with rural electrification, which I think was more of a direct USG money infusion to elec cos. Same for roads. RFD postal didn’t happen until the 1920s, pushed through by Sen Tom Watson (D-GA), one of the worst racist demagogues of the time, which is saying hella lot.
Without these programs, I don’t know what rural society would look like, but it wouldn’t be good.
ETA: frackin’ TVA ferchrissakes!
Suzanne
@Chief Oshkosh: Yeah, I don’t know the details, either. Just saying that France is not primarily rural. They’re preserving their niches but most of their population lives the way the majority of the world does.
SiubhanDuinne
@rikyrah:
Just saw that. What truly sad news. Theo was my favorite character on The Cosby Show, and MJW was a terrific young actor. May he R.I.P.
Bupalos
@Suzanne: I think you probably aren’t being very particular with your data or projections here. What is the current urbanization level in the United States, what are you offering as the projection over what period of time? How confident is this projection, what are the variables that might affect it, and what policies are dictated by this projection?
Near as I can tell this exists at the level of “urbanization is what has always happened and what will continue to happen and thus… fuck the rurals, there is nothing to be done.” I hear “that place is not going to exist, don’t waste your time.” I think that’s wrong.
The United States has gone through a massive urbanization, such that urbanization even if it is to continue (likely) is not possibly going to continue at historical rates and not particularly likely to continue at very socially significant rates. And I don’t know that things like global warming and IT saturation and spiraling inequality, the fundamental forces of our time, dictate towards urbanization. Maybe they do, maybe not. It’s worth thinking.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@E.:
@Miss Bianca:
+1.
So much of what’s written comes down to an effort to feel morally superior to the red, rurl rubes or anybody else who doesn’t subscribe to a Democratic Party that’s based on urban, cosmopolitan business neoliberalism (aka the so-called ‘abundance agenda) and then simply write off any push back as all about racism and sexism.
The messaging is not unlike what’s expressed from the right: what we’re seeing are flip sides of the same coin.
Suzanne
@Belafon: It’s legitimately about not wanting anyone to suffer. For me, it is entirely about looking at what the future is likely to bring and how to anticipate it and build social infrastructure to support it, rather than to be reactionary.
I don’t know what to do about people turning down the resources that they need to maintain their lifestyle because a Black lady who went to college was the one offering them. Anyone got any ideas?
Bupalos
@rikyrah: Oh no. He was really incredibly good in the Sneaky Pete series, he really had a presence where I thought he was going to have a nice rebirth.
Chetan Murthy
Well that’s great for me, b/c I grew up in East Incest (aka Weatherford) TX, and I remember those motherfuckers well. I’m with Ripley: “best to take off and nuke the site from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure”.
u
@Chetan Murthy: Actually, they don’t want a 1980’s life. They want a 1950’s (or even 1850’s) life — before those negroes and women had rights. But they want that with modern conveniences for themselves.
Suzanne
@Bupalos: Okay. According to the University of Michigan:
ETA: I mean, I see that within just a couple of presidential administrations, almost 90% of the U.S. population is going to live in cities, and I think that maybe that’s where we should devote most of our resources.
Chetan Murthy
Betty, it’s one of the problems with living in a democracy: you get what your neighbors voted for. And I will remind you that these fuckers don’t think I’m an American. Oh, I get to pay all the same taxes, but hey, what’s a little Reich Flight Tax among friends amirite?
artem1s
Aaaand POP goes the housing bubble. All those absentee landlords are going to abandon thousands of rental properties in low rent areas if they don’t get that automatic section 8 check from the government. Cleveland got stuck with about 10K vacant properties to deal with after Bush’s Great Depression.
Citizen Alan
@Old Man Shadow: i i think the Hallmark Channel is the most pernicious and Orwellian propaganda outlet the world has ever seen. An entire channel running 24/7 that is dedicated to pushing the idea–with glossy video, beautiful actors, and soaring music– that successful and independent women can only achieve true happiness if they surrender all the things that make them successful and independent.
Bupalos
@Chetan Murthy: I was about to warn her that you had a history. Honestly, I know West Texas. I don’t really have much to say about your over-the-top stuff, like it being too dangerous to bike in the finger lakes because of MAGAT’s murdering dark people… beyond noting it’s not true. I completely accept that it’s a personally reasonable or hard-earned kind of belief.
Suzanne
@Citizen Alan: I have never seen a Hallmark movie and I’m doing my best to keep it that way.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Referencing the original “If only the Czar knew”, great reference that I’m guessing most people don’t get.
A wonderful piece on that statement and it’s historical context:
thecollector.com/letter-writing-to-tsar-russian-tradition/
trollhattan
Want to live in the sticks? You can sell your city house and pay cash in the country. Granted, you might have a “Now what?” moment your first morning following the move in, but hey, go hunt and gather!
California median house price June 2025: $899,560.
Do not be deterred, wannabe Californians, It’s bargain time.
Lassen County — Median sold price of existing single-family homes was $286,500 [includes one of the least visited national parks, presuming Trump hasn’t sold it.]
Lake County — $301,380
Trinity County — $311,000
Siskiyou County — $315,000
Plumas County — $328,750
Kings County — $365,000
Tehama County — $380,700
Shasta County — $382,500
Glenn County — $385,000
Tulare County — $389,000
Betty Cracker
@Chetan Murthy: You and Uncle Tater with the Confederate flag have this in common: you both paint with a broad brush that slimes everyone in a geographic area, regardless of their individual behavior, thoughts and voting habits. It’s wrong.
