See, this is the narrative that I don't agree with: that your "rednecks" are fucked. I'm 40 minutes, tops, from Trumpistan. And you know what I see when I get out there? Brand new $60k trucks in the driveway. Huge multi-acre pieces of land. A pole barn workshop with an extra-tall door on one side so the 35-foot RV with three pop-outs can be parked out of the elements. I have a very good friend who is an honest-to-god Iowa corn farmer. Gun-toting, Republican-supporting, get the gummint outta my business... but give me my corn subsidy, or I'm going broke, real-life American farmer. And these people are being told day in and day out, by their own personal wing of the nutjob right-wing media, that they have it HARD. And they are suffering. And other people in America have it better than they do. And, for all intents and purposes, I do NOT have it "better" than they do. In fact, being reliant on the city for things like power and water makes me distinctly more susceptible to shakeups in the system. I understand coal mining is down, but it has been down ever since machines were brought in to do the majority of the work that they'd previously relied on dumb muscle to do. Same with auto manufacturing. Same for the majority of the physical labor jobs out there... that work is going away. And that's got nothing to do with the liberal left-coasties like me. That's because Bill Walton decided he could make more money if he bought cheapass chinese-made shit, and sold it back to the people who just lost their jobs to... cheap chinese manufacturing. Are there people who are screwed out there, and have a right to be pissed? Sure. But it sure as fuck isn't the people who painted "TRUMP" on the side of their $40k pole barn, that covers their $250k RV, and $30k of shop equipment. Fundamentally, you're talking about people who did what they were told for 30 years and are now fucked.
There ain't no 60K trucks in driveways out here except for in the bigger cities. Once you get out of the ring suburbs? Poverty and meth, crumbling roads, old farmers trying to hang on and schools that exist because they are cheaper than prisons. The barber I go to was not able to make it into work last weekend because he had to drive into the big city to ask for a handout from the state to fix the 75 year old historical building he is in due to not enough business to make enough money to fix it himself. He makes enough to pay the taxes and buy food while his wife works somewhere nearby. That was a lovely conversation to have as I was getting a shave with a straight razor on my neck. And all they do is watch Fox News, owned by a foreigner (but don't tell them that) who see Trump as the only one who gives a damn about their plight. And all the problems are the liberal commie minorities in the big city, so vote republican to keep them under control. Every time I go out into the sticks, I get a little more concerned that something very awful is about to go down. Then I get back into the liberal bubble of the city and think everything is going to be fine. The only major candidate, IMO, that cared about the plight of whole swaths of the county that are in deep, deep trouble was Sanders. We all know how that went down. The people who grow our food are getting older, the kids worth investing in are getting the fuck out as fast as possible, and huge swaths of rural fly over country are in deep, deep trouble. Rural people on the coasts at least have the tax base of the bigger cities to suckle on and eek out the next decade or two while this all shakes itself out and leaves something completely different in its wake. Kentucky? Indiana? Arkansas? West Virginia? They do not have the luxury of a Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Dallas, NYC etc as a buffer to buy time. There is no money for infrastructure that is not shoveled into corruption, the schools all suck (and I say that as someone that does outreach... thank science for the internet), they can't build new roads when the population is declining and with it losing the justifications for adding to what they got. The only thing going for a lot of the smaller rural areas is that housing is cheap as the old people die and nobody is moving into the now vacant housing. (2000 square foot house next to my friends, 10 blocks from "downtown" is 40K). But buying a house out here is an anchor, and there are a lot of people who are waiting for that big chance to get the hell out of here and go... well elsewhere, out there, where the jobs are, to school, anywhere but here. Young people work their asses off, get a wad of cash and leave instead of buying homes and land and so on. All the farm equipment I see on the way out to the sticks is old, I cannot think about the last time I saw new equipment working on a field. I get the same vibe of how the urban ghettos of the 70's acted. Nobody had any hope, nobody could buy houses, cash and employment was transitory so they all bought fancy clothes and Cadillacs when they had cash to spend instead of investing in housing education etc. If you manage to get lucky and have 20K in your hand, you buy something for the now because looking around? Fuck tomorrow. I say all this as a guy who makes twice median income, has a shit ton of savings and plans on retiring at 55. I have a thought here, somewhere, but it is late and I need to get to bed. Maybe in the AM will expand on this.
