13 ms·

The lack of opportunity in rural America is disheartening to say the least. I feel the election of Trump is a direct reflection of the lack of empathy people ha

• nickthemagicman 10y ago
  Absolutely rediculous. The RURAL STATE populaces vote Republicans into every major STATE office who then ravage all safety nets and education in the name of cutting taxes... Brownback, Jindal, Walker... The "cities" have nothing to do with any of it. The rural states believe that education is liberal brainwashing so there's no way to help them join the knowledge economy. And it perpetuates because education keeps one from being susceptible to propaganda...
• dredmorbius 10y ago
  That lack of empathy runs both ways. There are also cities which offer little by way of opportunity and have their own problems with crime and addiction. Density means that, political will and money offered, treatment may be slightly more effective. It can still be an awfully bleak world.
  • jbhatab 10y ago
    Absolutely. The cities have their own issues, but I don't know anyone in rural America that can't empathize with not having opportunity and being poor. Now when I talk to people in the city, I've heard so many things such as 'Can we all agree that America is disenfranchised by the electoral college?' or 'Isn't it crazy how trump supporters care about the borders so much?'. Where do you think the cheap heroin that is killing my friends is coming from? And the most frustrating part is I have to sit there completely silent while I think about my best friend who has died and come back to life multiple times from heroin. Why? Because I'll be labeled a trump supporter and potentially lose business. Even though my point has nothing to do with Trump at all and I'm only thinking about my friends. I can't think of a single scenario where brining up people in cities that have no opportunity is unacceptable. If anything it's the opposite, and people in rural America know it can get much more violent in the cities. They respect that fact.
    • karmelapple 10y ago
      I'm a little confused - pointing out that drug problems exist, and people are hurting, in rural places will get you branded something negative? I'm from a relatively rural area, yet I do not feel uncomfortable talking about my experience growing up and what I know of where I spent my formative years.
      • jbhatab 10y ago
        When I say that border security may help reduce cartels, I am labeled a Trump supporter and it does not go well in the Bay Area. You can look up the stats on where the heroin is coming from, and I've personally seen the heroin importation come through Manchester in New Hampshire and make its ways to smaller towns.
• M_Grey 10y ago
  It's true, but I wonder how many of these "suicides" were with pills, or of people addicted to pills. It's not a shock that the places that were hardest hit by opioid addiction, then hardest hit by ham-handed attempts to curb the flood of said addiction, are racking up high numbers of suicides.
  • jbhatab 10y ago
    It's all connected. I don't know many of the people that have been hit hard by heroin that didn't touch pills as well. It's a n issue with multiple fronts including pharma and heroin. But more importantly than any of this in my opinion is what pushes them all to continuously do drugs. Lack of opportunity. My home town friends are landscapers, farmers, movers, people that mow your lawns, etc. How can they move from that to adapting to this new society and what's America's plan to help these people?
  • lighttower 10y ago
    The suicide rate includes only confirmed suicides, most common way in America is self inflicted gunshot. However this is because it excludes overdoses unless they leave a suicide note. If they don't leave a note those are classified as accidental death by the coroner.
    • M_Grey 10y ago
      Thanks for that information, it definitely restricts my concerns to motives for suicide, rather than accidental overdose.
• olivermarks 10y ago
  I can't begin to say how profound I found your comment. thank you. I live in the SF bay area but I am acutely aware of how separate and different inland CA is to the wealthy coastal areas. I can't begin to imagine what the rest of the US experience is in these bizarre times. There is such a strong societal bifurcation going on right now and more importantly such damage being done to confidence levels it is hard to imagine what society in non affluent areas will look like in a few years time...
• loeg 10y ago
  "People in the cities" (who tend to be strongly left-leaning) literally want to give money to the less well-off people in rural areas to help support them. It's the right-leaning candidates who are opposed to wealth redistribution. Who is missing empathy for whom? From my perspective, the fiscal conservatives from the rural areas have relatively less empathy than vice versa.