Omnes Omnibus
It seems like people’s positions maybe hardening into things they don’t really mean. Those of you in rural areas obviously must understand the frustration that people feel at the large numbers of your neighbors who are putting everyone well being at risk by voting for the GOP when the only party that has done anything to make their lives better in living memory is the Democrats. And non-rural people, you know that 35-45% of those people you are venting about casting into the void at are actively opposed to GOP policies. Let’s all take a couple of deep breaths here.
Deputinize America
I live in an exurban area and commute to the city center. My neighbors all commute, too.
They all believe themselves to be rugged individualist bootstrappers.
It has occurred to me that we did a great deal of damage by having a policy of consuming the previous agricultural collars of cities with exurbs and medium density development. We lengthened commute times, made produce more expensive, and made living worse. Instead of a well-tended network of parks for green space, we subject people to expense of maintaining yards and gardens they can’t really afford for lifestyles they don’t really enjoy.
u
@Chetan Murthy: One of the foundational flaws in the United States (in addition to those “minor” problems like slavery and Jim Crow segregation, and the genocide of the indigenous people) is the fundamentally anti-democratic nature of the Electoral College and the US Senate. These are baked into the Constitution and they will never be changed. These give rural states an influence way out of proportion to the size of their populations.
Eolirin
You know, to the broader conversation, the question of subsidization is complex and a lot broader than just rural urban divide, especially in the light of climate change.
At what point is it unreasonable to continue to support housing expansion in Arizona when there’s not enough water? Is any of Florida going to be insurable and if it’s not what do we do about it? Do we need to start promoting mass migration?
The difficulties with rural regions will be easy in comparison to trying to figure out how to save Miami and Tampa or what to do when Phoenix starts hitting 115 degrees for the whole summer.
Belafon
@Suzanne: When I moved to the town I live in in 2001, it was close enough to DFW that people who loved there could get to Dallas for jobs – meaning there was more money than a town would have normally had for a town its size – and far enough away that they didn’t think they had to plan for anything. But then the Metroplex just kept expanding and expanding, and now, rather than being the smallish town that it was before, it’s now a fairly decent sized city (~50K, which would be large in some states but not here). But they didn’t plan, so it’s spent the last 10 years reacting and many of the major roads are under construction right now, and schools are being built everywhere.
Deputinize America
@Suzanne:
You’ve missed out. Mindless fluff, white picket fences, charming towns, precocious lovable children, warmth….
Its enough to make you want to puke.
Belafon
@Chetan Murthy: I grew up in Abilene.
Suzanne
@Eolirin:
Um, now. Yesterday. Fifteen years ago. Honestly, this was a factor in me moving away. Just in my years there, it has gotten hotter and drier. The land is literally sinking because there is no water.
Suburban-density sprawl is environmentally unsustainable. Even if people like it. We have to live within our environmental resources.
trollhattan
@Deputinize America:
The leapfrog development pattern of ever more distant exurbs has bitten so many places in the ass. Here, they’re still rezoning for more of same while frantically trying to “fix” freeway corridors that can never accommodate the current commute traffic, much less the future load.
Meanwhile, at least our downtown is overbuilt in office space, the inner burbs have been abandoned to farther out burbs, yet the city core is very short on housing and despite infill housing, there’s not nearly enough planned to meet the need.
The ’50s called and are laughing openly at 2025 us.
I do not have a fix.
Bupalos
@Suzanne: That’s a pretty marginal difference from now, over 25 years. And I’ll note that at the end there it projects a slight turn back. As for where “most” of our resources are going to go, if we mean federal expenditure, the overwhelming majority will continue to be service on the debt, defense, and medicaid and medicare and social security, none of which are really particularly “urban/rural” divides. If we mean other levels of government, the resources tend to stay where they come from which is good news for the already better off.
I reacted to the initial argument as a kind of “let them rot, people shouldn’t really be there and won’t be there long” kind of thing. And maybe that’s not your intent. But I don’t think broad historical forces are going to deliver a final solution to the problem of the rurals.
These current percentages (83% urban) might make people think about some assumptions and stereotypes about MAGA.
u
@Deputinize America: Those are basically the changes that took place in the 25 years after the end of World War Two — the period of when Baby Boomers were kids. The changes seem to have been a combination of what people actually wanted and what developers and automobile manufacturers could make money with. My state (New Jersey) sill calls itself the “Garden State”, but the small farms that gave rise to that slogan were paved over decades ago.
trollhattan
@Eolirin:
Somebody could perhaps notice all the damn alfalfa they’re growing using CAP water. Crazy talk, right?
Suzanne
@Deputinize America: Yeah, that sounds terrible. I like spy novels.
Belafon
@Suzanne: Because Rockwall is getting crowded, people are moving to areas nearby. Two of them, McClendon-Chisolm and Heath, didn’t realize they had to do any planning, so both areas are under water restrictions right now.
Eolirin
@Suzanne: Sure, but more density doesn’t help in the case of Arizona, and won’t help with building in heavy storm or wildfire areas. We’ve got a lot of problems to sort through.
Bupalos
You’re starting with an F- here. Tell me you have an EV and solar
D+ now, if you really talk to ALL of your neighbors
B+ now.
