- cross-posted to:
- politicalmemes@lemmy.ca
- memes@midwest.social
- cross-posted to:
- politicalmemes@lemmy.ca
- memes@midwest.social
cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/7076150
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Republican states also take more money from the federal govt for social services and entitlements.
A link that I frequently share:
That was just a gem.
Great read, thanks for sharing!
Far more. These states wouldn’t last more than 3 months if they seceded.
Disclaimer: I don’t live in the US and, when looking at US politicians, my opinions are most aligned with those of Bernie Sanders.
I don’t think that the problem here is the republicans or democrats, but both. These poor places have long been neglected and no politician care about states that are not swing states and have very few electors. The whole political system seems to abandon poor people, old people and people living in rural areas.
The reason why they vote for Trump is that they want to give a big middle finger to those that they see trying to dismantle their way of life: city people and rich people. Farmers work very hard to feed their country and there’s a pride in being self reliant.
Take for example modern cars, you’re not supposed to fix them yourself. That’s the producers fault. But when politicians make fuel costs go up and try to incentivize EV purchases, people can feel like their agency is taken away. The problem isn’t the fuel pricing or the drive train, but the fact that you can no longer service your own car.
This is a problem with society in general, not with republicans. The alt-right movement feeds on these fractures in society. It’s a symptom, not the underlying sickness. To combat this we need better social security, free healthcare, and more wealth redistribution.
But they’re not both the same
My favorite example was a few years back when Trump was elected. Both candidates visited West Virginia:
- Trump made all sorts of claims about creating coal industry jobs, including directly contradicting things he said elsewhere
- H Clinton sympathized with people, recognized that automation and economic conditions have been reducing coal industry jobs for decades and those trends would continue. She proposed expanded training to help people qualify for new jobs and programs to improve economic development
Both are the same? One denied the problem and blatantly lied to his constituents. During his term in office, I don’t think there was any attempt to follow through. The other at least recognized the issue, spoke honestly , and proposed something. There were quite a few people who decided to vote for Trump because they didn’t believe Clinton’s solutions would work, voted for hiding their heads in the sand (somehow denying reality was “telling it like it is”) over recognizing the issue and at least trying something, voted against their own best interests, fucked around and found out
I like this example because it clearly shows both that all politicians suck and that “both sides” really are NOT the same
“We’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.”
The moment Clinton said that (and that’s a direct quote), she lost any hope of getting most of Appalachia to vote for her.
To be clear about what Clinton’s plan looked like, even if you ignored her terrible delivery of it, here’s what it sounds like to the guys on the ground who’d benefit from it:
Step one, first you lose your job, and we’re going to speed that up by tightening regulations with the express goal of killing the coal industry faster.
Step two, then you get put on unemployment and a retraining program. This of course will cause some of you to lose your hones and vehicles, and for some your family too because especially in very socially conservative areas a man losing a job for a prolonged period is often a catalyst to losing a marriage. Now that you’ve lost your home, downsized your car and lost your family it’s time for…
Step three, the industry you’ve been retrained for doesn’t exist, or doesn’t exist at remotely the necessary scale here, so now you just need to pull up stakes and move elsewhere. Hope you didn’t have any family nearby you cared to see, or took care of, or if you lost your wife in the previous step ever wanted to see your kids again.
Step four, congratulations! If you made it here, you probably have a job again. I mean, you had to sell your home just to stay afloat through the retraining, it pays less than your old job, you’re living somewhere with a higher cost of living now, and you had to be cut off from your entire support network, but you’re probably employed!
And all of that assumes her plan as proposed was actually going to be a thing that actually happened. As opposed to the at least as likely scenario where they still use regulations to kill the coal market more efficiently, but don’t do any of the other stuff. Which was probably at least as likely in a post-Byrd world (Byrd was corrupt as all hell, but he always did his best for his constituents).
Why would unemployment cause people to lose their homes and vehicles? Wouldn’t a lot of retraining programs aim to find ways to sustain people’s living in the meantime?