  • jbhatab 10y ago
    Giving money is not the issue in rural America. It's not social welfare such as health insurance or anything of the sort. If anything I'd say there's a lot of disgust with how many rural Americans live off the system. It's lack of opportunity. What is your answer to that? Tesla isn't opening up a factory in New Hampshire anytime soon. There certainly isn't as many amazing colleges such as UC berkley there. Throwing money into unemployment and welfare won't solve the problem at all. Trump literally said I will fight to get you jobs back. Ignore if that is true. Ignore if he is an idiot. Ignore if that works in the long term. He was the only candidate that actually said a single idea that was directly aimed at helping them.
    • w1ntermute 10y ago
      > It's lack of opportunity. What is your answer to that? Tesla isn't opening up a factory in New Hampshire anytime soon. In generations past, Americans picked up and moved to where the opportunity was, rather than staying put. Why is it unreasonable to expect the same now? The economy has permanently changed - those jobs are never coming back. On the other hand, moving is far, far easier in 2017 than it was for those on the Oregon Trail or the Mayflower.
      • mc32 10y ago
        Presumably the cost of living in cities with growing economies disincentivizes poor people from moving.
        • tomrod 10y ago
• dtmmax33 10y ago
  You can just as easily replace "rural America" with "black America" and make the same exact point. Lack of empathy goes both ways.
  • pmoriarty 10y ago
    Not to mention Muslim Americans, who are the boogymen du jure these days. Or any number of other minorities in America, like gays. All of these are not only not empathized with by Republicans, whose base and support comes largely from rural America, but actively hated, discriminated against, and oppressed.
    • hueving 10y ago
      >but actively hated, discriminated against, and oppressed. Have you ever spoken to a Republican? For a group that 'actively hates' black people, don't you think its a little strange this man led the RNC [1]? 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Steele https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Steele
      • TuringNYC 10y ago
        You've found one lone minority amongst the GOP. For every minority you find, you'll find 100 of these GOP types like Representative King, a prominent Iowa Republican http://edition.cnn.com/2017/03/13/politics/steve-king-babies-tweet-cnntv/ http://edition.cnn.com/2017/03/13/politics/steve-king-babies...
        • hueving 10y ago
          And how does this statement in your article fit into your world view? >House Speaker Paul Ryan, also a Republican, "clearly disagrees" with King's comments, a spokeswoman told reporters. Paul Ryan is hardly a fringe in the Republican Party, he's the speaker of the house. You're going to need some actual stats showing 100:1 is the ratio of racists to non-racists. Anything else is conjecture.
      • Eridrus 10y ago
• thecpphorse 10y ago
  "they forget why the electoral college was created. To help rural America from being completely ignored while the cities with denser populations sway the votes towards their issues" The Electoral College is rigged the way it is because otherwise the slave states would not have joined the union. That is the only reason. There were more voting white men in the north and more non-voting slaves in the south. The delegates to the constitutional convention from the south new that the north would outnumber them in direct elections so they invented the electoral college system. It should have been scrapped after the civil war.
• spectrum1234 10y ago
  As someone who hates politics I love this response.
  • ajross 10y ago
    I expect you would, because it "feels" right and confirms your worldview about poor whites being "just as bad off" as poor urban minorities. It's unfortunately wrong about almost everything. I know you "hate politics", but please look this stuff up. We've long since run out of time for people who "hate politics" to have the luxury of ignorance.
    • hueving 10y ago
      When telling someone something is wrong, you should provide links so they can actually learn something. Otherwise it's not actually going to change anyone's view.
      • pasquinelli 10y ago
        Pfft, like that makes a difference. People have every ability to look stuff up themselves if they're so interested. If they don't it must be they aren't that interested. Why's that going to change because some random person online, with whom you disagree, gives you a direct link?
    • deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    • jbhatab 10y ago
      Minorities in the cities face major issues and there are large movements aimed specifically at helping with them and to show their empathy. A major one was black lives matter. I think there needs to be more for different races such as Muslim and Latin descents. But where is the support for a large piece of America. Rural America. It is a LARGE piece of America, even larger than black America. And unfortunately that gap in empathy was filled by Trump, which places us where we are now. And please don't mix that statement up with me liking Trump. I understand how that could be read that way. I am just thinking about my friends in rural America that are facing very real problems and I care about them.
• jamesthesnake12 10y ago
  Would you say the situation is worse than the south side of Chicago? It seems really weird that we ignore problems in cities for decades and then suddenly when people start to move to them they are suddenly the crutch of the rich. What about people forced out of cities due to genterifcation? Not saying rural places don't deserve love but they have been getting fetishzied like crazy lately
• rayiner 10y ago
  > People in cities have the privilege of wealth and the ability to direct America in a way rural America doesn't. Have you ever lived in a city? Tell black people in Baltimore that they have "the ability to direct America in a way rural America doesn't." And speaking of the ability to direct America--each person's vote in New Hampshire counts about double what it does in Maryland or New York, so there's that. > The issues they face in rural America are completely ignored. In what way? We spend huge amounts of money in this country on infrastructure for rural areas. A higher percentage of eligible rural residents take advantage of programs like food stamps than in urban areas. And we spend almost $30 billion dollars per year on agricultural subsidies--which go almost entirely to rural areas. That's before we even get to wealth redistribution within states. Rural areas in most states are heavily subsidized by tax revenue raised in urban areas in those states. (Which is fine, of course--urban areas tend to be richer and should carry more of the tax burden. But to say rural areas get ignored is laughable.) > But go to a town ravaged by heroin and lack of financial growth and bring up transgender bathrooms to them. They will be baffled by your lack of knowledge of how their lives operate. That's an entirely self-inflicted problem. Nobody would be talking about transgender bathroom rights if people (disproportionately, people in rural America) weren't trying to ban certain people from using certain bathrooms.
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  • jamesthesnake12 10y ago
    It's weird how these are problems in cities but they are also hurt by the EC as well!
  • jbhatab 10y ago
    Absolutely. The cities have their own issues, but I don't know anyone in rural America that can't empathize with not having opportunity and being poor. I can't think of a single scenario where brining up people in cities that have no opportunity is unacceptable. If anything it's the opposite, and people in rural America know it can get much more violent in the cities. They respect that fact. Now we spend a huge amount on infrastructure, yet if you actually go to rural America you will feel a large lack of hope. There is no place for these people in where America is going. They know the infrastructure funding is temporary. Do you think these people don't know robots are coming? THEY DO!!! So they feel like their entire lives are being threatened and they want to adapt. They really do. But what solutions are being offered? Are we actively trying to level the educational playing field between cities and rural America? Are we trying to enable high tech companies to pop up in smaller states? I don't see it. 'That's an entirely self-inflicted problem. Nobody would be talking about transgender bathroom rights if people (disproportionately people in rural America) weren't being assholes about what bathroom people use.' You clearly have never been to rural America. That is a very ignorant statement. There are many people in rural America that respect all types of people. Put yourself in the shoes of an American that had had a farmer for a dad that was uneducated making less than 40k. You don't even know the concept of Google being a real thing. You've never met a facebook employee or google employee. Or hell, even an Exxon employee. You're local dirt sales company is one of the hottest companies in your town. Your parents don't know how to help you get into college. What are you doing to help this person?
• pmoriarty 10y ago
  City folk's contempt for rural folk and vice versa is hardly a new phenomenon and would be unlikely to explain the recent increase in rural suicides.
• moultano 10y ago
  Why do you describe these people as if being rural is something inherent about them rather than just where they happen to be living? People move. People have been moving to cities worldwide in the largest numbers ever seen in history because that's where opportunity is now. It's much more realistic to create policies that enable them to move to where the jobs are than to reverse that trend.