Suzanne
@Bupalos: I said before that there will always be a rural population. But it is already proving to be unsustainable to provide certain services in those locations. So the question remains: what do we do about that? I have no answer beyond voting for Democrats, and in the meantime, what will happen is that these kinds of professional services will concentrate in cities.
As for whether or not urbanites look down on people in rural areas, whatever, who cares? And vice versa, I will add…. Some of my ancestors were called “rootless cosmopolitans” and I hear echoes today.
Eolirin
@trollhattan: Yeah, that’d be great, but let’s be honest, that just ups the population cap. It’s still a desert with a lot of people trying to live in it. There’s gonna be strain on maintaining the infrastructure unless population growth stops.
Citizen Alan
@Eolirin: And then their own family members went on facebook with insane conspiracy theories about how the hospital murdered their loved one as part of the covid hoax.
Suzanne
@Eolirin: Managed retreat is definitely in our near-future. I get that “the suburbs are better!” NIMBY crowd will push back, but I agree with you.
Kathleen
@rikyrah: Oh no! May he Rest In Peace. He was a wonderful actor. Great comic timing.
Gretchen
They sound like domestic abuse victims: « He loves me! He never meant to hurt me! I just have to try harder! ». So how do we get the victims to finally leave the abuser?
jonas
@Old Man Shadow: I remember back in 2010-12 listening to a woman (iirc) down in North Carolina or somewhere being interviewed by NPR talking about how she’d rather go without any health insurance or health care than sign up for Obamacare. And she had like type-2 diabetes, copd and a bunch of other stuff that was going to kill her if she didn’t see a doctor regularly. She literally prefered to die rather than take advantage of a “Demoncrat” health program. Same with the people who are now watching their kids die of measles. Better a dead kid than a live one who got a vaccine.
You just can’t even with these people.
As several people have pointed out, this level of complete, life-hating sociopathy and cognitive dissonance was not a thing before the advent of Fox News. Destroying the Murdoch media empire and sowing its fields with salt would be a huge benefit to the world.
Bupalos
My santimoniousness reminds me to remind folks here:
The 4,000 used EV credit will disappear in September. Chevy is clearly pushing out all the 2017-2022 Bolts that they bought back for the battery recall out to lots right now to get em sold before that disappears. 17-19’s will ALL have new upgraded batteries and most of them were not driven for 2-3 years. Great car. Best deal in the history of anything. Do good, feel good, save money! Probably a free car when you factor in what you’ll save over its lifetime.
Eolirin
@Suzanne: We are not culturally, economically, politically, or logistically prepared for the size of the population migrations we’re likely to face inside the country over the next 30-50 years.
It’s going to be a fucking shit show.
Captain C
@Citizen Alan:
I don’t remember the exact phrasing, but a few years ago there was a tweet (pre-Lone Skum) that went something like: “Every Hallmark Channel movie small town movie ever: He works part time on the Christmas Tree farm. She’s owns a small bookstore. Every Christmas, the villagers gather together on the snow-kissed town square. What’s meth?”
@Suzanne:
Understandable. Strangely enough, I have a friend who’s worked on several. My attitude towards that is like my attitude towards musicians playing music I find crappy, to wit: “I ain’t listening to that, but I’m very glad you’re earning a living from it.”
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: ANY excuse to bash the people who rightly point out that bureaucratic overreach makes it so we get nothing done before the GOP sweeps in and kills the painfully slow effort. One of the reasons rural voters favor the GOP is because they don’t make most people go through onerous processes to do every little thing, from opening a business to adding on to your home to whatever. The only place they layer on the red tape is for social welfare programs. They brag about living in spaces where that red tape doesn’t apply and make fun of us for creating it. The only place they layer on the red tape is for social welfare programs.
Geminid
Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa appeared on Fox News a few daydago, and he didn’t sound like he’s dropping out of the New York mayoral race anytime soon. Sliwa:
Baud
@Geminid:
Why would he drop out?
TEL
@u: My understanding is a lot of this hate grew and solidified due to talk radio. In the 90’s there wasn’t a lot else available, and a lot of these folks marinated in it. Remember, Rush was primarily a talk radio star, not a TV star.
suzanne
@Eolirin:
Agree. I am not optimistic, either. I don’t think our politics will withstand it.
Ramona
@Bupalos: Trump’s best case scenario would have been not to have raped and never to have run for office.
Belafon
@Bupalos: If I could only afford a down payment and car payment.
Ramona
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I’m just talking about this town of 800 in Nebrasaka and certainly not about the 100 who voted for Harris. Let’s see what other inhabitants say when their hospital closes down.
They Call Me Noni
@u: I have several times now railed against the EC on this site.
IT CAN BE CHANGED!!
We sent men to the fucking moon surely to whoever resides in the cloudosphere we can make a change/amendment to a piece of damn paper.
Sure Lurkalot
In re the topic of rural health clinics and the effect of the Republican Medicaid cuts, I’m just finishing up Bad Company, an expose of private equity written by Megan Greenwell. It follows 4 people whose jobs/careers/lives have been upended by the capture of 4 sectors (retail, health care, journalism and real estate) by private equity.
Rural health care clinics and hospitals were already under assault by market forces of dwindling populations and resources and many turned over the reins to financial companies who knew little about the core business but a lot about how to load up debt, extract fees off the top and drive companies into the ground.
So yes, the people in rural areas are not totally incorrect to not blame (just) the Republicans’ Medicaid cuts. The commodification and enshittification of a lot of goods and services we need and/or enjoy has been brought to us by our B-school geniuses.
