this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2025
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Leopards Ate My Face
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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.
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.
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.
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).
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.