• colmvp 10y ago
  Those elite, privileged liberal rubes in coastal cities primarily voted for a candidate who wanted to retain social programs that certainly helped those in rural areas. How many people in those rural areas voted for a party and leader who ran on repealing access to health care and social programs, who have no qualms about trying to reduce funding to Planned Parenthood and Meals on Wheels, and use the savings to provide significant tax cuts to the super rich and building a wall that everyone knew Americans would have to pay for? I mean, even Tucker Carlson effectively said to Trump, "The counties who voted for you will do far worse under your plan" and the Presidents response was "Oh, I know..."
  • jbhatab 10y ago
    Just like the people who support planned parenthood trying to protect themselves, rural america voted for a person who had their interests in mind even if there were consequences. They were looking out for themselves because people in the cities certainly weren't.
    • colmvp 10y ago
      I have nothing directly to gain from PP, Meals on Wheels, Medicaid, or the dozens of social programs that I don't have access to because of my gender, age, and income. I support them because as a society we all benefit when others can get access to help. In the case of PP, more than half of Planned Parenthood health centers are in rural or medically underserved areas. In the case of Medicaid, the ACA expanded coverage and federal funding to millions of Americans in rural America, specifically to states that enrolled. The states that chose to enroll experienced a decrease in patients skipping medications due to cost, a decline in difficulty paying medical bills and an increase in regular doctor visits for chronic illnesses. Their rural communities also had a lower rate of hospital closures as compared to rural communities in non-enrolled states. It is mind-blogging to read stories/interviews from rural Americans who benefited from this expansion, and yet in the same breath, will insult Obama and talk about repeal-and-replace, as if somehow the ACA didn't directly benefit them.
• jolux 10y ago
  >Do I think transgender deserve equal rights? Absolutely. But go to a town ravaged by heroin and lack of financial growth and bring up transgender bathrooms to them. They will be baffled by your lack of knowledge of how their lives operate. And what about the trans people in those communities who are fighting against the grain of their culture to survive another day? What about their suicides? This is of course "intersectionality 101" but you can't just write off transgender rights as something only privileged people need. Trans people still commit suicide at far higher rates than the rest of the population (looking at these numbers, especially in rural areas) and they need rights no matter where they live.
• vinceguidry 10y ago
  > they forget why the electoral college was created. To help rural America from being completely ignored while the cities with denser populations sway the votes towards their issues. It's hard to speak with any authority about the human nature underlying politics, especially in a historical sense, as data about people's motives is non-existent, but the Electoral College is way easier to understand when you realize the elephant in the room that 18th century America was grappling with at the time. Once you understand the sheer weight that slavery pressed down with on the entire global order, you can see what made the College necessary. Slave states simply would not willingly march into a political system in which slavery could be made illegal out of their control. They wanted a safety measure by which the will of the people could be disregarded in order to maintain the status quo. The idea was that if the country ever really elected an anti-slave President, the College would be able to step in and set aside the election in favor of a brokered deal, the same way that these days anti-Brexiters were hoping that the government could use the rules to avoid having to actually carry it out. The slave state power brokers would work out a deal with the College electors directly if it came to that. The College was sold to the power brokers as a way to keep their assets safe and producing, and to the rest of the country the way bald-facedly undemocratic measures are usually sold to the unsuspecting, as a way to increase democracy. In the end, it didn't work. Lincoln won by such a landslide that a negotiated Presidency wasn't in the cards. We keep the Electoral College around to this day as a vestige of our old ways. It's rather interesting that the states seceded immediately following Lincoln's election. His platform was anti-expansionist, not necessarily abolitionist. I suspect the tide in America simply turned towards war and there was nothing anybody could do to stop it. Much like how pre-WW1 Europe was a tinderbox ready for the first spark, mid-19th century America was just itching for a fight.