Ramona
@rikyrah: I loved him in his adult acting roles! Especially Sneaky Pete where he played this canny, no-nonsense above bribes parole officer.
This is so sad. I feel so bad for his family!
Ramona
@Eolirin: Huzzah!
Shalimar
@Omnes Omnibus: In rural Alabama, Florida, and Mississippi, which is what I am familiar with, it is not 35-45% actively opposed to the GOP. Republicans win those counties 80-20 and I suspect most of the 20% are black. White rural voters around here are overwhelmingly GOP. Maybe we can abandon rural areas but also have an outreach to minorities to get them to better places.
Sister Golden Bear
@Old Man Shadow:
Hallmark Channel is definitely missing out on a market for holiday rom-coms featuring a woman who moves from her tiny, backwards, rural town to the big city, where she joins a racially and sexually diverse polycule who run the volunteer group that organizes Christmas meals to the homeless.
Geminid
@Baud: Sliwa’s not dropping out. Its just that there are people wringing their hands over Mamdani and urging all but one of his opponents to drop out in order to make way for a “unity candidate.”
But Adams and Cuomo like to hear themselves talk, even if no one else does. And Sliwa sounds like he’s having the time of his life.
So like I’ve said, I expect Mamdani to win this race unless he blunders, which I think is highly unlikely. Mamdani’s biggest challenge will begin next January, when he begins his term as Mayor.
Shakti
@Bupalos: @artem1s: @Deputinize America:
I just see a lot of talking around the fact these people don’t see the rural health clinic closing as affecting their relative status. I’m not sure if they acknowledged the role Medicaid played in keeping the clinic open that it would destroy their conception of their relative status?
Besides, the dehumanization of other people is why they like Trump so much and why he’s so popular. They like it more than breathing, eating or medical care.
It’s not a FAFO story.
I don’t think it’s dehumanizing to simply note they voted for a man who promised to do that, and as a result he got power, and now fulfilled that promise. Nor would it would be to ask what they plan to do about it regardless of whether they think Trump is responsible or not, besides schmoozing another hospital group and vaguely hoping he’ll do something.
Or to ask why they’re pretending that they didn’t know where the funding for the clinic comes from
44% of the state’s rural hospitals are already losing money
If their hospital has similar numbers to this rural one in another state, it would have numbers like “30% of the patients it sees are on Medicaid, a figure that’s even higher for specific, critical services like obstetrics and behavioral health.”
I don’t know how they think entities can make up an additional 30% hit to their bottom line while losing money, if they understand something like a 30% to their paycheck would be devastating even if they were covering all their expenses on their current paycheck pre- cut.
Baud
@Geminid:
Sounds right, based on what little I know. It would perhaps be a more interesting race if it were just Mamdani against Cuomo or Adams. But I’m not really into interesting these days.
Elizabelle
These rural folk may not believe in gravity, either. But. *Splat!
Citizen Alan
@Suzanne: My retired RWNJ older sister basically has it playing in her living room 24/7. Except at Christmas when she switches over to the Hallmark Christmas Channel, which is the exact same stories except there’s snow on the ground and the entire picturesque town where this hapless miserable city girl finally finds True Wuv is covered in tinsel and lights.
I genuinely wonder how much my highly intelligent niece’s decision to go into elementary education and get a job less than 30 minutes from the house she grew up in* was influenced by the “values” that my sister raised her with regarding the proper life course for a respectable young woman: get a job teaching little children while looking for a rich husband (which was my sister’s own path).
*To be fair, I give her credit for living that far away. Out of the 25 or so currently living descendants of my four grandparents, 22 all still live in the same county where we were raised. One (the niece) lives in an adjacent county. Another (my younger nephew) lives about 90 minutes away from his parents house in the town where he went to college for five years, but he hopes to “move closer to home” if a job opens up. I am the only one to have ever lived on a permanent basis outside of the state or even that county.
prostratedragon
@TEL: My recollection also. It gradually choked off other radio programming, especially music, with sports talk serving as a gateway to the hard stuff; same adrenalizing style, switching the content.
Citizen Alan
@trollhattan: Also almonds, though those are at least edible by humans.
zhena gogolia
@Sister Golden Bear: I would watch that!
Eolirin
@Sure Lurkalot: Private equity is up there with social media for destroying society.
Trivia Man
@Chetan Murthy: my example is cod fishermen. They HATE regulations. But cod are a small fraction of historic numbers because they fished to maximize their individual short term success instead of sustaining their tesource.
Citizen Alan
@jonas: I think it was responding to someone like that on Twitter with “Okay, die then” that got me perma-suspended. Still have a Twitter account because deleting your account is something you can’t do while suspended.
Sister Golden Bear
@trollhattan:
In addition to threat of a mid-air collision, it forced the SkyWest to make a risky avoidance maneuver. Assuming the turn was at as steep as described, it dramatically increased the risk of a stall (stall speed drops the steeper an aircraft banks), especially as the SkyWest was likely already flying slowly (nearer the stall speed) for the planned landing.
Eolirin
@Geminid: That challenge will be a lot bigger than getting elected. I wish him luck.
Suzanne
@Citizen Alan: I grew up around a lot of religious conservatives, though my family was not, and the overwhelming message was that the correct path was to marry and be a SAHM, as well as to stick near one’s parents and care for them in their old age. My grandfather (the primary male figure of my life — I lived in his house until I was 15) had a slightly broader outlook: women could also be secretaries, nurses, or teachers! So many choices!
