Is condescending conservative anti-city rhetoric a bug or a feature?

[ApatheticAustrian]

Nothing new at all, but the general, global rural-urban polarization of 2016 and especially the EC-PV divide in the US highlighted this once again....

..... We hear all the time about the need to respect rural voters, to accept their values, their way of life, to understand their anger about anything and their sheer necessity to election "agents of change" like Mister Trump.

A Goal about which i, in general, agree, cause those geographical areas - even while in structural decline - won't go away, need all the help they can get, especially in times of economical change & increased competition and should concern all of us.

At the same time..... especially since the election, you can hear every day how out-of-touch big-city-inhabitants are, how far away they are mentally from the "real world" or the problems of their fellow Americans and......how outright un-american it would be, to bemoan the divide of EC/PV, cause then...... BIG CITIES WOULD DECIDE ALL ELECTIONS!!!!

Let alone the fact, that this is just wrong - the rural areas can also outvote cities in nearly every european nation - the US is not some kind of feudal place, where every state can also "collect" a specific number of inhabitants before "closing down". The people of the US are moving all the time, inside a state and between states and this is MEANT to change elections, otherwise the EC wouldn't be based on the population of each state and changed once every decade.

Life is changing, structures are changing and if more Americans want to live in cities, it should be their right without diminishing their practival voting power as some kind of "sick" power exchange. As i said above, i think it's absolutely important to improve the problems of rural America, especially in the poorest regions of Appalachia and the Mid-West, and i am - as a lefty - absolutely in favor of using federbal bucks to subsidize those in need. What i - on the other hand - detest is "subsidizing" rural areas in ways of political voting power.

A rural voter shouldn't be more important than a big city voter and just cause cities aren't looking so big on a map, rocks and trees still aren't voting and a human's life doesn't become less worthy, if there are a lot of them in one place. IMHO conservatives who are dismissing city voters, city values and the wish of urban voters for equal representation as un-constitutional or anti-rural are out of touch and not even interested in competing outside of their "safe spaces".

/Wall of Text

[The_Doctor]

I can't speak to Europe or elsewhere (I don't have the level of familiarity that I would need to speak authoritatively on that). But I would say clearly that both sides here disdain the base of the other side, and have geographically negative views as a result.

As a result, rural voters vote Republican, urban voters vote Democratic, and the suburbs split. All this polarization inherently means that neither coalition can get the upper hand over the other and the gridlock hardens. As a result we see high numbers of partisanship.

So there's kind of a mutual contempt.

[publicunofficial]

Scott Walker's main election strategy is to blame Wisconsin's problems on Milwaukee and Madison, and run up the marigin in rural areas. Most states where the liberal population is concentrated entirely in one or two cities have Republicans use a similar strategy.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

It's the conservative version of the way liberals (at least in the U.S.) often condescend and patronize folks in places like West Virginia.

[Roronoa D. Law]

It's more or less a loose term for "Black" because when people think of major city they equate it with blacks and other minorities. GA, IL, and NV all have hostile urban-rural divide and they also have high minority population in their urban centers. While states like UT, KS, OK and NE have similar situation with one/two large metros holding a majority of the state population but they lack a large minority population so their not as polarizing.   

[pbrower2a]

It's more or less a loose term for "Black" because when people think of major city they equate it with blacks and other minorities. GA, IL, and NV all have hostile urban-rural divide and they also have high minority population in their urban centers. While states like UT, KS, OK and NE have similar situation with one/two large metros holding a majority of the state population but they lack a large minority population so their not as polarizing.   

Don't forget Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.

[Mr. Reactionary]

It's the conservative version of the way liberals (at least in the U.S.) often condescend and patronize folks in places like West Virginia.

[Antonio the Sixth]

It's the conservative version of the way liberals (at least in the U.S.) often condescend and patronize folks in places like West Virginia.

[Tartarus Sauce]

It's the conservative version of the way liberals (at least in the U.S.) often condescend and patronize folks in places like West Virginia.

[Bismarck]

It's the conservative version of the way liberals (at least in the U.S.) often condescend and patronize folks in places like West Virginia.

[RINO Tom]

Scott Walker's main election strategy is to blame Wisconsin's problems on Milwaukee and Madison, and run up the marigin in rural areas. Most states where the liberal population is concentrated entirely in one or two cities have Republicans use a similar strategy.

