Darren Bullock, 40, is a Trump voter who switched from the Democrats in 2016.
He is likely to lose Medicaid coverage because of the new requirements, although he is not hopeful of finding adequate employment.
“If they want people to work 80 hours a month, they’d need to bring in a lot more jobs,” he says.
There’s stupid and then there’s USA stupid. A very special breed of moron because of how obvious it is that they’re fucked, how they have the money and resources to fix it, and how they refuse to do the right thing so hard that they actively shoot themselves in the feet, legs, arms, torsos, and just about everywhere to avoid even needing to consider thinking about helping other people.
Like, at least the right-wingers in better countries are living in the good world that more leftist policies have built. They’re dumb as hell but at least they’re not steeped in the thick shit of the right to the point where it should be too bad to ignore.
It’s not like they haven’t already tried it either. We’ve been doing the same policies since Reagan and they continue to fail and continue to be doubled down on. Hell, Kansas was touted as the example of what conservative policies could do under Brownback. They created their conservative utopia and it crashed hard. They couldn’t even afford to keep their schools open for the full school year.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_experiment
Conservatives looked at that massive failure and said they wanted more.
You say “fail” as if they aren’t working exactly as intended.
Depends on perspective. They failed for the 99% of us.
Well of course, but they’re a roaring success for the people the instigators of the policies actually give a shit about.
Presumably not the people that the voters care about.
It’s because all that failure is making some very influential individuals very wealthy.
Propaganda works. If you believe any country is immune, you’re wrong. Heads up. CPAC is already in Canada, the UK and Poland. Murdoch sewers are everywhere.
I read an article once about a guy who grew up in a poor rural area in the US that changed my opinion a bit. He talked about how progressive and left leaning people want to help the poor and uneducated, but typically only in major city centers.
Poor people in major cities are seen as victims of society. Socioeconomic forces beyond their control have caused them to fall behind and they need help! Rap music is the voice of the oppressed! Poor people in rural towns are seen as hillbillies who should have paid more attention in science class instead of playing football and taking their cousin to prom. Country music is for hicks! Combine this with the stats that inner city poverty is mostly minorities and rural poverty is mostly white people and you get a sense as to how rural people can see progressive programs as “racist”. It certainly doesn’t help that this idea is beamed into their heads by billionaire funded propaganda like Fox News.
A tech company lays off 1,000 employees and there’s rage, but a coal mine shuts down putting 1,000 people out of work and there’s cheers. Biden telling rural Americans facing the loss of their livelihood “learn to program” is pretty rich coming from a wealthy successful man who likely doesn’t know how to work a computer, let alone know how to program one. Republican politicians at least pretend to care about run down rural towns. And if they don’t do that, at least they pledge to knock those smug city slickers down a few pegs! Send the Marines into LA!
Hopefully the US can fix its urban-rural divide. I have no idea how that would happen, but it seems to be a major hindrance to class consciousness.
I think I know the article you’re talking about (although I’m having a hard time finding it again), but I don’t think that’s quite what it said.
It’s more like progressives are perceived by rural people as not wanting to help them, because the type of help they offer is assistance in moving or retraining or otherwise changing in order for their lives to improve. This is because the progressives understand (correctly) that the jobs that used to sustain the small towns are never coming back, regardless of how much the rural people want them to.
The writer then pointed out (also correctly) that this “elitist” approach was not effective in solving the problem.
Unfortunately, I don’t remember what the author’s conclusion/recommendation of a better strategy was.
Good explanation, plus yes, there is no easy solution. Yes it’s quite possible the only solution is for people to move away. Sucks for your town but those people may be better off
I’ve actually been thinking about this a bit lately. Early in my career I expected to go where the jobs were, and expected to move every few years. However now I’m established. I like it here and would not want to move. Of course part of the reason is the number of job possibilities but I do wonder whether I’m still open to moving should they dry up
You nailed it. I have yet to read anything that outlines Trump voters better than this:
How Half of America Lost It’s Fucking Mind
I always enjoy reading that article cause it really highlights how smug the left can get when it comes to other people.
There was the thread about a how a Cuban woman who voted for Trump and her father got detained in the ICE raids. Sadly, it took an event to help her learn the error of her ways. She did seem remorseful and wanted to grow from the experience. Yet the vast majority of comments were all dog piling her. I can imagine that every comment that she read about this was her fault, she’s stupid, etc. There was a tiny voice her head going “See, we were right. The left is intolerant. The left is full of jerks and assholes. We never shit on you for your mistakes.”
These types of comments just drive people back to Conservatism and their old beliefs. From what I heard, the Cuban woman grew up around Conservatism and was brainwashed to think “I’ll be spared cause I conformed to Conservative values.” Not realizing that those spreading that propaganda are straight up fucking racists.
The left really does need to start saying to people “It’s alright. You were hoodwinked. We’re going to help you get through this; direct action, mutual aid, etc.”
Unless of course the person whose face is being eaten by a leopard is an unrepentant asshole. Then fuck em. Sympathy and understanding should be left to those who are willing to learn.
https://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-one-talks-about
They don’t, it’s just a safe audience since Fox News and talk radio brainwashed everyone.
There it is.