College and living in an urban area (where I can make a living from that education) are not simple preferences or mere lifestyle choices for people like me, who have no property or money to inherit, no college fund, no family business, no relatives to get me that apprenticeship (and I’m not hot enough for OnlyFans). Those are literally the only way I have to independently support myself. But ’twas ever thus, for lots of the not-straight-white-man population.
Fair Economist
@Suzanne: Neil Garreau wrote about this in the 80’s talking about the then new trend of higher density areas developing in suburbs. His point is the Americans demand a range of services like a decent hospital, a variety of restaurants, entertainment option and you need a concentration of over 100,000 people to get that.
I saw that with my parent’s friends when they were retiring. About half wanted to retire to rural Florida or mountain North Carolina or such for the scenery and the peaceful country life. But basically all came back in a few years. They got bored.
Sandia Blanca
If anyone’s interested in talking about impeachment, the Citizens Impeachment team has us calling our Senators today to hound them on the topic. citizensimpeachment.com/sign-up-to-help-us-stop-trump/
I called Senators Cornyn and Cruz. I challenge my fellow Blue Texans to do the same! We need to let them know we exist.
Citizen Alan
@They Call Me Noni: All we need is 218+51+1 to amend the Apportionment Act of 1911 and give the states a fair representation in the House. Increase the House from 435 to 3,400. Adjust the Electoral college appropriately. That solves most if not all of the problems with the EC.
trollhattan
@Citizen Alan:
One of my favorite pet peeves.
Per USDA in 1991 California had 409k total acres of almonds.
In 2023 it was 1,380k.
And almonds must be irrigated in drought years or the orchard is a goner, which is where groundwater overextraction comes from. Pistachios can be “fallowed” in dry years and survive IIUC.
Trivia Man
@p.a.: and i think the government has given private enterprise plenty of $ for universal high speed broadband, rural and urban, yet they never did it. Pocket the $ (stock buybacks!!) and say “can we has more please?”
Eolirin
@Citizen Alan: We also need the SCOTUS because you know that’ll be challenged and the reasoning for why it’s not constitutional will be insane but still happen
Though while we’re at it, we should make the house fully remote so people don’t need to relocate to DC.
Citizen Alan
@Shalimar: If blacks and other minorities were excluded from voting in Mississippi, it would be well over 90% Republican. I recall reading once that FDR took 96% of the vote in Mississippi against Wendell Wilkie (who openly favored civil rights and expanded voting rights for blacks).
prostratedragon
@Geminid:
While I agree, 🤡 is playing his usual chaos card:
Sister Golden Bear
@Fair Economist:
Saw similar stories about tech workers who moved to small rural towns during pandemic because they could work remotely.
u
@Shakti: My answer to the question of “Are these rural voters really stupid or are they just shit people?” is, in many cases, BOTH. They love Trump because they want to see the people who they hate suffer and die AND they are too fucking stupid to realize that they too will suffer and die as a result of Trump’s cuts. Stupid idiots who are also very cruel. Fuck them. (And, yes, if the democratic republic is not totally destroyed then the “blue states” will resume subsidizing their sorry asses in the future. The anti-democratic structure of the U.S. Senate (and state senates) insurance that their ungrateful asses will continue to be bailed out.)
Suzanne
@Fair Economist:
Much of my graduate study was around urbanization and development. This is essentially true. There’s economy of scale in pretty much every industry, right? So we see the emergence of mega-farms and big box stores and urban hospitals expanding rapidly while rural hospitals close. It’s all part of the same economic phenomenon.
Eolirin
@prostratedragon: That’s not gonna help Cuomo or Sliwa.
The Audacity of Krope
All this talk about how urbanites supposedly look down on rural folk, when the reality is the greater mass of rural folk absolutely look down on urbanites and consistently elect officials with the explicit intent of stealing from us and punishing us for our foreign lifestyle. Their urban allies control massive swathes of the media that dedicate themselves to invective against urban elites like ::checks notes:: nurses, wait staff, medical technicians, and bus drivers.
That’s if I assume their representation reflects their values.
Eolirin
@Suzanne: Some of that dynamic, though not all of it, is regulatory failure too though. It’s also policy choices.
u
@Geminid: Ha. I continue to believe, unless I see proof to the contrary, that Curtis Sliwa has literally travelled by Time Machine from 1987. No other explanation is plausible.
Doc Sardonic
@Miss Bianca: Follow the money, in this case expenses vs. profits. If a service provider wants to get into the rural broadband grant business they look at cost to provide service, maintenance, etc against what the grant is going to pay them per subscriber. Depending on type off build out, location distance and other factors, running fiber optic cable can cost anywhere between 5,000 and 60,000 dollars a mile. If you assume a median price of $32,500 per mile to a place with 500 households is not worth doing the initial design work for the provider, even at the $5000 per mile it is rarely viable.
Miss Bianca
@Fair Economist: Hmm. Well, in Salida, which is where I would be going for hospital services, we got all that with a population base in the county of just under 20,000.
How long they can *keep* it under current circumstances might be a question.
Suzanne
@Eolirin: Of course. Nothing is ever just one thing. But again, I will note that many of these phenomena are worldwide.