• losteric 10y ago
  I think the root cause of nearly every American societal issue is our education system. The foundation of a healthy democracy is an educated electorate. Yet, as a nation, we refuse to acknowledge or invest in public schools as a foundational insistution... We still see them as a cross between daycare and basic workforce preparation. The public school systems need to be responsible for growing the next generation of American citizens. I find it absurd that most fresh high school graduates wouldn't be able to pass our citizenship test, much less understand principles like personal finance or critical/rational thinking. Without those core mental frameworks, many people end up trapped by their own inability to rationally analyze their situation and plan for the future. Drug addiction, crippling debt, suicide, high unemployment, the rise of demagogues, these are all symptoms of a populace that is ill equipped to deal with the modern world. Unfortunately, education is also one of the hardest things to repair in a crumbling democracy... a large investment in non-voters that takes over a decade to yield dividend is a hard sell. The worse things get, the more we focus on the short term, leading voters towards snake oil politicians that further down the nation.
• Veratyr 10y ago
  > While they cite that the popular vote strongly favored Hilary, they forget why the electoral college was created. To help rural America from being completely ignored while the cities with denser populations sway the votes towards their issues. Do you have evidence for this? It doesn't make much sense to me as the population of even rural states is still largely concentrated in cities but I'm not sure how recent a development this is.
• nkrisc 10y ago
  People living in rural areas only make up about 14% of the population in the U.S. They actually have outsized power already. https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/rural-economy-population/population-migration/ https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/rural-economy-population/pop...
• hn-VZ4N8hcYCjKw 10y ago
  Perhaps rural America should cease voting against its own interests time and time again. There's this onus on urban dwellers to "understand" rural America. Where's the reciprocity? Rural America has a structural advantage in the US Government. It receives billions of dollars in subsidies which are solely for Rural America. It votes consistently against policies which would benefit all Americans, because someone believes Urban Americans are not Real Americans. I'm done with empathy. I've moved on. Rural America can solve its own problems.
  • colmvp 10y ago
    I think this is why at times I have a hard time empathizing. It's one thing to prefer having lower taxes and allowing the market to sort out itself. To want to enforce immigration more stringently. To want to have states operate more independently from the federal government. There are strong arguments for either side. But so many of the representatives seek their own benefit at the cost of the country and own constituents, only to then blame the other side on falsities. The ACA is one prime example of something that was completely mischaracterized by a huge portion of the Republicans who misinformed their constituents on its effect. You can see this by rural Americans living in enrolled states who personally benefited from joining Medicaid but then elected to vote for Trump partially in the hopes of repealing and replacing the ACA. And this is further exemplified by Republican representatives who rallied to repeal the ACA over and over again, but are now hesitant to actually go through with it because of the realization that a good portion of their constituents are covered and benefiting from it.
    • hn_throwaway_99 10y ago
      There have been a lot of articles recently highlighting poor rural Trump voters who are shocked and surprised that a lot of programs they depend upon (Meals on Wheels, Medicaid) are now on the chopping block. It's really, really difficult to have empathy in these situations. Similarly, as a gay man who saw nothing but disgust and contempt from rural areas for decades (and still does), and an active crusade to demonize me and take away my rights, NOW the argument is that we don't have enough compassion for rural areas? As much as I want to be logical about this, the emotional part of me is just going "Seriously, fuck off. If you want things to get better, move out of your ass-backwards shithole town like I did 20 years ago and find a better place to live."
• oedenfield 10y ago
  I greatly up in rural Ohio and this is one of the best comments I've seen here. Well said.