Benefits aren’t as big as the income you lose, and often get tied up in red tape on the way leading to delays. Depending on how weird your personal situation might be, it could be up to a couple of months. I don’t recall her plan involving increasing and expediting benefits to people in her retraining program.
Unemployment doesn’t provide as much money as the jobs people are losing. My state has a maximum of $362/week. That isn’t going to let you make a mortgage payment, car payment, and buy food. There also generally a lag in receiving benefits, the first payment could take a month or so to show up.
There also generally a lag in receiving benefits, the first payment could take a month or so to show up.
Especially in red states that have intentionally made getting benefits a long and tedious process and don’t hire enough people to process a sudden surge in unemployment (see Covid in places like Texas where it could be weeks or longer until you can even apply because the website is down from the surge of people)
Both are the same? One denied the problem and blatantly lied to his constituents.
They both lied, they just said different lies. Do you think that if Hillary was elected, she would have done anything substantial for those people? If she really wanted to do something, she could have done it under Obama.
But neither she nor Obama(nor Trump nor any politician) gives a fuck about those people. And those people know it. So if they have to choose, they would choose someone that tells them shit they like. Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies.
They are the same in that they are alienating this particular part of the population from the rest of society. I agree that one is clearly better than the other, but my guess is that some people vote for Trump just to “own them libs” in California. They see liberalism and socialism as a threat to their lifestyle, something that’s not necessarily true, and they’re protesting that. We do need politicians that are more understanding to their problems and not those that are solely focused on the urban voters.
I think that leftist policy is the way to go for this, but we still need to satisfy that idea of self reliance. Of course the Democratic Party is way more sane but in my view, they are still very conservative.
If you want to talk alienating people there’s clear differences between the two parties as well. Let’s assume you’re correct that Democrats are alienating coal miners and basically anyone else that makes their living from fossil fuels. Who are the Republicans alienating?
- Immigrants. Particularly ones that aren’t white and Christian (both combined; if you’re not white but Christian they don’t want you).
- Various minorities such as blacks and Latinos but especially LGBTQ people (and 1000x if they’re trans).
- Scientists, professors, and basically everyone involved in accredited colleges (non-accredited fake schools like Liberty University are welcomed).
- Health care workers (but not private hospital owners). Especially doctors and nurses working in gynecology, labor & delivery, and anyone working in transgender treatment.
- Anyone in a union and unions in general (but this has always been the case).
The Republican argument has always been that even though they (obviously) hate or at least don’t give a shit about all these classes of people their (non-existent) economic policies will benefit them somehow. Economic studies as well as basic measures of social health have all shown repeatedly that this is untrue. The actual (partisan) laws enacted by Republican majority in each state as well as federally have had negative impacts both economically and on the general well-being being of their constituents.
For incredibly obvious examples, the Texas Republican legislature banned municipalities from instituting mandatory water breaks for workers. Georgia’s banned handing out water bottles to people waiting to vote. Florida is banning books with any sort of sexual theme (including biology books and books on sex education!) and the mere discussion of anything related to LGBTQ topics in schools.
In what universe are these good policies? They’re not. From an economics standpoint Republicans are the kings of unnecessary licensing requirements (aka “job killing regulations”) and placing unnecessary restrictions on job seekers as well as welfare programs in the form of mandatory drug testing (which has no purpose; do we really care if some disabled veteran is doing drugs from time to time?), extremely flawed citizenship checks (because there’s no national database regular citizens are being denied), and banning necessary medical care (abortion, which is a human right according to the UN).
These are definitely not good policies. What I’m arguing for is that the fact that the poorest states are voting Republican, not because the voters benefit from Republican policy, but because they’re unhappy with how things are going in general in their part of the country.
The problem is that both parties are alienating the poor and rural populations. Just the fact that Hillary Clinton did run for president is a warning bell. One shouldn’t expect to see two presidential candidates from the same family. This is also true for the Bush family. This just shows that it’s a small and privileged elite that runs the US. Of course people are upset and of course they will vote for the opponent of a political dynasty.
No one seems to listen to rural and poor voters and therefore they vote for the most extreme and outrageous candidate that they can find. I’m arguing that they do not vote based on suggested policy. If Americans were rational, that’s have a social democratic party like most countries in Europe have.