Bullshit. Medicaid helps regardless where you live, and rural people are probable on Medicaid to a higher percentage. Funding to keep rural hospitals open, pretty much helps rural people by definition.
Yes jobs are another thing entirely, but if you buy the bs that we’ll reopen coal mines and create thousands of new jobs, you’re just hopelessly lost and deceived. Those jobs were already gone. Consider the trends of over half a century of those jobs disappearing with automation, even when coal mining was increasing. Those jobs haven’t existed in this guys lifetime so there’s nothing to come back to.
He might also look around at the environmental destruction and consider whether he really wants that, to make some coal baron wealthy while creating negligible jobs.
There’s got to be a better way
I still say they’re either low knowledge and gullible, or somehow believe destruction is better than trying ineffectively or starting on a long path
The thing is that democrats are hardly leftist and their approach to economics is still pretty dogshit. When people say to shut down the coal mines anyone who gives a shit will also say that governments should help retrain people to do other jobs. Like, a shut down oil rig should be a great opportunity to retrain the workers there to do maitenance on a solar power farm.
The other problem I have with it all is that they’re fighting to have personal money and would rather keep something like a coal mine running and polluting than retrain. Instead of asking why they’re constantly being threatened by corporations and the lack of a safety net they’re actively defending the people who are hurting them. That takes a lot of my sympathy away.
And then there’s their fucking “towns” that are just super spread-out nightmares which they refuse to fix. They want their lives to be cheaper but they demand heavily car-centric infrastructure and attack anything that would actually make their lives easier and cheaper. And oh my god do they moan about the concept of having a neighbour within 100ft.
I’ve lived in a more rural place and I’ve lived in cities. People in cities generally want things that will legitimately make their lives better(but oh my god are there some people…), and they don’t often fight the people who are trying to help them. Rural North Americans are so fucking stupid and they get aggressive when they get scared, which is all the time because they’re huge fucking babies.
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As for the tech company thing, a big reason is because the layoff are all to pad quarterly earnings. A coal mine shuts down because it’s an environmental disaster but Microsoft will layoff 10,000 people via video call from a private island Sting concert just so the executives can make more money. These things are not equivalent.
I have a hypothesis that many conservatives are reflexively opposed to change. So if you suggest putting in a bus lane, they’ll fight you tooth and claw. But once you get it in, a couple years later, if someone suggests removing it those same people will fight tooth and claw to keep it.
In other words, sometimes they’re stupid and don’t have good reasons.
I think its because change always sucks over here. I was a caregiver before COVID, the agency took Medicare, so my wages were set by a state committee. The state raised the minimum wage, but I never got a raise because the committee took years to approve one. The state passed a law mandating PTO, but it was less than the 2 weeks we were already getting, so we didn’t get more. I was doing overtime, living paycheck to paycheck, then the state decided that they wouldn’t transfer the clients to palliative care, and we needed to watch them die too. No bump in pay, but they gave us the number to an employee helpline that would tell management if you used it, so I never used it.
There was a client I had been taking care of for four years, and I held her hand so she wouldn’t die alone. I was out of PTO, couldn’t afford an unpaid mental health day, another longterm client died, and I drove into traffic. I haven’t been able to hold down a job since.
It’s said a rising tide lifts all boats, but sometimes people get caught in the undertow.
It’s been documented that the fear center in conservatives’ brains gets activated a lot more than it does for progressives. They are scared and angry and aren’t spending the time to understand anything which is exactly what would calm their worries. They’re basically just running around breaking shit and making life hard for everyone because they’re stuck in monkey brain.
Also they do seem to like change when it means removing stuff that benefits others. It’s not change exactly that sets them off, but anything they perceive as giving their resources away(and they most certainly do not understand the concept of an indirect benefit).
And this retraining goal then gets you in trouble for offering training for jobs that don’t exist.
It has to be combined with:
And time. It’s not going to be fast. There is no silver bullet. No one will do it for you: you need to take advantage of the support to improve your life. Yes it’s harder than listening to some bombastic idiot spout gibberish and make promises forgotten as quickly as he rattles them off, but it can help at least some
Precisely. It’s a good thing the left pushes UBI, free schooling, and new, positive infrastructure projects really hard, especially in rural places where private business fails to service because it’s not profitable!
Well, all except for the people willing to change but considering the right is full of people who keep saying “life’s not fair” and “that’s too bad you gotta do what you gotta do” I’m sure they can suck it up, right?
Certainly life is messy and unfair, but my state has an excellent education system including free college (depending on income). I do realize we spend a lot more on it than many states could afford but the only way to address that is the Department of Education. Did those states vote to expand the Department of Education to improve all our kids’ education? No, pretty much the opposite. You can’t help someone who won’t help themselves. You can’t give money to someone who won’t take it
Americans will shoot anything
Except nazis, apparently.
MAGA - Morons and Genuine Assholes
And then there’s Brexit.
Why is The Telegraph using “pc” instead of “%”?
No idea. Honestly surprised they put an otherwise legible article together
Maybe they want people to think that 68pc means 68%, while in reality it means something like 68 People who Care. You know, a sneaky way to make people think you’re writing about something big, although all you really have is one big nothing-burger. A clever legal loophole that allows the paper to get away with anything.
Well, who knows what that actually is, but that’s the feeling I get every time newspapers do something weird like that.