More urban versus suburban. The suburbs are an enormous money sink that require tons of subsidy and infrastructure expansion to persist. A bunch of our municipal, state, and national policy revolves around keeping life in the suburbs artificially cheap and expanding the housing stock.

Rural communities don't have anywhere near the kind of political influence as the suburbs, as they lack a wealthy professional workforce or a large enfranchised voter base to command elected offices. While you definitely see rural politics show up in suburban races, they tend to revolve around cultural icons (driving a big truck versus riding the bus, having a big yard versus living in a town home, proximity to colleges and communities of color, taste in clothing or music) rather than actual rural political issues (water rights, agricultural labor issues, affordable education and health care).

Rural communities get steamrolled as regularly as urban communities. We're seeing that now in Texas, where the governor is turning a blind eye to another big drought and unleashing his police force on migrant farm workers as he gets ready to axe all the public schools out in the tiny towns and force people into low-budget charters. Urban centers are louder in their opposition, but the rural neighborhoods are getting fucked just as hard.

[–] Starkstruck@lemmy.world 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Rural areas would benefit so much from progressive policies, but so many of them would rather make life hell for the "bad people" than actually improve their own life. I don't understand how people can be so hateful, and frankly I'm glad I don't.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago

so many of them would rather make life hell for the “bad people”

A lot of the voter polls in rural neighborhoods are migrant workers without voting rights in the district. A lot more are too young to vote and not interested in sticking around long enough to set down roots in a poor community. And a healthy slice more than that are Company Town employees, who get a great deal of their political knowledge from their bosses.

I don’t understand how people can be so hateful

Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. The first step is terrifying people, often with very legitimate concerns. Then comes misinformation and misdirection, scapegoating and bigotry. And finally, you just pound on those priors knowing full well people aren't going to fact-check you on every rumor and innuendo when you're telling them something they've been primed to believe.

Communities with very real and persistent drug abuse problems get sold on the "Evil Mexican Cartels ruined your town" mythology by sprinkling it with half-truths and selective reporting. Communities that got de-industrialized in the 80s and 90s are told to hate East Asians for "stealing" their jobs with cheap foreign labor and unfair business practices (that the employers still managed to profit off of). Communities of Jews are told to hate Arabs and communities of Arabs are told to hate Africans and communities of Africans are told to hate Jews, because the Scary Outsider controls the financial system that's driving everyone in town into bankruptcy.

And always, forever, there is the Specter of Communism. The Authoritarians in the big evil government (not the military! not the cops! the evil foreign blue-haired trans tankie bureaucrats) coming to take away whatever prosperity you have left.

Simmer people in that soup for long enough and they'll all come out spitting hate, because its the only thing they've ever known for years and years and years.

[–] Liz@midwest.social 3 points 5 months ago

Yes I agree, and that's a reality that we don't point out often enough. Even so, schisms really tend to happen more along cultural boundaries than actual policy.