I think you need to take a look at the county maps.  Walker ran up margins somewhere, but it wasn't the rural areas.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

It's more or less a loose term for "Black" because when people think of major city they equate it with blacks and other minorities. GA, IL, and NV all have hostile urban-rural divide and they also have high minority population in their urban centers. While states like UT, KS, OK and NE have similar situation with one/two large metros holding a majority of the state population but they lack a large minority population so their not as polarizing.   

This is true. Republicans talk about certain big cities because it immediately conjures up images of blacks rioting, gays walking around in assless chaps, and illegals raping in the minds of Conservative voters

When we talk about "Real America", it is not blacks that are excluded, but rather liberal whites from the city and inner suburbs who don't share real American values.

[Bandit3 the Worker]

This isn't completely new. When I was growing up in the '80s, rich suburbanites liked to portray city dwellers as dirty and rough.

[MasterJedi]

A lot of the people in my fiancé's family are rural or small town people. They have no idea how condescending they sound when they talk too. A lot of them buy the "if you go into the big city you'll get mugged, shot, killed and raped" mantra.

[Bojack Horseman]

Yes, that's the goal. Hating Chicago and inner cities is a thinly-veiled racist statement because we all know what color occupies the majority of major American cities.

[JA]

It's the conservative version of the way liberals (at least in the U.S.) often condescend and patronize folks in places like West Virginia.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

^
Though I don't entirely agree; I'd rather live in WV than in some Miami suburb where all the houses have bars on the window.

[Famous Mortimer]

In many ways, all politics throughout all history has just been about the mutual hatred between rural people and urban people, all ideology was just window dressing.

[Famous Mortimer]

Anyway, as to what to do about it, there's a number of things to consider.

First off, material conditions in the cities are not that much better than material conditions in rural areas. It's just that rural areas are more uniformly poor whereas urban areas have extremely rich people as well as extremely poor people and it throws off the averages.

Most of the disadvantages that come with living in a rural area are not a result of government neglect, they are inherent to being rural. Like, you live in the middle of nowhere. There's not a lot of stuff. You have to drive everywhere and gas costs a lot. There's no culture because there's no people because it's the middle of nowhere.

Ideally, people living in rural areas WOULD be moved out of those areas and into cities. Not necessarily mega-cities like New York but at least mid-sized cities without a couple hundred thousand people. There's really no justification for living anywhere else unless you are working as a geologist or something.

The problem is, most of our cities are already overcrowded. Adding more people will only make the problems of overcrowding worse.

What we need to do is straight up build new cities. We can do this by building public transport between cities we already have. People will cluster around the stops.

[Beet]

Conservatives have always been associated with the countryside and liberals with cities, since the English civil war. Even in the Syrian civil war, you can see how the government is stronger in cities and ISIS in the countryside. There have been times where this was reversed, such as William Jennings Bryan's campaigns, or Mao Zedong's or Pol Pot's campaigns, but usually the economic vanguard turns out to be the right side of history since the rise of the West. Thomas Frank idealized the countryside-left in What's the Matter with Kansas, but the truth is, Kansas has usually been a very Republican state since its inception, and it's populist detour in the late 19th century was the aberration of state history, not its vote for Dubya in '04.

Rural ascendancy seemed secure for Millenia before the rise of the West, as nomadic invaders always sacked the militarily hapless urban centers. The "sea people" destroyed the Hittite Empire and Egyptian Empire, then the Macedonians destroyed the Persian Empire, the Goths the Roman Empire. India faced constant invasion from the north, bringing in the Aryan race. Finally, the Mongols ended both the Islamic and Chinese golden ages simultaneously. The post-1500 urban ascendancy seemed impossible.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

Yes, it is very intentional and the people who do it are no worse than shitlib hipsters who bash small towns all the time.  Both these things are unhealthy for democracy because both sides have willfully isolated themselves from the rest of the country, and that reflects on a larger problem in society which is the bubble that people are living in.  Urban liberals have given up on even trying to appeal to so-called 'middle America' while conservatives use the "inner cities" as a racial scapegoat for all the country's problems.  It's a major reason why politics in this country is as polarized as it is now.  We aren't exposing ourselves to different ideas or perspectives, much less trying to reach out to new people and share our ideas and people have become less tolerant and more narrow-minded because of that.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