You’re wrong, though. One side is literally performing a hostile takeover of the government, trying to kill our democracy, openly hates anyone who isn’t a rich white male, and tries to dismantle any and all social safety nets.
Rural areas pretty much only vote republican because they’ve been brainwashed into voting against their own best interests. Republicans have been dismantling the education systems in these areas for decades for just this reason. Many of these people need legitimate cult deprogramming.
So no, both parties are not the same by any stretch of the imagination.
Rural areas pretty much only vote republican because they’ve been brainwashed into voting against their own best interests.
Since WV was brought up earlier, I feel the need to point out that WV was a Dem safe state until 2000.
WV voted Dem because unions, and started voting GOP when the Dems started openly attacking the largest union industries in the state.
See, this is the problem. They’re called brainwashed when they’re protesting a system that failed them. Both parties are bad in that they are runned by wealthy elites that do not share the everyday worries of ordinary folk.
The problem is the wide gaps in society with billionaires that try to go to mars while spouting conspiracy theories at the same time as a single mom can’t feed her children while working two jobs.
I will maintain that the Republican Party is way worse than the Democratic Party but both are bad. What the US would need is an overhaul of the political system, with a removal of the electoral college and the first-past-the-post system. There is also a need for new parties that take the side of ordinary people.
You left women off your list.
Georgia’s banned handing out water bottles to people waiting to vote.
This isn’t some special unique ban. Giving anyone anything of any value for voting (even if it’s just in general and without regard to who they claimed to vote for) is illegal and has been for a long time.
Anyone engaging in political messaging giving anything to anyone (or advertising in basically any fashion) within so many feet of any polling place (which includes the line) has also been illegal for a long time.
You could still probably get away with this anyways by setting up some kind of bottled water giveaway to anyone who wants some, regardless of if they are in line or even thinking about voting, so long as it also contains no reference to any candidate anywhere on it (because otherwise you couldn’t do it near the line). But you’d have to absolutely avoid politicking whatsoever and you wouldn’t be able to limit it to just voters. Which probably significantly reduces the desired impact.
Family farms went away late seventies early eighties. Farming is mostly corporate in America. There’s not a lot of profit margin, so they make up for it with size.
You are very wrong about that.
I get that political memes communities are for building an echo chamber where you say whatever confirms everyone’s preexisting opinion, but this post is catastrophically dumb.
Conservative economic policies suck (not exactly surprising given conservative policies are largely just aimed at helping huge corporations squeeze as much money out of their labor, the public and the environment as possible and are intrinsically unsustainable and damaging to things that actually matter, like american quality of life), but of course red states have poorer economies- rural areas are both conservative and also intrinsically not going to have as much money as urban areas where there are more and larger businesses.
You can demonstrate that conservative economic “principles” suck dogshit a lot more effectively if your examples aren’t obviously hollow to anyone who thinks about them for more than 2 seconds.
But I guess that doesn’t make a meme that lots of people will upvote because it tells them their opinion is smart and good and that they don’t need to think about why they think the things they do.
It doesn’t matter that the argument is good. Conservative propaganda is completely stupid, but it convinces the right people. It is those people who are less educated that you need to convince. And no rational, educated argument will convince better in 10s than a shitty catch phrase.
Its really strange to me that you would advocate the idea that we should parrot bad points to propagandize our perspective. I don’t mean this as insult, I just find that a really alien way to look at the world…
As a counterpoint to some of what I understand your stance to be, in my experience those kinds of hollow arguments tend to only appeal to people who already generally agree with them. To my mind, that makes them much more effective at polarizing perspectives than actually informing anyone’s perspective in a meaningful way. They ensure that people who have been consuming intellectually bankrupt reinforcements of whatever they already believed are even more incapable of meaningfully engaging with people they don’t see eye to eye with, when that opportunity arises
I understand that the popular, cathartic, take is that we should just hate the bad people who think the wrong thing and that talking with them is a pointless waste of time, but in my experience the only thing that ever seems to change individual perspectives is compassion and sincerity, perhaps especially when not entirely deserved. And I also find that dismissing the intellect or emotional capacity of anyone I disagree with as a means to justify hating them and what I’ve decided they represent is a really toxic way to engage with the world. And by that I mean toxic to myself- I think its toxic to others too, but frankly writing off half of my country folk as stupid wastes of oxygen we’d all be better without feels poisonous to my own emotional wellbeing.