• lkrubner 10y ago
  I am sick of this line of thought: "a direct reflection of the lack of empathy people have from cities have for rural America" When I was young, in the 1990s, I thought it was crucial to understand what was going on the Red states. I grew up in New Jersey, but I spent several years trying to help the Red states. I joined a voter registration drive and spent a year of my life in Louisiana, going door to door, talking to people about their beliefs, religion and politics. I sat in people's kitchens while they gave me coffee, and I listened to their concerns. Many of my friends did something similar. Later, I was briefly active with a labor union in North Carolina, trying to help the poorest workers unite and fight for a living wage. I felt strongly that anyone who was willing to work hard for 40 hours a week should be paid enough to rise above poverty. At the same time, I was disheartened by the deep racism that I ran into everywhere. The white workers were loath to create an alliance with the black workers, and this racism undermined every political coalition that might have raised wages and ended poverty in the South. Nowadays, I see things very differently. Nowadays, I ask myself, why is it always the idealists from the Blue States going to the Red States and trying to understand their concerns? Why isn't it ever the other way around? Why don't the best-and-the-brightest people from the Red States travel to the Blue States and try to understand our concerns? There is something paternalistic about thinking that the Blue States always need to figure out what the Red State folk are worried about. The whole attitude, of us Blue State people going to help the Red States -- it's as if the people of the Red states are spoiled children and those of us in the Blue states need to cater to their whims. There is no rational basis for this ongoing deference of the Blue States to the Red States. And in electing Trump, I feel that the Red States have declared a quiet war on the Blue States. So my attitude now is far less compassionate than it used to be. Nowadays, I no longer wonder how we might better understand the needs of the Red states. Nowadays, I only wonder how their political power can be destroyed, so that their effect on national politics can be nullified as much as possible.
  • charles-salvia 10y ago
    I really sympathize with this, honestly. At a certain point, as I'm working really hard to debug a segmentation fault late at night, and then catching the subway early in the morning, the idea of having to sympathize with a bunch of welfare-receiving meth addicts* who keep voting themselves into oblivion really strains my patience. But think of it this way: forget about "rural vs urban", and think of it as a problem with education levels. Rural areas tend to be, on average, much less educated and far more religious. Lack of education has a corrosive effect on democracy, because it garbles the decision making process of entire voting blocs. So why should Blue State people take the initiative to care? Precisely because we are the more educated (on average) and the more cosmopolitan. When engaging with any population that is sufficiently less educated and more provincial, a more educated person is very likely to become frustrated with all the self-destructive behavior observed. Think of a first-world humanitarian organization trying to build schools or hospitals in an impoverished third world country. They may encounter all kinds of resistance based around irrational fears, superstitions, shamanism, and other self-destructive world views. It's really the same thing that happens when Obama tries to make healthcare more widely affordable and available, only to run up against widespread resistance based around conspiracy theories, tribalism and close-mindedness. (It also doesn't help that some of the highly educated people in power regularly exploit the fears of the lesser educated for their own political gains.) But if you think about the situation as a problem of education, rather than "urban vs. rural", it becomes easier to avoid losing your sympathy when you encounter this sort of self-destructive behavior among the less-educated. * it's a joke, relax.
• pnathan 10y ago
  The thing to do is move. That is what my friends who have made it did. That is what my family did. That is what my in-laws did, and their parents did. That is what I did. We have phenomenal ways to keep our connection with friends and family alive: use them and move.
• VonGuard 10y ago
  Lack of opportunity plays right back into lack of good education. Your family made up for it at home. Most do not. Go to the south and you see this in action every second of every day. The south hates education, hates social services, hates them thar books that don't have Jesus in them. And, lo and behold, Alabama is like 49th in education, but it's also super high in people who are on permanent disability and Oxy. Why? Because the politicians in Alabama get elected for saying "Jesus," and the first thing they do when elected is gut education and social services, making the problem worse, breeding more deeply ignorant people, who then vote for yet another Jesus hugger who cuts their social services even further. There's a reason these states are fucked. It's their own faults. City folk have tried to help for centuries. Country folk generally don't want that city folk help, especially because it ain't coming with Jesus attached.
