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"The Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation survey of nearly 1,700 Americans — including more than 1,000 adults living in rural areas and small towns — finds deep-seated kinship in rural America, coupled with a stark sense of estrangement from people who live in urban areas. Nearly 7 in 10 rural residents say their values differ from people who live in big cities, including about 4 in 10 who say their values are “very different.”
Yes, I know it's the WaPo..and the article is long---but well worth reading..IMO
Some people prefer the open spaces of country living. That has nothing to do with political ideology.
We lived in San Diego for nearly 30 years. First on the beach (literally ...1/2 block off Windansea) and then five miles inland (Mira Mesa, adjacent to Mira Mar Naval Air Station, as it was called until recent years). We chose to leave California and come back to Ohio (my wife is a native San Diegan) where I was raised, for some space ...11 acres in the country. That didn't change our political views, which were always conservative. We voted for Reagan for governor of CA and then for President. It wasn't till 1993 that we left CA.
Love it! With your permission I will use it on here.
Absolutely.
It's not my phrase lol I heard that when I was a kid in 3rd grade and moved up to the sticks from Poughkeepsie.
I'm surprised it isn't a national thing...
Then again I'm the only dude in Florida who doesn't wear flip flops and have a closet full of timberlands I'll never wear again. Not cold enough to wear jeans and boots like I used to...
I wonder why they have the distrust.....? Must be something. .......
I think it's because in cities there are too many well-to-do, snooty, stuck up city slickers with ivy league degrees who look down their noses at rural people and say things like "They're the poorest, least educated, most drug addicted, least employed, cohort in America."
Really, who is going to trust ignorant jerks that have that kind of stereotype stuck in their mind about rural people? They give other city dwellers a bad reputation with rural dwellers and cause all city dwellers to end up with their own stereotype of being "well-to-do, snooty, stuck up city slickers with ivy league degrees who look down their noses at rural people and say nasty things about them."
Some people prefer the open spaces of country living. That has nothing to do with political ideology.
We lived in San Diego for nearly 30 years. First on the beach (literally ...1/2 block off Windansea) and then five miles inland (Mira Mesa, adjacent to Mira Mar Naval Air Station, as it was called until recent years). We chose to leave California and come back to Ohio (my wife is a native San Diegan) where I was raised, for some space ...11 acres in the country. That didn't change our political views, which were always conservative. We voted for Reagan for governor of CA and then for President. It wasn't till 1993 that we left CA.
So much for your theory.
LoL...whose theory? I posted this in the spirit of, 'interesting'. I agree with some of it..disagree with some...and I think the conclusions are a bit simplistic. But, for what it is--I was provoked to thought..so I decided to share it.
If...if...it was 'My theory'...I'd remark that while groups have trends--individuals are apt to do anything..and the one fact has little to do with the other.
I don't think anyone posting on this thread actually read the article.
There's no mention of educational differences at all. It focuses on attitude towards government and cultural issues.
Here's a few items from it.
1. 6 in 10 rural residents encourage young people to leave their areas for better opportunities.
2. Unemployment is only marginally better in cities (4.8% to 5.3)
3. Rural workforce is shrinking due to people locating to cities or stop looking for work. Jobs available in rural areas, but usually low pay.
4. Poverty rates are almost identical: 16% in cities and 17% in rural.
5. In both urban and rural, about 1 in 5 report trouble paying their bills or needing government assistance.
6. Biggest differences between residents of rural areas and big cities: concerns about changing demographics and thoughts of bias in who gets government assistance.
7. Rural residents are 3 times more likely to consider immigrants a burden.
8. 60% of rural residents think government efforts to improve living standards have had little effect or have done more harm than good.
9. 78% of rural Republicans feel that Christian values are under attack; for rural Dems, it's 45%.
Number 9 probably is the main reason Trump was elected and is the reason he will be the best president. When Obama said we are not a Christian nation, he removed God's protection from our country. I am glad we now at least have a president that says, "God bless America."
If the Democrats are so pro-worker then why did they want amnesty for millions of illegal aliens to be able to remain here and retain American jobs?
Contrary to my better judgment, I’ll attempt to answer this question seriously.
One of the enduring differences between Left and Right, is that the Left is internationalist, regarding the distinction between nations as perhaps an administrative necessity, but not a fundamental one. Most peoples in most locales have similar aspirations, frustrations and fears. The Right on the other hand emphasizes difference in culture and national identity, regarding these demarcations as being no mere accident or administrative structure, but as defining who we are, both as individuals and as a tribe.
So when the Left thinks of workers, it thinks of workers in China or Mexico or wherever else, without stark distinctions between Us and Them. The Right, meanwhile, is careful to note whatever aspects of international trade are zero-sum, regarding it as their duty to guard “the home” even at the expense of prosperity or human interests elsewhere. Thus the Left would consider all workers, and certainly all workers in America, to have valid interests – regardless of their immigration status; but for the Right, there is no such equivalence, and “our” workers take precedence over “their” workers.
One could of course argue that both Democrats and Republicans now favor Capital over Labor, and while that may be true, I think that to the extent that Democrats are Left and Republicans Right, there is in every sense a distinction between the two, of trans-national vs. intra-national.
Returning to the theme of this thread, it seems to me that city-people have however abstractly a kind of international kinship with other cities, while the countryside is more local. New York feels a kinship with London and Tokyo and so forth, even amongst people who favor lower taxes and who decry what they regard as being a societal moral decay. But somebody in the hills of West Virginia is unlikely to feel such international kinship with is counterpart in the hills of Romania or Cambodia.
Of course Trump got much of the vote in rurual America. Trump sold them nonsense about bringing back the "turn a bolt Bob" factory jobs of the past. You really think he would tell them the truth, which is to get 21st century job skills and move to a more populated area?
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