Do with that what you will 🤷
Edit: some wording.
I don’t even necessarily disagree with your point that convincing people who are only going to engage superficially is politically important at scale, and that those people may at times be more swayed by hollow talking points than well reasoned arguments, its just very foreign to how I’m used to relating to the world I guess
Ok, to elaborate a bit, first, your argument is only aimed at people on your side already, as I said.
But more importantly, secondly, the point made is not completely wrong. Sure, it is only a correlation that’s pointed, and the left should try to help the conservative voters instead of blaming them. But as a matter of fact, conservative policies do empoverish people. Which means the argument has some truth condensed in an inaccurate catch phrase that can actually hit its audience.
I guess we went to the same conclusion on this.
I’m starting to believe these days that the leftists are prone to argue and disagree about technicalities and details, and it can be counterproductive to the information war that’s happening.
It is definitely more inherently difficult to build than to destroy, i.e. to move forward rather than back.
Moreover, most of the time when conservatives seem to argue on the internet, truth is not even a minority portion of their goals. Thus, liberals aim to argue in order to become correct - bantering back and forth the details until the most proper course of action can be decided upon that takes into account all of the facts - whereas conservatives argue in order to be effective, at “winning” the goals already given to them by an authority figure, who they presume to know more than they personally about all subjects (maybe God Himself even, via their chosen shepherd here in Earth, in spite of literally everything God has ever said in the Bible previously, such as the workers deserving their wages, taking care of widows and orphans, and other social justice matters).
So yeah, arguing “facts” with someone who has already decided their position in advance and is not listening to new ones coming in, is indeed a huge waste of time, most often. Sadly, I don’t know what would not be a waste of time, in terms of convincing conservatives about any factual matter. In the analogy above, until those coal miners saw for themselves that they were being evicted from their homes and could not purchase groceries with all the non-existent money that was promised to be flooding in as “clean coal” was to make its great comeback, I am not certain that they could be convinced by any means? In fact, I bet many were not convinced even after they became homeless - surely it was just their bad luck that they could not wait for the clean coal revolution, or you know what, I bet it was those damned dirty Democrats who did it, somehow!? (despite not being in charge of pretty much anything for multiple years straight) “Lock her up!”, no matter what she may or may not have done, bc it’s a convenient scapegoat.
And it’s not even that they are brainless, it’s more that they do not choose to engage their brains in these matters, preferring instead to defer to authority, whenever their brain comes to a different conclusion. So what is that precisely… laziness, perhaps? Or just flat gullibility. In any case, most definitely an easy target to aim to exploit, by oh let’s say some nation that would like very much to switch the USA from a foe to a friend to its goals, or at least neutralize it.
The founders warned us about all of this btw, saying that it would lead directly to the death of the at-the-time still fledgling democracy. We chose not to listen, and we’ve been coasting along ever since, likely protected more by the large oceans than anything else, back when that was a more daunting technological hurdle to have to cross.
I don’t think it’s an unfair comparison. Red states have large cities. Blue states have rural counties. I think the stats are based on median income? Red states are more “business friendly,” so you would expect all that business activity to trickle down and be reflected in the median wages?
And they want it that way. Because they can look at their constituents, point a finger at everywhere/everyone else, and say “look what THEY’RE doing to you! They’re causing ALL of your problems!” And those people continue to eat it up, every single time.
It’s always easier to put the blame on someone else and not change anything than to accept that you might have a tiny part to play in the solution, too
I can usually point out why conservatives think and act a certain way. Logical from their point of view, if mostly wrong. Still, I get them.
I’ve never had an answer to this sort of post. I guess they just fall back to, “It’s $somebody_elses_fault!” And that seems to work for 'em, drives votes.