ETA: I believe in living near a L1 trauma center.
u
@Ramona: The thing that rural residents seem to be too dumb to understand is that services like hospitals and clinics CANNOT SURVIVE ECONOMICALLY IN A PLACE WITH A LOW POPULATION DENSITY WHICH RURAL AREAS, BY DEFINITION, ARE, UNLESS THEY ARE SUBSIDIZED. A hospital in New York City or Boston can get plenty of customers because it’s in a high-density city. Rural areas HAVE TO BE SUBSIDIZED. But, yet, these morons complain about Big Gummint.
Citizen Alan
@Eolirin: Nothing SCROTUS does at this point would shock me, but saying that Congress did not have the power to increase the number of representatives in response to population changes when it has done so at least 5 times since 1787 would be absurd even by the incredibly low standards of the Roberts Court.
Ramona
@Citizen Alan: Yessss!!!! And a state by state push towards proportional representation.
catclub
@Jerry:
yes, but now we need to get jobs for all the grannies in nursing homes on that sweet medicaid dime.
Ramona
@Eolirin: Judicial Stripping!
bluefoot
@Trivia Man: I have a casual friend like this. Her family owns a fish & shellfish business on the north shore of MA and she is CONSTANTLY railing against regulations, the EPA, etc. I repeatedly tell her she wouldn’t even have a business if the regulations did not exist because all the fish would be gone. She will not listen.
Kelly
@Fair Economist: I moved out to rural Oregon where I grew up when I retired from my career in the Portland metro. It’s beautiful out here. Hiking and river trips minutes away. I bought a house next door to my Mom and took care of her until she passed away last year at 88. I’m not bored living in the country but after taking care of my Mom I want to move to a city before my 80th birthday. I’ll want stores and services I can get to within a few minutes of slow streets and mass transit options.
Baud
@Ramona:
I don’t want to see Alito naked.
prostratedragon
@Eolirin: I should think not. But it could lead to more action that might supress turnout.
mark
Lots of comments here. I zoomed to the end to post one of my thoughts and or observations. I live in the Seattle area. I’ve lived here all of my life. I am almost 70. Most people in the area have come from somewhere else looking for opportunity. Many have left flyover country as soon as they could get out. They left the not too bright behind. Hated to say it that way, but I couldn’t think of a more delicate way to put it.
Suzanne
@Baud: Never thought I’d see Baud advocating for pants.
The Audacity of Krope
@Suzanne: I’m sure a robe will do.
Belafon
@prostratedragon: And that will help his favored candidate how?
lowtechcyclist
@Old Man Shadow:
This. We Democrats have been going out of our way to help rural America from the days of the Tennessee Valley Authority to rural broadband initiatives. Have we just been doing it wrong this whole time?? If so, what’s the One Weird Trick that will enable us to do it in the right way?
I’m more of the mind that to the extent that we do targeted initiatives, they should be aimed at cities and suburbs. Let’s improve and upgrade mass transit, let’s convert office buildings into residential where feasible, and tear them down and replace them with dense residential housing in places where there’s a big surplus of office space. Let’s give subsidies to cities that tax the shit out of unoccupied residences, so that it’s unprofitable to hang onto condos as an investment without bothering to rent them out. We can upgrade aging water and sewer systems, stuff like that.
In short, let’s do everything we can to get every last vote we can out of the cities and suburbs, as rural America dries up and blows away. Give urbanites and suburbanites more reasons to vote Dem than you can shake a stick at A lot more of them will make the connection than will those rural folks.
Eolirin
@Suzanne: Hey, we don’t know if he’s doing that. He might just want him to keep the robe on.
Fair Economist
@Citizen Alan: I have mentioned this before, but, no enlarging the House does not fix the EC problem. Even with an infinite House, 1888 and 2016 still come out wrong. Only 2000 flips.
prostratedragon
@Baud: Today in serendippity — yours, followed immediately by the first sentence of mine.
Captain C
@u: He does (or did, I’m not sure) have a Bob Grant-like radio show, so your impression tracks.
mark
@bluefoot: Very insightful. My wife is a VietNamese national by birth. She made that observation once. She said you wouldn’t see all of this wildlife in VietNam. It all would have been eaten. She was commenting on the ducks. geese. coots. trout. bass. etc. etc. in the area.
prostratedragon
@Belafon: Turnout.
Baud
@Suzanne:
I don’t care if he wears anything under his robe.
The Audacity of Krope
@Fair Economist: I like the idea of expanding the house regardless of the electoral college. Better odds of knowing your rep and your rep knowing your local community. More localized races could be run more cheaply. There would be more opportunities for smart, caring people with few connections.
Librettist
I would make sure insurance coverage handles helicopter rides for acute issues if I lived out in the sticks. YMMV.
Captain C
@Citizen Alan: Alito would base it on Divine Right of Kings, and Thomas’ concurrance would basically be 340 pages of “No new RVs make Clarence a dull boy.”
Captain C
@Baud: No one does. Probably not even Mrs. Alito.
lowtechcyclist
@Sister Golden Bear:
One piece of advice I’ve seen for people planning to relocate to a new area when they retire is: find a place there that they can rent for six months, as kind of a ‘try before you buy’ thing. If the new location isn’t going to be all you’d hoped for, six months will probably be enough time there to figure that out.
The Audacity of Krope
In fact, can we get a paper bag to put over old Leatherface?
catclub
You are my spirit guide.
Captain C
@The Audacity of Krope: Two, in case one of them rips.
