//Note. Hopefully everyone grooves on the wavelength that we aren't talking about any technical dictionary or Political Science 101 technical definition of liberal/conservative but to broader, loosely defined social movements that just default to using the terms, fair? //
The end of basically any economic future for the rural areas, and a questionable economic future that doesn't involved an hour plus of commuting for the suburban areas, and a total lack of concern or caring from anyone in power about it.
The rural areas are dying. I will argue, with every ounce of strength in my being, against pretty damn close to literally every way that the rural areas (Again "Orange Man Bad" I know, I know, don't need to be reminded) have choose to react to this, as dangerous, hateful, stupid, and short-sited but I will not do a disservice to honesty and pretend it's not true.
Way back when the whole Trump... thing first happened I happened (I can't directly link it because it's got a naughty word in in the URL) David Wong wrote an article for Cracked.com entitled "How Half of American Lost Its (Censored) Mind" and broke it down.
1. It's not about blue states and red states, it's about urban and rural.
2. City people are from a goddamn different planet then rural people.
3. The rural areas have been beating to (censored)
4. All the economic recovery is pointed at the cities.
I blame the Rural areas for literally everything they are currently doing... except for the base fact of being angry in the first place.
This is why all the liberal threats against the rural people are so laughable. They've got nothing to lose, you can do nothing to them.
"Trump is gonna start a war!" Hell half of them are living in a goddamn post-apocalypse already.
"Trump is gonna tank the economy" Oh I'm sorry is the factory that was the only business in my town and shutdown 20 years ago somehow going to make less money?
You can dismiss all of this as some sort of stealth pro-Trump screed if you must, but I lived in these place. The places where the last business to open was the Dollar General a decade back (an actual real namebrand Dollar General if you're lucky, a knockoff most of the time), where when a "name" business closes and shutters its doors it not gonna get turned into a twee hipster micro-brewery or vintage vinyl record store in a few month it's just gone forever, and that one pothole has been on main street literally your entire life. A place where when stuff leaves it never comes back. When stuff breaks it stays broken. Watching everything around you just die and decay.
There's a line in an old country song. "Honey you know the world ain't round. It drops off sharp at the edge of town. Baby you know the world must be flat. Because we people leave town they never come back."
The despair eats you goddamn alive. And you can't complain. You're not allowed. You're just a dumb redneck who sleeps with his sister and does meth.
To use the example Wong did in the article I mentioned it's the feeling when a Category 5 Hurricane plows through the entire heartland of the country but there's more thinkpieces written about the plight of goddamn shelter dogs in New Orleans then about anyone who affected that lived outside of the Mardi Gras parade route. "Oh who cares about a bunch of rednecks losing their mobile homes? I only care about devastation in places that have a CSI spinoff."
And then as I said earlier you turn on the TV and an ultra-rich liberal who flew in his private jet to stand in an auditorium with other ultra-rich liberals so they can hand each other gold statues about how awesome they are stands there in his suit that cost more then all the money you will ever make in your life and takes time out of his day to tell you that you are the problem and put on a big showy display of proving who among them wants to understand you the least.
It breaks something in you. I know. I was never "there" but I came close. Like David Wong said in the article I accept the fact that had I not escaped, and I use that term deliberately, from rural life I'd probably be a Trump supporter. And again everything makes sense if we see Trump as a brick with the words "Are you listening to us now?" written on in thrown through our window. Just because their message is every possible variation of wrong doesn't change that. It doesn't mean we have to listen to them, but we do have to "listen" to them or this isn't going to get better.
I've never stop opposing the kind of raw, stupid, reflexive hatred we're seeing from the Trumpers... but that's not the same thing as not "getting" it. Not condoning it, not understanding, not accepting it but "getting" it.
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