Reply to Why didn't Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana boom along with the Sunbelt?

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Reply to "Why didn't Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana boom along with the Sunbelt?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Because those states are horrible. Have you ever visited one of them? I have *shudders* Never again.[/quote]

You are a good example of why people in the South distrust and dislike DC.

Are you just opposed to being around poor people or being reminded of the legacy of a slave economy?  Can you recognize anything good in the region that gave America some of its finest writers and musicians?  Whose black pastors led America's civil rights movement?  Can you recognize that black Southerners were never given the compensation promised and that this fact stalled economic growth?  That, in the false promises and manipulation by the ruling class of these states, poor white Southerners were given black Southerners as someone to blame for their misfortune?

I'm a white Southern liberal who frequently finds herself in the middle of conversations like this. Until we solve this problem of rural white Americans communicating with urban elites, we'll see increasing polarization and a populism that leads to an authoritarian state. How will that serve those of us who live in the urban mid-Atlantic or Northeast?

I'd counsel DCUM posters to read Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Cooperhead to get a little insight.  If it doesn't move you, there's something wrong with you. Find a way to talk to the people of Alabama and Mississippi that doesn't make them hate you. This population has seen rapid change and globalization that has cost them their livelihoods.  Understand it, or just sit back and endure the unfolding catastrophe.

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Nice speech.  Now what do you tell the rural white Americans who hate DC why they should try to understand it?[/quote]

I explain that they're voting against their own self-interest and rising to MAGA bait and lies. I explain that they may cheer for the dismantling of federal agencies but that only 15% of federal employees are in the DMV, so they're shooting themselves in the foot. I explain that federal investment in technology, education, and science has fueled economic growth these last 50 years. I explain that rule of law is more important in the long run than the policies of any individual administration, and that's being sabotaged by the people they're electing.

I said that I was in the middle of these constant arguments and I am.  I should get paid by both sides for the decades of explaining I've done.  What DC people fail to understand is that the orthodoxy of their rhetoric is undermining their own cause.  All the virtue signaling and ignorance of how non-urban citizens live -- attitudes prevalent in the private schools my children have attended -- have hastened the rise of MAGA.  [/quote]

Correct: the orthodoxy of rigid rhetoric and purity tests most certainly did hasten the rise of MAGA. Coupled with the inability to examine or understand the plight of real people struggling across the country—not just in red states and rural areas—the rigid rhetoric and pet causes fueled the backlash and over-correction we are experiencing today. [/quote]

That's your take.  Given that MAGA has their own rigid rhetoric and purity tests, I think their rise was hastened by a much simpler explanation:  the election of a black president.[/quote]

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