  • jboggan 10y ago
    Speaking as a native Georgian who got an excellent public school education, undergraduate and post-graduate education at Georgia universities, you really have no idea what you are talking about. I am not a Christian although I would say 90% of my neighbors were and you are completely missing the mark in analyzing any of the problems the country or the South has. Your attitude is exactly what the parent comment is talking about. I was in a small pilot program of 6 middle school students who were bussed to the high school to take advanced math. 3 of us ended up regularly using heroin before graduation. I have a lot of good explanations for this having watched them descend and none of them line up with reduced education, social services, or ignorant Bible-thumpers. Short answer: end the phenomena of latchkey kids. The main difference in the kids who flourished and moved up in their lives and those who floundered was the presence of a stay-at-home parent in addition to one with a steady income that supported the family. The main difference in the good and bad school districts in my area were the number of full time parents that were available to participate in the school, extra-curricular activities, and parent-teacher organizations. Failing that (because the two income family is seemingly required in many areas), line up the public school schedule with the parents' work and commute schedules. For some context, here's an award winning documentary about a high school in an adjacent county having a massive syphilis outbreak while I was in school: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yux7hVgDPa8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yux7hVgDPa8
• panzagl 10y ago
  I can't believe no one has stated the obvious solution to rural lack of opportunity, the one that worked until 40 years ago- reinstate the draft.
• msabalau 10y ago
  Lack of opportunity in NH? The unemployment rate in New Hampshire is 3.8% It was two and change last year. I grew up in NH. it's a small place. No suitable job in your town? Drive. You know what would help with addiction? Universal health care, and treating addiction like a disease. Who has supported that: the types of politicians who get elected in cities, and who people in rural areas vote against. Rural issues being ignored? Hillary's website is still up. Anyone with a browser can see the white papers on rural aid, the economy, drugs. The 65 policy fact sheets. 112,000 words of policy, compared to 9000 on Trump's website. Of course, one might look at deeds, rather than words. What's in the news this week? "Trump slashes billions from rural programs." Perhaps you think that the policies on the left are wrongheaded. That's fine. But to say that the politicians on the left ignore rural America is to lie. As you note, the electoral college exists to give unjust and immoral over-representation to rural interests. And the nomination process for presidential candidates starting out in lily white and rural Iowa and New Hampshire. And of course, a small town in New Hampshire has all sorts of opportunities for local political participation: selectman and school boards, and even in a small town of 5000 souls two or three state reps. It is not the fault of people in cities that people in small towns don't use these tools and advantages to elect people who will put in place policies to make their lives better. People in cities are not stopping rural people from taking care of themselves. Rural people are ruining their lives on their own.
• pimmen 10y ago
  > "While they cite that the popular vote strongly favored Hilary, they forget why the electoral college was created. To help rural America from being completely ignored while the cities with denser populations sway the votes towards their issues." It doesn't prevent rural people from being trampled on by city people, it gives small states a disproportionate number of votes. Rhode Island and the District of Columbia are not rural, yet they get far more electoral votes per capita than California. And most of the rural population is actually located in the states that have fewer electoral college votes per capita, California is more than the Bay Area and South California. Plus, the larger states can still win by themselves, you only need the 17 largest states to win the election. However, because of the electoral college you only need 22% of the population to win too. And this wasn't what it was designed to do either, it was designed for two reasons; 1. Halfway between popular vote. This was the first time in modern history a population would have direct voting rights over the government so it was taken a bit slowly by having a buffer of electors that were free to cast the vote in anyway they wanted. 2. Handling the slavery issue. Slaves weren't citizens so they couldn't vote, but the South still wanted more influence since they represented more people than those eligible to vote. The solution was to have a base number of electoral votes even though the country had few eligible voters. The reason it stayed is because people believe the modern narrative of representing the rural population, but it's really because no one bothered to change it since US political tactics have evolved in this ecosystem. Why change a game you already know how to play?
  • _acme 10y ago
    D.C. citizens may have more electoral college votes per capita than California, but D.C. residents have no representation in the U.S. Senate.
