umm… camping makes you an authority on rural living? Well, I’ve stayed in hotels in the city. Guess that makes me an authority on city living.
I have in the past lived in Urban, sub-urban, country and now mountain rural. The people I know now are not inclusive of all that I’ve known. Poor and rich alike.
This is getting quite pointless. Many enjoy city living. Many enjoy country. And I’ve probably hi-jacked this thread far enough.
Like I said, it makes me as much an authority on the people that you do not know or interact with as you are. I didn’t say it made me an authority.
I’ve lived in the dense part of the city, the close compact suburbs, for a while we were in a pretty rural area(but that was from 8-12, so all I remember of that was how long of a bus ride it was to school, how the school lacked any real advanced or challenging classes, and how there was so much less to do), and now I live in fairly loosely packed suburb.
Fair enough, it just felt that you were implying that rural life was superior in a way that us city dwellers (which is to laugh, I live 40 minutes from the nearest city, my house probably costs less than most rural houses, I have about a half acre of land [not sprawling, but I gots me some room]) could not appreciate, and that you had a unique insight into the mind of the country life, especially in these times when they were voting for Trump, where just the thought of moving closer to the city fills them with a sense of dread that can only be overcome by fighting their ignorance.
Not at all. I was defending ‘rural’ living from those that where disparaging it with poorly disguised insults.
One thing I have learned in this life is that the most scathing insult possible is an accurate description.
Disguised? Were we supposed to be disguising them?
The city folk’s disguised or undisguised arrogance, condescension, insults, and disparagement toward rural folk lost democrats the election.
Evil never goes unpunished.
http://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/rural-democrats-ignored-suffer-consequences
Good article – thanks for the link. I found the discussion of NON-white rural voters especially interesting.
But the tone isn’t as harsh as the words you used. More “benign neglect” with a bit of “baffled cluelessness,” not “insults and disparagement.”
Characterizing rural residents as, in any way, ‘hunter-gatherers’ is usually inaccurate. The concept of hunter-gatherer was one that described humans prior to farming activity developing, which, in turn, allowed for settlements instead of nomadic wandering, which, in turn, developed into centers that became, eventually, cities.
Cities were, at one time, central and important to farmers. It is where they went to sell their crops, transact legal business (marriage licenses, deeds, etc…) and to buy goods not available in their villages. Many farmers did, indeed, live in villages for convenience and protection in earlier days.
Today, the average rural resident is not a farmer. Farms get larger and larger and the number of people needed to operate them constantly decreases. No factory worker has ever been as impacted by mechanization and computerization as have been small farmers. But, as some have pointed out, people remain in homes away from population centers for one big reason – it is a lot cheaper to live on some back road than in the city. Most rural residents, these days who have ‘jobs’ have them in towns or cities.
So, why do they continue to live there? Partly cost, but also, by choice. CHOICE. And why do they make that choice? To a degree, because they fear people different from themselves and are afraid they will be at a disadvantage among people used to city life. Why do so many kids go off to college from the boonies then never go back except for funerals and reunions? Education exposes them to the fact that people can live together closely and with obvious religious and ethnic differences without any real negative consequences…indeed, we tend to like it after a short period of adjustment.
To summarize – people live in the boonies because they are afraid to live among people different from themselves. This is a circumstance that pushes rural people to be ever more bigotted in their assessment of city people and city life. They associate liberal goals of opportunity for all, etc., with city people, so they hunker down and take offense every chance they get.
Generally speaking, where someone lives is because of what sort of folks they are, and the sort of folks they are affects their political views moreso than where they live. Both their politics and where they live are outgrowths of what sort of people they are to begin with.
The political problem for Democrats isn’t simply that small percent who are truly ‘rural’, but also the citizens who live in smaller population centers that we don’t think of as rural, towns and cities in states dominated by one or two very large population centers, who vote contrary to what Democrats would like just because they resent the political power of the large city.
“benign neglect” is term coined by politicians and is a contradiction.
Neglect is never benign, it is harmful to both the neglectee and neglecter as evidenced by the recent election and it is also evil!
The only people who are “modern hunter gatherers” are hosts of reality TV shows.
Well NO, they live away from the cities because people there are just not nice!
boonies is a disparagement as it means “in the middle of no where”.
crucible says “Some different perspective”. Well NO, same perspective just uttered from different tongue.
Here is a dissertation that refutes most of what crucible said. Educate thy-selves.
Well NO, they don’t go back because there are no jobs.
Not fear,
City People Are From A Different Goddamned Planet
Trends Always Start In The Cities – And Not All Of Them Are Good
The Rural Areas Have Been Beaten To Shit
Everyone Lashes Out When They Don’t Have A Voice
Assholes Are Heroes
The statements were obtained from here and gives a much better perspective.
You can turn the article around and describe the attitudes of the city toward rural areas in three movies.
There’s this universal shorthand that epic adventure movies use to tell the city guys from the country guys.
In Hunger Games, The city guys live off the labor of others and wear opulent finery surrounded by a city full of people who think alike …
The rural guys are slaves forced to participate in games designed to increase tithes payments by pitting one sector against the other. Death of all except one is the reward:
In Star Wars, **The city guys live in an awesomely powerful and deadly space station with obedient army’s welding power …
**
Luke is a farm boy facing adversity with individual bravery and fortitude whose parents were killed and his life destroyed by the powerful for his effort:
In Braveheart, the omnipotent Prince lives in a luxurious castle and is surrounded by slaves and minions …
William Wallace was a close to the earth, unassuming, farmer and talks of such things as freedom and was drawn and quartered for the idea:
The theme expresses itself in several ways – primitive vs. advanced, tough vs. delicate, masculine vs. feminine, poor vs. rich, pure vs. decadent, traditional vs. weird. All of it is code for rural vs. urban. That tense divide between the two doesn’t exist because of these movies, obviously. These movies used it as shorthand because the divide already existed.
We city folk are programmed to use whatever means to disparage and control the individual. “Nothing that happens in the country matters!” we say at our cocktail parties, we expect and deserve for them to grow our food and fill the ranks of our military.
You sure are pretty disparaging of people who live in the city for someone who constantly complains about people being disparaging towards people that live in the country.
Maybe the first step is for you to start acting how you demand others act.
This thread is a debate.
Facts not in evidence. No Quote was provided.
I have not demanded or complained about anything of city folk.
The debaters can behave as they wish. I don’t give a flying fuck.
All I have done is answered the question “What have we EVER said to disparage such people ?!??!?!?!?” by quoting the disparaging remarks.
Don’t take this as a disparagement, “Please try to keep up!”
Your two previous posts were almost entirely disparaging of city people. Here are some examples:
I live in Chicago and I know many many nice people. Way more nice people than the alternative actually. Yet you claim people in cities are “not nice”.
I am in fact from Earth, which is the same planet you are sitting on now. Pretty disparaging comment about millions and millions of individuals.
Pretty disparaging to think that you can sum up the opinions of millions and millions of people by using movies. If I said I can sum up the attitudes of rural folk with the movie Napoleon Dynamite, how would you take that?
I sum up my feelings toward rural areas with these three movies:
The Revenant
Legends of the Fall
Backcountry
Basically that people go into the country to be eaten by bears. Because every time I go to my inlaws in the country…there are bears.
I was going to quote and reply to some of the things burrunderthe saddle has posted, but I’ll just go with the quote below instead. The Waco Kid in *Blazing Saddles *seems to have him in mind:
The condition “there are no jobs” exists for everyone. The rational response (move to somewhere where there are jobs) is practiced only by some. What distinguishes them from the rest?