It’s simple. The poor in red states have been made proud of struggling. They’ve been manipulated in to taking pride in being poor and uneducated. It’s such a sinister thing that has been done to them with no way of breaking that belief. They’re both victim and villain with no self awareness to save them.
Add in an (un)healthy dose of “rugged individualism” and American Exceptionalism, and everyone is just a “temporarily embarrassed millionaire” looking to get theirs and pull the ladder up behind them.
I have never liked that language tbh. If you talk directly with someone who dropped out of school at an early age, you will see that they are quite aware that they will never ever in their entire lifetime become anywhere close to being rich. Many know that they are likely to die within the decade, lacking access to medical care, which in turn affects whether they can keep even a minimum wage job, much less afford a house. The spiralling downwards of court appearances and jail time, which further affects their ability to even be considered for a job, are all too clear to them.
It turns out though, they simply do not care. They vote conservative bc they (have been told to) actually believe that the rich deserve more than they do. i.e., that phrase gives them too much credit to be voting towards their own best interests, even for the far-distant future, when instead they are aware that they will never become one. Except even my previous sentence still gives too much credit to the enlightened self interest - by way of kinship selection - of some, who do not even think about it as deeply as that, and instead they simply vote as they are told and as everyone else votes around them (especially when those around them who do not vote that way are too afraid to speak openly about their local “defiance” to the entrenched authority structures).
That said, some of them are very much aware that they are being lied to. Though again, they simply do not care, even though the outcome of their vote still affects literally the entire nation (e.g. Mitch McConnell could not be a national leader if he did not keep being reelected locally).
Good heavens sir/ma’am/they! We do not speak of understanding conservatives around here! Are you mad!? They’re all simple morons who have no logical reasons for believing as they do.
To retain your social media score, repeat this mindless chant:
“The cruelty is the point.”
The assholes I see here, and formerly on reddit, have never been around conservatives, have never spoken to them, have never travelled the blasted countryside. And no, arguing with dad over Fox news doesn’t count as “experience”.
There’s much to unpack. Not worth the effort? Repeat the quote above and wonder why they call us “ivory tower liberals”.
Thank you for some sane input. You can’t see me, but I’m standing on my chair applauding you.
And for anyone who wishes to try and understand, give this a pass. Still the finest thing I’ve read on the subject:
https://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-one-talks-about
I assume their answer would be some sort of afactual “it’s because we’re wasting all our money on illegals and gay libraries!”
When my mother talks about politics she’s not really interested in facts, policies, studies, or evidence. She’s speaking from an emotional perspective. It’s why topics and goalposts shift so easily in discussions with that kind of person. It’s like trying to follow dream logic. It makes sense to the person in it, but from the outside you’re left wondering why the chickens needed new gloves. They don’t even have hands.
I’d rather fight alongside republicans and democrats to make sure everyone lives in dignity and isn’t ground into dust by the gears of capitalism rather than pushing more red vs blue rhetoric. Fuck the politicians that put the south in the position it’s in today.
Easy there or you gonna be called a tankie.
i’d rather call it “unregulated capitalism”. because it seems to work pretty goddamn well in most european countries, and they regulate to what extent you can exploit your workers. unions are a good thing for everyone.
America’s capitalism is very well regulated. Its just a matter of regulated by and for whom.
That goes well for them because they exploit the global south.
The main criminals in Amazon forest are Norwegians and Canadians companies.
Capitalism is only good for them. The rest of the world is fucked because of it.
welp, time for the governments to have a few words and actually stop deforestation.
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The problem is both parties are in favor of grinding people into dust to keep the gears of capitalism going, so if anything they’re more likely to team up for the opposite reason.
Right, I should’ve been more clear. I think there’s a major disconnect between what the politicians want and what people want, but I think I was referring to the people when I said republicans and democrats in my previous message since so many people identify with either group for one reason or another. Not good phrasing on my part. It probably would’ve been easier to not use labels at all, but the main topic was about red v blue, so I stayed within that idea.