No need to expand on it, my friend. You fucking nailed it right here: As Steve Jobs would've said, "Boom." I get the same vibe of how the urban ghettos of the 70's acted. Nobody had any hope, nobody could buy houses, cash and employment was transitory so they all bought fancy clothes and Cadillacs when they had cash to spend instead of investing in housing education etc. If you manage to get lucky and have 20K in your hand, you buy something for the now because looking around? Fuck tomorrow.
Worked out really well in the 70's-90's I have thoughts, they ran way freaking long, working on editing now.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appalachia#Poverty_in_Appalachia There's a fun read. I'm having a hard time looking shit up on my phone at the moment, but if memory serves me right post-civil war economy in The South was utter shit for decades and the scars of resentment from that run deep as fuxk too. Yet here you are criticizing farmers and ranchers for taking subsidies when not doing so could repeat past economic mistakes in our history. Droughts, floods, and plagues if insects ruined agricultural economies in the late 1800s and early 1900s and with global warming, we might see that repeat again. It's cool though. Rednecks in Appalachia, the deep south, and the flyover states all backed the wrong ponies. Their come uppance is obviously well deserved, like hat one guy who got hooked on heroine because his doctor told him percocet is totally safe to take long term. Obviously people that make grevious mistakes, not matter the circumstances and motivation behind them, are beyond deserving of help.
Man, I wish there were some sort of magic wand solution we could wave over these areas and just make shit better for the people there... Appalachia, specifically, but also Detroit, and Arkansas, and ... yeah. There are a lot of places the modern world has just left behind. In the West, when the gold/silver/gypsum mine stopped producing, everybody in the town just left and went somewhere else. They followed the work. But when the need for coal dropped dramatically - and will only continue dropping - what is a coal miner to do? Move to Philadelphia and open a sandwich shop? I mean... shit... generations of families have worked in these industries that are drying up. Family members are buried in the back yard, in some cases. Do we really expect these people to just up and move somewhere else? No ... but ... the US doesn't have a guaranteed base income, like some countries, so these people need jobs. But the only job in town has left, and taken all the paychecks with it, so the other jobs in town collapse as well. And then you have Appalachia... a stunningly beautiful bit of the country with no way for people living there to support themselves. It's a problem that requires a long term effort, across multiple disciplines, and the collaborative effort of communities, government, and people from all over the country, not just the rurally dispossessed. My friend Annie Ford is a fiddle player from Appalachia. Grew up in a clapboard house with an outhouse out back, and they had to carry water from the stream. Serious 1880's lifestyle. Now she has her own touring band, lives in Seattle, and has a modern house. We talk about the juxtaposition sometimes, but it is just such a hard life for me to even conceive of... there's not a lot of common ground or experience. Then there's my friend Brett who had parents that got tired of the rat race, and moved out into the backwoods of Idaho, and lived off the land and what they could build with their hands. He and I have talked a lot about that life - and the first time he saw a computer, etc - and how different things are now for him... he's does telephone tech support for a high tech company, has two motorcycles, an apartment in the middle of town, and is a big time gamer. So ... what then? ... we de-populate the rural areas and move people to the cities so they can get office jobs? This is not a simple problem, and there are not simple solutions to it. (But, back to my original point, that's what the Republicans sell: simple (idiotic) solutions that don't actually solve anything for the people they pretend to be speaking for. Oh wait! I know! All the poor in Appalachia can be a part of a new WPA program, like Hoover Dam, and build Donald's wall! Yeah, right...) There are no easy solutions to these problems, and it will take collaboration of people, government parties, and a seriously long-term vision of 20-50 years, to see any changes... IF anyone can get people together on a plan, instead of worrying about who is marrying who, or whether the Confederate flag should be taken down...