• eeeeeeeeeeeee 10y ago
  I also came from a small town and got out as fast as I could. I moved to the city where there were more opportunities and people were more open in general about other human beings. You paint "city people" with a large brush. And it doesn't really align with the facts. Remember, our tax dollars from the cities are where GDP growth is happening. And we pay more for services than we get back. Many of these rural areas already benefit from huge subsidies from the federal government, especially the corn industry. Many of the southern red states get back more in federal dollars than they contribute. Hillary has even talked about re-education to new industry and funding for coal country, but they didn't care and instead bought the lie that Trump was going to bring back an industry already on its way out. So I suspect they want a handout. I do lose respect for any person who doesn't respect civil rights. I very much want to help these people, but they need to meet us half way in the 21st century. We are talking basic civil rights, to be recognized as a human. Recognition that climate change is not a hoax and humans are causing it. But even then, what are we supposed to do? Give them welfare? Why should we do that when they complain about others getting government help? Why are those good citizens deserving of help but the urban poor can be forgotten and denigrated constantly as lazy?
• bobcallme 10y ago
  > I grew up in New Hampshire in a very rural town with a population of 4,000. Rural life sat well with some of my peers, but I loved tech and quickly left through college enabled by my parents ability to point me in the right direction, which many of my peers didn't have. Just because other people don't go off in the same direction that you did, does not mean they went in the wrong direction. New Hampshire has a large number of tech companies and new ones are always being created. Anywhere there is people, there will always be opportunity; it just might need to be created or found. > I've enjoyed my life as I've explored more of America and ended up in the Bay... YOU and others like you are the problem. If you leave an area to find more "opportunities", then you are not helping to solve the lack of them in a given area. We are at the best point in time to create a company or startup almost anywhere in the US, but too many elitists pricks think they must go to the Bay Area or other major cities just so they get a nice payout. If you are looking for an easy out, then go help fund the next bubble but don't try to say that "..I would love to solve this problem..." when you and many like you had the power to do so.
• omni 10y ago
  > why the electoral college was created. To help rural America from being completely ignored while the cities with denser populations sway the votes towards their issues. This is a seriously revisionist interpretation of why the Electoral College was created. Almost everyone circa 1800 lived in rural areas[1], and it would be very generous to suggest the founders predicted the massive urbanization of the population more than a hundred years in advance. For a starting point on reading up on the arguments of the time, I'd recommend Federalist #68 [2] where Hamilton laid out his views. The Wikipedia article below also goes into counterpoints from his contemporaries. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1800_United_States_Census#City_populations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1800_United_States_Census#City... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_No._68 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_No._68
  • jbhatab 10y ago
    It was a major factor that they didn't want presidents appealing to only the most populous states. The fact that America was rural made that even more pressing back then because it was easier to spread information and there were more candidate than our two party system. It would have been easy with a populous vote to dominate a few key areas and biasing towards their issues and mindsets. From your own article, "Also, a successful candidate for the office of president would have to have the distinguished qualities to appeal to electors from many states, not just one or a few states: Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union, or of so considerable a portion of it as would be necessary to make him a successful candidate for the distinguished office of President of the United States" This was quoted in your article from Hamilton saying that they didn't want a president that appealed to a single state.
    • omni 10y ago
      Thanks for commenting! I was afraid nobody would see this since I got in to the thread pretty late. The quote is Hamilton wrapping up his argument in Federalist 68 (it's from the last paragraph not talking about the vice presidency). The point here doesn't support the decision of EC vs. direct voting, since no state had even close to a majority of the nation's population at the time. I read this more of him trying to remind the reader that putting thought into the election process at all is worthy of thought and effort.
• lightbyte 10y ago
  >While they cite that the popular vote strongly favored Hilary, they forget why the electoral college was created. To help rural America from being completely ignored while the cities with denser populations sway the votes towards their issues. This is completely false and baseless. When the electoral college was setup we did not have mega cities that contained most of the population. The Senate was setup to give less populous areas a larger voice. The House is currently setup to give less populous areas a larger voice due to the cap of reps. We don't need every single branch setup to give less populous areas a larger voice, cities currently have extremely low representation compared to rural areas in all regards.