Baud
As long as I have indoor plumbing and access to BJ, I can live anywhere.
catclub
But if they did it with an equal dignitude of the senators argument, and quoted a proviso in the secret constitution that no change can benefit Democrats, who would disagree?
Ksmiami
@u: it’s high time these places with their stupid insularity die from ignorance. Sorry not sorry but these small towns are a total drain
Princess
@trollhattan: My gut is the German trade official is bluffing but I hope he isn’t.
N other news: absolutely stellar interview with Hunter Biden. Yes, that Hunter Biden. It will cheer you up.
bsky.app/profile/onestpress.onestnetwork.com/post/3luilsio34k2o
catclub
@Baud: you probably expect your indoor plumbing to be thawed.
Geminid
From Al Arabiya:
The talks will be in Istanbul. It will be a busy week for diplomacy there; on Friday, foreign ministers from France, Germany and the UK, plus the EU’s top diplomat, will hold talks on Iran’s nuclear program with that nation’s foreign minister.
And this could be a big story from Middle East Eye:
Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa and SDF leader Mazloum Abdi already signed an agreement in principle under which SDF forces would be integrated into the Syrian Army, and the area it controls in Northeast Syria would fall under the Damascus government’s control.
That was in March 13, but since then implementation has stalled. Abdi and the SDF have still been holding out for an autonomous status for what they call Rojava, under a federal system. But the US, which has sponsored the SDF since 2013 as part of the war against ISIS, reportedly put its foot down last week on the side of a unitary Syrian state.
This decision will likely disappoint Rojava’s many Western supporters, including some in Congress like Senator Chris Van Hollen
Ed. A link to the MEE article
share.google/Rx8OuRRBjFKTA0oO5
Ksmiami
@lowtechcyclist: blue areas get upgrades. Red areas need to just wither
mark
@Kelly: I have afib. A couple of months ago my heart was going crazy. I finally gave in at about 4am and called 911. The aid car showed up within a few minutes. They checked me out and took me to the hospital. There was a greeting committee there when we arrived. They got my heart under control in just a few minutes. That was the happiest place on earth as far as I was concerned. It’s unfortunate small town America can’t have the same thing.
They Call Me Noni
@Citizen Alan: Or just count every vote for each of the candidates and whoever gets the most votes across all 50 states wins. He/she who gets the most votes wins. Majority rules.
The Audacity of Krope
What happens if they don’t? Seems the Kurds deserve self-determination just like anyone.
lowtechcyclist
@mark:
I live in the Seattle area. I’ve lived here all of my life. I am almost 70. Most people in the area have come from somewhere else looking for opportunity. Many have left flyover country as soon as they could get out. They left the not too bright behind. Hated to say it that way, but I couldn’t think of a more delicate way to put it.
I don’t know that it’s mostly a matter of intelligence. But it’s like immigration: we get the best of the people from less-developed countries because they’re the ones who take the initiative to try to change their lives for the better, rather than just shrugging and accepting that there’s nothing they can do about their crappy lives. Same thing, I expect, with the people who move from flyover country to the cities, versus those who stay behind.
It’s emotionally hard to move away from everything you’ve ever known and take a chance on a new place and a new career. The people moving to the cities from rural America are those who can clear that emotional barrier.
Suzanne
@Baud:
PHRASING!!!
mark
@lowtechcyclist: Good point. There are a lot of immigrants here. The ones that work in the tech industry are doing very well. The young people from fly over country do quite well also. My latest boss is from Montana. He is in his 30’s.
Ksmiami
@mark: sad small town America is a drain and a drag on the rest of the USA. From politics to economics
mark
@lowtechcyclist: Another thing going on. The people from outside the area. be it foreign or domestic. have the best jobs. the best real estate. Their kids go to the best schools. Not all of the natives here are big winners.
Nettoyeur
@u: Prosperity gospel, which is uniquely evangelical. If you are rich, it’s because you are worthy in eyes if God. If not, tough.
Suzanne
@lowtechcyclist: I don’t want any part of the discussion around whether or not living in rural or urban areas are “legitimate aspirations”. Everyone’s vision of the good life is different and, as long as I can pursue mine, I don’t really give a damn about others’. They don’t like me and that’s their business.
The question is about how and where we spend our resources. I am more than willing to dedicate some of my resources to making sure they have Medicaid, but that’s really the only support I have to offer. And if they’re not really willing to support my “legitimate aspirations” in turn, then I’m not the one with a hate problem.
So, the resources need to get spent where people are, in ways that will provide the most benefit to the most people. As you note…..guess where that is?!
The Audacity of Krope
Precisely this.
TerryC
@JustRuss: I live on 17.5 acres of woods and meadow on a dirt road only 5 miles from the center of Ann Arbor. I think I will keep it.
Geminid
@The Audacity of Krope: One problem is the Kurds are not a majority within the area the SDF claims; Arabs are at around 50% of the populace, and there are almost as many Turkmen in Northeast Syria as there are Kurds.
The Kurdish PKK was the best organized fighting force in the area when the US formed the SDF to fight ISIS in 2013. So rebranded as the YPG, the Kurdish forces became the backbone of the SDF.
Once ISIS was knocked back the SDF sponsored AANES, an autonomous government to rule “Rojava.” Since then the SDF has controlled most of Syria east of the Euphrates River including Syria’s oil fields. There is a lot of resentment towards SDF rule though, on the part of Arabs and Turkmen and even some Kurds.
