This is true. The same problem applies to transportation, health care, food security, etc. Poverty is terrible. Unfortunately, the right wing also seems to hate any effective programs to deal with it. No school lunches, no basic income, no nationalized insurance, etc etc.

The left continues to treat them with kid gloves,

This has generally been bothering me. You'll have someone on the far right say like "We should kill the jews", and I say "We should stop that guy. Like, I'm okay with someone doing violence to that nazi" and people are like "whoa whoa whoa we can't have VIOLENCE." So basically the right wing can do and say whatever, but everyone else has to hold themselves to pristine standards and just take it.

"Cops brutalize family and shoot their dog". "Maybe we should fight back." "Whoa whoa whoa violent speech is unacceptable bro." Like, ok, I guess I'll just get shot quietly.

https://archive.is/ktNni

Frog core anyone? https://froglord.bandcamp.com/album/save-the-frogs

You think there’s no culture in rural areas?

There is less cultural output because there are fewer people. There's probably a thousand new bands that started in Brooklyn this month. You just can't have those numbers out in the sticks because you don't have the people. There literally aren't enough singers.

Culture matters. People interacting and inspiring each other matters. It's not that there's nothing happening out in Wisconsin or wherever, but there's less. There are fewer people to be doing stuff!

I almost wrote a preemptive response about "where does your food come from". I don't think most of the people living outside of cities are farmers.

A quick search says

The Midwest rounds out the top five states with the most farmers:

    Missouri (162,345, or 5% of the labor force)
    Iowa (145,432 or 9% of the labor force)
    Ohio (130,439 or 2% of the labor force)
    Oklahoma (130,434 or 7% of the labor force)

I don't know if https://usafacts.org/articles/farmer-demographics/ is a real site but it would be awkward for someone to make up these numbers.

That's a lot of people in the sense of like "I couldn't have that many people at my birthday party" but not a lot of people compared to like, who lives in major cities. Bushwick, Brooklyn is one neighborhood and has like 130k people.

Food is important but probably not a justification for holding everyone else hostage. Especially when most people living in those areas aren't even growing food. (Some are second order involved, like the guy who works the Laundromat helps the farmer or whatever). Also especially when the efforts being stymied would help people, like student loan forgiveness or federally funded school meals.

The urban liberal doesn’t consider the rural conservative POV, and they want to apply their position nationally. Should the rural conservative have no useful defense against that?

The rural conservative POV is utterly poisoned by decades of racial violence and regressive policies. There's like a mass shooting every day. Climate change is going to fuck us. Conservatism is not an okay world view.

That said, the answer is probably local government for things that are actually local. Environmental issues cannot be local. You can't have this town dumping mercury into the water and pretending that's just fine. But for something like "we want a bike lane here" or "we want a library that's open weekends" that's doesn't need to be federal. But if "local" means "no queers allowed to get married here" then the locals can fuck themselves.

Guns are a whole separate wedge issue. I think they should at least be treated the same as cars- license, registration, insurance, mechanisms to remove the license like DUI. I don't know how close to reality that is.

I wrote this on my phone so it's not my best work.

Cities matter more. Sorry, but that's the reality.

Cities are where people live. People matter.

Cities are where culture happens. Culture matters. You're not going to have a big art/music/anything scene in bumbleweed, NE because there aren't enough people there to constitute a scene.

Cities are where economy happens. Money moving around matters. There are more transactions per day in the corner shop by me than a whole week in some country town with 700 residents.

Rural people still have the Senate and local government. Their rep in the house (which should be expanded) also should speak up for their region.

Everyone deserves some minimum respect, but the idea that nowhere-utah is just as important as Queens is insane. A minority holding the majority garbage is not good. Especially when that minority seems fixated on terrible ideas like climate change denial and xenophobia.

Don't forget about the halo effect. Someone on stage doing a killer set is going to seem hotter. When someone is good at one thing, we start to think they're good at everything (where being hot is a thing).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect

It's a little hard to square "steam is over charging for games" with "look at all these games I bought for 80% off ($5) off", but I guess there's more to it.

Still seems like this could just be a setting book for Fate.

Just guillotine the rich already

Folks should unionize, and then use that collective power to tell "back to office" mandates to fuck themselves to death.

Shut down AWS and let the world burn until management capitulates. It's not like the soulless husks calling the shots can run the show themselves.

There's a pizza place I don't go to anymore because it has a "joke" sign up that does some bad math to prove no one works enough thus no one deserves days off. Reminds me of this.