Right. The only reason any of this has anything to do with geography is that the Republican Party is exploiting ethnic identity in order to stay alive (in power). It’s a publicity campaign (propaganda) that can work only because they can make people think that the interests of the people are divided along these imaginary lines. I may live in Los Angeles. but fundamentally my interests are the same as someone in “Middle America.” In fact, the areas are not as different as they would have us think, but it’s a narrative they are exploiting. Trump is the logical conclusion of this false narrative.
The question you should be asking is this: What are we going to do about all of the agricultural jobs, now that we can feed ourselves without 90% of us working on farms or ranches?
The huge job destruction was the urbanization and industrialization of the 20th Century. We don’t talk about it in those terms because we magically created new kinds of jobs at the same time. People whose ancestors had been farmers going back thousands of years were now doing things their own grandparents could hardly have imagined.
But that can’t possibly happen again. Or continue to happen. It must all come crashing down now, for absolutely no very good reason. I have spoken!
I work in agriculture. Food should cost way more than it does, but we have agricorp conglomerates mechanizing a lot of the generation of food (with people like me and my brother). So when you go back to the little ag town I grew up in, NOBODY is working. FUCKING nobody. The only people that have any money to go get food at the food store without food stamps are stealing fertilizer catalyst from the last remaining owner/farms and making crystal methamphetamine and speed balls with it.
Since nobody is working, the town has gone to shit. Nobody working = nobody paying taxes. Main street isn’t even paved anymore, they gave up and dumped gravel on it. There were three little businesses left by the time I had to leave, and now a Dollar General has replaced them, employing 10 percent of the workforce that the other businesses did, and pays less. The whole town seems to be on food stamps (or the Lone Star Card for those in Texas.) Some of the people I know that still live there have started to commute 70+ miles one way to get to a “decent job.” By decent I mean *almost *15 bucks an hour. Since nobody is working in the home town, people have started to sell their properties off to the Large Friendly Agricorp, which has caused a run on the cost of land there. Since the only people buying are rich folks or businesses looking to park their money in some sort of “investment” so they don’t have to roll their profits to the tax man, the tax valuations on people’s homesteads have shot up. My best friend’s mom back home is probably going to lose her house next year due to property tax increases she can’t keep up with. Her house has been for sale for over two years in a break even price for her, but its not selling because its not something that the Large Friendly Agricorp wants.
I wish you were right, RTFirefly, but those jobs aren’t getting replaced where the jobs are getting displaced. That’s the key. Who gives a damn in rural East Texas if Portland gets 10 new jobs in IT? Those IT jobs pay good if they were in East Texas, but those IT employees can only scrape by in Portland. I know, I went to Portland and worked one of those new IT jobs from East Texas. Those 10 jobs lost in East Texas feel like a hell of a lot bigger kick in the nuts than 10 jobs lost in Dallas, for example. Since the community is so small, that 10 job loss was something like 30 percent of the money that rolled around town.
I was able to keep my credit good so when the floor got swept out from under us, I was able to bang out a bunch of credit cards and move across the country, over five years ago that we are still paying off. I was able to do this because my parents were healthy, I had no children, and lost everything at a slightly earlier time than everyone else did in town. The poor souls left are stuck. Thats why they want to “burn it down” and vote Trump. Nothing’s changed at home.
The problem is that they fell for Trump’s dog-and-pony show. He wasn’t going to “burn it down,” and had no intention of doing that. He hasn’t burned anything down–it’s all just rhetoric, the same as any politician. He played them good. That was all just an act. A performance, like on The Apprentice.
In fact, he made the swamp even swampier, and has been tilting the profits into his family’s pockets.
Are they willing to recognize that? Maybe think about it a little more before they vote next time?
While election crimes are the most serious crimes Trump has committed, I think people may have made a mistake by focusing on those. I feel there might have been a bigger impact if they had investigating Trump’s corruption.
Trump has been using his presidency to make money for himself. I feel that some of his supporters who back Trump on his election crimes (he’s just sticking it to the liberals after all) would have their faith shaken if they saw the bribery that’s going on. That’s just Trump taking care of himself with no feigned concern for the people who voted for him.
Right you are, except you don’t have to convince me. They are the ones that need to change their mind, and telling them that they are stupid so far hasn’t worked. I think the important thing to remember is that things in Shit Town are always going to get worse. They don’t trust Democrats because it got worse for them when he was in office, to their perception. The robots and Friendly Agricorp were in full swing during Obama time.
At least now they have someone repeating the same bitching they are doing vs. trying to placate them with something they don’t understand. You go with the guy that bitches the same way. They are all spending their free time trying to keep the tweakers at bay, they aren’t watching the ‘real’ news and certainly aren’t reading anything.