Also, the Turks adamantly oppose an autonomous state and say they will disarm the SDF if no one else will. They probably could too, but it would be a long and bloody fight.
But with the US pulling its support it looks like General Abdi and the SDF will have to take the deal on offer from Damascus. I guess we’ll know for sure by Labor Day.
Shakti
@u: Nah. Not stupid. They understand that’s what is happening. I think they value that relative status so highly over everything else and that’s stupid.
I think they would be fine with everything as long as they got a carveout from the policy- a demonstration of relative status.
Bupalos
@mark: I will say as someone who does a lot of foraging, I’m pretty much constantly looking at the geese and asking myself why not?
Seems to me they’re basically a modern version of the bison.
The Audacity of Krope
@Geminid: Yeah, it seems a difficult situation. Thank you for fleshing it out for me. As usual, it seems resources are a central consideration.
I don’t suppose a simple plea that people just get along and leave others to their own business would work.
Anne Laurie
@TEL: Underappreciated datum: Rush Limbaugh took off on talk radio at the same time more people were spending more time in their cars because they were commuting longer distances every day.
This was before podcasts, or Spotify, or even (in many cases) car-based CD players. If you didn’t want to listen (if your local station couldn’t pull in) meathead sports-talk radio, you listened to Rush Limbaugh & the many local wannabes. Just as Fox News tv would later poison a generation of old retired people, Limbaugh poisoned ‘nice normal suburbanites’ spending an hour each way twice a day commuting from their city job to their shiny new post-Levittown mini-McMansion.
RevRick
@Ksmiami: I do like eating, however.
And, late to the game about Hallmark Channel and its movies, women also love reading about serial killers and watching Dateline.
Librettist
This isn’t a semi-rural retirement house in eastern TN. Curtis in on the 100th meridian. There was never enough rainfall for anything other than winter wheat and cattle at scale. The sod busters fled before the 20th century.
This 800 population town is propped up by a small state two year A&T college. Any future PCP will be rotating with other locations, aligned with the school, and paid for by the state.
WaterGirl
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
I know it might FEEL like that, but it seems to me that it would be a ton more accurate to say that:
1) some people on Balloon Juice they are all backward, bigoted rubes who shouldn’t be helped or targeted for engagement, and 2) other people on Balloon Juice are not writing those people off.
Glidwrith
@rikyrah: I looked at those two graphs and see much more.
1. Before 2020, non-college educated men were doing BETTER than their women counterparts for jobs.
2. Non-college educated women are, right now, not doing better than the men.
3. It looks like only in the last year are the college educated women actually doing better than the men.
Why? IMO, perhaps because women are willing to work in more service oriented jobs (say, health care) that are in demand that men are not.
I have no sympathy for the moment, that a single result, which may well be temporary, that college educated men are ever so slightly not on top of the heap.
There’s a huge amount of pain that’s going around thanks to Shitgibbon and company and college educated men have far more tools to use than a lot of people.
H-Bob
“That leopard isn’t eating my face — my face actually is being eaten by the fleeing vegan antelope whose leg was bitten off by this leopard”!
LAC
@WaterGirl: oh, I think there is a third category. 3) There are people that are not going to take the lead on “engagement” because their level of melanin might be upsetting. Otherwise known as “Please proceed, ally”
Geminid
@Geminid: It turns out the SDF denies the Middle East Eye story. From Rudaw English:
Rudaw English is based in Erbil, Iraq. That is the capital of the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region of Iraq. This entity comprises the four northern Governates of Iraq, and its autonomous status is guaranteed under the Iraqi constitution. The US has maintained a military mission there in one form or another since the First Gulf War.
The Kurdistan Region is a fascinating project. It’s the closest Kurdish people have come to self-rule in the modern era, and they are doing fairly well in terms of security, human rights and civil liberties.
Relations with the Baghdad government stay problematic, and pro-Iranian militias sometimes fire drones into the Kurdistan region. A drone attack just knocked out production in a couple oil fields. The Baghdad government does not have control over some large armed militias in central Iraq. Iran does, and that can be a real problem.
Despite this, Iraq may be more stable now than it has been since Bush blew it up in 2003. Iraqis still have a long way to go, though. They have parliamentary elections coming up in 2026, and those will be a chance move forward some.
u
@catclub: Because of the ICE-thug crackdown, there is now a shortage of nursing home workers. The solution: Force nursing home patients to do the work for free!
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Sister Golden Bear: YES!!
Citizen Alan
@Fair Economist: I’d like to see the math on that. Not doubting you. I’d just like to see it to figure out how that happens.
u
@Anne Laurie: Again, though. Nobody forced those suburban assholes to listen to Rush and to accept his wisdom as though it were the word of God. Rush, and all of the Junior-Varsity-Rush-Limbaughs influenced a generation of white people BECAUSE THEY WERE TELLING WHITE RACISTS AND MISOGYNISTS WHAT THEY WANTED TO HEAR. During my own commutes I would sometimes tune into right-wing talk radio (Rush, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, et. al.) for ten minutes at a time, for the same reason that I read a translation of “Mein Kampf” many years ago. Hitler was actually more intelligent and interesting than those radio jerks. Stupid ideas, stupidly presented, to stupid listeners.
Another Scott
@Princess: Zooks!!
Thanks for the pointer!
Best wishes,
Scott.
Miss Bianca
@Princess: very late to the party, but just gotta pop in to say, FUCK YEAH, GO HUNTER BIDEN!