HN crowd remembering it is not enough. The problem in the U.S. is that the electorate is divided into two camps: the educated and the uneducated. The uneducated camp votes without a deep understanding of important issues, and they can easily be influenced using "culture wars" topics such as DEI and trans kids. Consider that 53% of Americans approve of the administration’s performance so far—why is that? How can we effectively explain things to that 53%? That’s the challenge.
"stupid people like trump and dont understand policy and are easily influenced. smart people(like me) like kamala and know whats best for everyone, how can we explain this to them"
This is such surface level and frankly lazy dismissal of a stance or political view that a huge swath of people hold. It's like your "education" didn't really prepare you for the fact that other smart or educated people could come to different conclusions, so you use backwards logic to assign a label of uneducated to them just because they came to different conclusions. The arrogance of it is astonishing.
The numbers are undisputable. City voters (who tend to be better educated) overwhelmingly vote one way versus rural voters. We can discuss the reasons for it, but if you don't even agree that this is a fact then I don't know how to discuss it.
Or a different take (because we didn't really do the "numbers" and removed all variables and angles to this):
- Right-leaning individuals are more likely to want to live in rural areas. Arguably to be left alone by leftist policies. So there is an element of filtering. Additionally, perhaps rural-living individuals are simply less-likely to go to higher education.
- People with more education have spent more time being indoctrinated by left-wing education. Let's be honest, schooling is heavily biased towards the left, especially higher-education.
- Maybe left-leaning individuals are more likely to send their kids for higher education and degrees.
- And the opposite of above. As an example, because I lean "right", I'm less likely to send my kids to an American indoctrination camp to get a degree. You could laugh and judge and claim disbelief, but this is very real and I'm serious. I've literally had smart, well thinking friends from school turn into zombies spouting left-wing talking points after moving to an American college. And not "smart" left-leaning talking points, they're arguably brain-washed and not even using their intelligence to reason their left-leaning views with me.
- People with more education are more likely to have been pressured by peer-groups to vote left. See: Cancel culture and intimidation on campuses against right-leaning individuals/speakers. And the opposite of that, left-leaning individuals are pushed out of rural areas due to pressure or push back from locals.
- People in urban centers are more likely to be exposed to political ads, campaigns, and things like "DEI" re-education programs in workplaces.
- Rural areas are less likely to have or fund arguably weird teaching policies to children at a young age. E.g. the whole drag-queen story hour stuff that the right is upset about.
- Left-leaning policies and programs are more likely to get funding by NGOs.
So you want to argue numbers, let's argue them. But don't pretend like there aren't any variables that drive those numbers other than "oh uneducated (implying stupid) people vote right" which if you are honest, was exactly the angle you were going for as a dog-whistle to other "educated" or "left-leaning" readers.
> As an example, because I lean "right", I'm less likely to send my kids to an American indoctrination camp to get a degree. You could laugh and judge and claim disbelief, but this is very real and I'm serious. I've literally had smart, well thinking friends from school turn into zombies spouting left-wing talking points after moving to an American college. And not "smart" left-leaning talking points, they're arguably brain-washed and not even using their intelligence to reason their left-leaning views with me.
Another way of putting this would be “I’ve seen people go off and get exposed to new ideas, and when they came back they no longer agreed with me.” But that doesn’t mean we should block access to learning.
I'm very cognizant of that, and I would understand it if they came back and reasoned or debated with me. But I promise you, the stuff I got back from some of these individuals was pure talking points and they were downright hostile and aggressive to even entertaining the idea of a debate on certain topics. It was eerie, and I love spirited debate and hot topics; they make in-person conversation lively as long as everyone stays civil.
On the other hand, your use of descriptors such as “American indoctrination camps” and “zombies spouting left-wing talking points” does not make it seem like you’re particularly open or receptive to “spirited debate”. These are not “civil” terms used by someone who is seriously interested in having his or her ideas challenged.
From my perspective, it sounds like your friends were exposed to ideas that would have been previously unavailable to them, and having had their horizons expanded, came to modify their views on certain things they had been effectively taught as dogma until that point. Then, when they came back and tried to communicate those newfound viewpoints, they were dismissed as brainwashed zombies who weren’t using their intelligence. I certainly would not consider it worth my time to argue with someone who believes me to be indoctrinated beyond hope and dismisses my intellectual capability simply because he or she disagrees with me.
To summarize your argument, the rural-urban political divide is driven by self-selection and environmental factors, where right-leaning individuals deliberately choose rural areas to avoid left-wing influences, while urban areas reinforce left-wing views through higher education, workplace policies, and cultural pressure.
This is a novel argument, one that I have not seen discussed a lot. If this is the truth then great.
But I am worried that it is not true. I am worried that what is really happening is that Billionaires are taking advantage of less educated voters by convincing them to vote against their self interests. They do so by shifting their focus to the "values and cultural issues" of the moment. In the past, it was gay marriage and abortion; today, it's trans kids and DEI. Once these issues dominate the conversation, little attention is paid to the real priorities and actions of these billionaires: Cuts to funds that research cancer (the topic of this thread), cuts to Medicaid, food stamps and other welfare programs, cuts to education, cuts to development assistance to the poorest in the world and so on, all to fund tax cuts for the wealthy.
If your fear was true, the solution would be simple: the democrats could focus on important issues instead of pushing these (from my point of view, ridiculous and dangerous) cultural issues. Yet they push them vehemently, which caused this response. Why do you think they do that?
The current democratic leadership is dumb, in my opinion, because they allow attention to be diverted. They should shift towards the center on the "values and cultural issues" in order to neutralize the conservative advantage, then they will be able to do things that the middleclass (and lower) cares about, such as healthcare and health research, education, consumer protections and so on, and make the Billionaires pay their fair share of taxes.
I am afraid that is not what they learned :/ from what I can tell, they think Kamala ran too far to the right (whatever that means) and lost her base. It seems to me that these values are more important to them than we would rationally think possible.
To come back to the previous topic: n=1, but I moved out of a city to escape the bullshit and find some common-sense. I have a master's degree and my wife is an MD. We are not the only ones in our circle that deliberatly moved into a rural area :)
How happy are you with the NIH cuts, US withdrawal from Climate Agreement, vaccine sceptic being made secretary of health, US alienating Europe, proposed ethnic cleansing of Gaza, etc.? Maybe you have to deal with fewer trans kids, DEI and other such bullshit, but when you look at the big picture was it worth the trade off?
I believe in subsidiarity. If we cannot maintain strong families and raise children well, larger issues will become unsolvable in the future.
Focusing on larger-scale issues at the expense of the most basic health of society is a recipe for long-term disaster.
Which means are justified to solve climate change and achieve world peace? And if we sacrifice everything our society is built on to reach those ends, where does that leave us?
I can't help you with your reading comprehension. Where did I make any such statement?
I am merely pointing out that hysterically calling ~50% of the population stupid, uneducated etc, while feeling smugly superior to them, was not a winning strategy in 2016 or 2024, and proponents of said strategy seem unable to learn from repeated failures.
