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Far-right extremism is thriving in rural areas. Here's what it looks like in Upstate NY
(www.northcountrypublicradio.org)
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this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2024
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As a Democrat from upstate NY let me tell you why the rural areas are dark red: NYC seems to be all that matters.
At least 50% of NY's population lives within 50 miles of NYC and I wouldn't be surprised to find out its closer to 65% or 70%. Of course it gets the most attention. I get why people living outside that area would be upset but they cant be surprised.
You see the same thing in every state with a large metro area. There's always griping from western and central MA but the fact is 75% of the population lives in the Boston metro area.
The issue, addressed in the article, is that these rural areas used to have industry that gave people a sense of purpose. Now the choices are basically move to a city, die of a heroin overdose, or join a right wing militia. We need to give these people something to do that's beneficial and where they feel they're contributing to their communities, otherwise, they're going to be wooed by groups with ulterior motives that dress their goals up in rhetoric of service and cohesion.
I mean we have crumbling infrastructure. You could probably start some sort of government program to have people work on that. Like the whole pipeline from education through training, building, maintaining, researching.
Unfortunately a chunk of the us is pathologically opposed to that sort of thing.
The exact people we're supposed to be coddling and hand feeding, specifically.
I'm sympathetic to economic concerns, that sympathy lessens alot when you reject any offered solutions to scream "coal or bust" (or relevant absent industry here.) That sympathy dissipates completely once you decide to blame gays and blacks and start spending all your "I ain't got no money" cash on Maga gear and throwing faschie parades.
It's almost as if it's not about economics at all 🤔
The problem with this statement is that liberal/left/environmentalist forces have been waging a war on coal for decades now, and winning. This is the root of the rural working class turn against the Democrats. We had nearly 200k coal workers in the 80s, and now it's down to under 50k. That's people directly employed in coal, not to mention those employed in the thriving rural economies they supported. Millions of people have been impacted by the decline of coal, and right or wrong, they perceive Democrats as responsible for both the decline, and the failure to support the people who were impacted.
At this point you have generational poverty as a result of the closure of coal mines and plants, and you have kids growing up who don't know what it used to be like, they only know the abandoned buildings and drug addiction they grow up surrounded by. I'm not saying we have to tolerate the negative attitudes that fester in these situations, but we do have to understand where they come from, and we certainly shouldn't let it stop us from trying to make things better. If people have positive, productive things to do, they won't spend all their time on the internet finding reasons to hate their neighbors, and that facet of the problem will solve itself over time.
a. Coal sucks. It was never going to last forever. It's horrible for the environment at like every stage.
b. 200k people is nothing. There are almost that many people living in my neighborhood of Brooklyn alone. I'm not keen on them having so much more political power than here.
Mining for coal again is just a non starter. There's only so much in the ground to begin with, and a lot of people don't want the environment to be damaged that badly.
There are things we could do as a society to make things better. Probably none of the good ideas come from the right wing. Basic income or government work programs would probably help. Letting the free market decide will just lead to people being exploited and the environment savaged.
People love to make the "empty land should vote" argument by harping that urban areas "don't care about rural needs" but also love to ignore that anytime the rural areas are consulted the response is always basically "coal or coup" or "ban f**s or coup."
I'm tired of these various right wing interests absolutely refusing to engage with any part of the process then crying that they're being oppressed because they don't get their extreme demands met, and I'm tired of people making excuses for them as they march in the streets to undo the whole country.
There's a vast political center in the post-industrial east, northeast and midwest willing to be pursuaded. The Democrats have certainly attempted to do the right thing for the climate... sort of... but have utterly failed to consider the effects on industrial communities as the industry leaves. Then they add insult to injury by saying things like "learn to code"... but then not doing anything about the spiraling cost of education. This has been going on for decades, and the result is generations of impoverished people losing trust in the political process and falling victim to narratives of fear and hate.
Understanding this is step zero in beginning to steer this ship left again.
What a horrible, neoliberal thing to say.
It's not just 200k people, it's hundreds of thousands more that lost their livelihoods when the main economic driver in their area shut down.
I'm not arguing for coal (it's 2024, why are we still using it at all?), I'm arguing against abandoning an entire population of people who made their livings off of it and its cascading economic effects.
As they say: Adapt or die. For the rural folk, they’ve been failing to adapt, nows the time for the follow-up.
It's funny how the enlightened centrists who attack leftists (no matter how varied) as single issue voter, big govt nuts, and insensitive are always the same people who think "if we don't use big govt to ban all energy except coal and force companies to reopen all the mines no matter how problematic then they have every right to overthrow the government."
Why don't we try that with a leftist position? "Institute single payer Healthcare so every citizen has access to healthcare scot free or else we're going to overthrow the government?"
Y'all would SCREECH about it being economically impossible, brand us as terrorists, and be ITCHING to gun us down. But hey the people who just want to kill gays and own blacks again, they get a pass and we need to cowtow to their demands or else we deserve it.
You seem to be arguing with me, but I agree with almost everything you say. In particular stuff like:
Corporate merger? How about we start with nationalize both companies, guillotine the executives, and hand it all over to unions?
We shouldn't compromise on getting rid of coal, but we should make sure the people and communities affected are taken care of in the aftermath. Or should have, anyway, that ship has basically sailed. It's the same neoliberal psychopathy that turned the post-industrial northeast and midwest into a war zone in the 60s-80s.
Yeah, I'd love to reinstate the CCC & Youth Corps as permanent jobs programs, including all the arts funding, but that ain't happening. Guess we'll just have to get shot by Proud Boys instead.
They need gender-affirming care.
Whew, for a second I was afraid someone wasn't going to explicitly make it about gender.
Thank you for your service.
Women aren't dying of drug overdoses in Appalachia and the Rust Belt?