I also kinda need the hope of everyone getting sick of the late stage capitalism we live in and working together to fix it somehow. It’s a lot harder to imagine that becoming a reality if it’s only a handful of people going against everyone who calls themselves democrats or republicans.
Republicans don’t have policies. I know because i asked reddit’s conservative sub once and got down voted with no responses.
Or you could look at the 2020 Republican platform.
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Exactly.
lol I couldn’t tell if he was for or against the statement he was replying to but it turns out he just can’t read
I can read, I’m pointing out they have no platform.
2024 will be the same. “Whatever Trump wants.”
ah fair enough my bad
Removed by mod
Points gun at you: “I win”. /s
(you may think this is in poor taste but consider: isn’t this the actual, authentic reality of the situation?)
I think it is great tasting
Or maybe poorer (and often less educated people) tend to vote Republican?
Kind of a chicken and egg situation isn’t it? One begets the next and so on, but I guess I’m not sure which came first.
If poor people voted reactionary and reactionary policies made places wealthier, then the wealth and political allegiance of places in America would flip flop every few generations. We would expect that places like Texas are getting richer and places like New York are getting poorer, and that 100 years ago New York would have been poor and right wing, while Texas would have been rich and left wing.
But if poor people voted reactionary and reactionary policies made people poorer, then we would see that poor places stayed poor, reactionary places stayed reactionary even through the party switch, and the wealth inequality between reactionary states and progressive states would increase over time.
Which of these two results do you think is true?
Maybe neither?
I would say less educated people tend to vote reactionary. But reactionary policies do not necessarily make people poorer.
Sure they do. For example, there’s the problem of suburbs. A suburb requires more roads, more buses, more plumbing, more electrical, more broadband, more land, more water use, and more energy per person than a medium or high density neighbourhood, like brownstones or terrace houses. Water is wasted on lawns and energy is spent on heating and cooling because isolated buildings have more places to leech heat. And that’s in addition to all the problems of simply taking up more space. Suburbs cost the taxpayer more money, and they’re also bad for small businesses, because people in cars are less likely to spend money at independent grocery stores, cafes, thrift shops, and etc. They visit big box stores and franchises, which leech money out of the community. Everything about the economics of suburbs is a disaster.
So why does America have suburbs? Because Americans are racist. When segregation ended, they wanted a way to avoid living next to black people. And pricing them out of living in these expensive suburbs was a great way to do segregation without technically doing segregation.
more uneducated than poor, i would vote democrat if it meant i can make a bit of extra money at my job.
Also, 11 of the 20 most violent crime ridden cities are in red states. The city with the most violent crime is St. Louis, which is in Missouri, a very solidly red state.
Number 20 on that list? Republican favorite boogeyman Chicago. Safer than Nashville, Tennessee. Safer than Anchorage, Alaska. Safer than Indianapolis, Indiana. Safer than Little Rock, Arkansas. But I suppose those are all “blue” cities.
Yeah, republicans are very dumb.
I don’t think you can draw a direct line from the statistics to economic policy. It may be more true that the voters for the Republican party are less educated and more rural in those counties
Poverty drives people to the right, maybe?
I find that the opposite is true. Poor people tend to lean left. It’s just that conservatives don’t take care of their impoverished populations, so the whole area rots economically from the bottom up.
One example that hits particularly close to my home is how republicans are vehemently against raising the minimum wage. But they also can’t figure out why fast food joints and grocery stores around here can’t keep enough staff to stay open.
Nobody can afford to live on 7.25/hr anymore. But republicans here will never acknowledge that. So our economy suffers.
Poverty drives people to political disaffection. Low-Income voters are the least likely to vote. Less than 30% describe themselves as liberal or somewhat liberal.
Au contraire - poverty drives people to the left, historically.
There are other factors at play here, covered by others in great detail; the most important being that rural areas (that are obviously poorer than business centers) are more conservative, and with that, Republican.
It should, shouldn’t it. Perhaps I mean it makes people more receptive to right wing rhetoric.
I would reckon poverty makes people more easily manipulated, because they are desperate.
It’s all about love languages. Gotta find a way to love people the way they want/understand love.