Yes, it is very intentional and the people who do it are no worse than shitlib hipsters who bash small towns all the time.  Both these things unhealthy for democracy because both parties have willfully isolated themselves from the rest of the country, and reflects on a larger problem in society which is the bubble that people are living in.  Urban liberals have given up on even trying to appeal to so-called 'middle America' while conservatives use the "inner cities" as a racial scapegoat for all the country's problems.  It's a major reason why politics in this country is as polarized as it is now.  We aren't exposing ourselves to different ideas or perspectives, much less trying to reach out to new people and share our ideas and people have become less tolerant and more narrow-minded because of that.

I have no problem with the minorities in cities, just the liberal whites.  You know, the types that think people shouldn't get married until their 30s and should maybe have one kid when they are 40.

[Lexii, harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy]

Yes, it is very intentional and the people who do it are no worse than shitlib hipsters who bash small towns all the time.  Both these things unhealthy for democracy because both parties have willfully isolated themselves from the rest of the country, and reflects on a larger problem in society which is the bubble that people are living in.  Urban liberals have given up on even trying to appeal to so-called 'middle America' while conservatives use the "inner cities" as a racial scapegoat for all the country's problems.  It's a major reason why politics in this country is as polarized as it is now.  We aren't exposing ourselves to different ideas or perspectives, much less trying to reach out to new people and share our ideas and people have become less tolerant and more narrow-minded because of that.

I have no problem with the minorities in cities, just the liberal whites.  You know, the types that think people shouldn't get married until their 30s and should maybe have one kid when they are 40.

Yeah, those are HUGe problems
And a lot of conservative urbanites do exactly the same thing

[100% pro-life no matter what]

Yes, it is very intentional and the people who do it are no worse than shitlib hipsters who bash small towns all the time.  Both these things unhealthy for democracy because both parties have willfully isolated themselves from the rest of the country, and reflects on a larger problem in society which is the bubble that people are living in.  Urban liberals have given up on even trying to appeal to so-called 'middle America' while conservatives use the "inner cities" as a racial scapegoat for all the country's problems.  It's a major reason why politics in this country is as polarized as it is now.  We aren't exposing ourselves to different ideas or perspectives, much less trying to reach out to new people and share our ideas and people have become less tolerant and more narrow-minded because of that.

I have no problem with the minorities in cities, just the liberal whites.  You know, the types that think people shouldn't get married until their 30s and should maybe have one kid when they are 40.

Yeah, those are HUGe problems
And a lot of conservative urbanites do exactly the same thing

Politics is downstream from culture, and if culture stops viewing one-night stands and hooking up as unthinkably terrible (as it already is starting to), then that flows to harming family values.  I may be angry that we now have abortion, gay marriage, and transgenderism, but these things existing are all symptoms of the sexual revolution (see also: no-fault divorce).

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

Yes, it is very intentional and the people who do it are no worse than shitlib hipsters who bash small towns all the time.  Both these things unhealthy for democracy because both parties have willfully isolated themselves from the rest of the country, and reflects on a larger problem in society which is the bubble that people are living in.  Urban liberals have given up on even trying to appeal to so-called 'middle America' while conservatives use the "inner cities" as a racial scapegoat for all the country's problems.  It's a major reason why politics in this country is as polarized as it is now.  We aren't exposing ourselves to different ideas or perspectives, much less trying to reach out to new people and share our ideas and people have become less tolerant and more narrow-minded because of that.

I have no problem with the minorities in cities, just the liberal whites.  You know, the types that think people shouldn't get married until their 30s and should maybe have one kid when they are 40.

Uh, no.  The fact that people are choosing to wait before they get married isn't a problem.  Although I do believe that is more of a regional discrepancy; I was born and raised in New England and almost nobody there married young.  I moved south a couple years back and now almost everyone at my college is getting married before age 23.  It was definitely a huge culture shock for me and it's not something I particularly agree with (but then I'm celibate, so).  But it's not particularly important considering all the very real social ills that exist in American culture.

Regardless, there are as many entitled, sheltered right-wing c**nts who are raised in these cities as there are liberals.  Skin color has nothing to do with it.