Many rural areas do not have good access to internet services. In my area, I can go just a few miles out of town and have zero phone reception until I get into a more open area without large hills blocking signal. So that’s part of the issue.
So, you're moving the goalposts from "internet" to "good internet" - which is interesting, because I recall using a 36kbs modem in the mid 90s and somehow I didn't turn into a racist idiot who sought to ruin my own life.
Here's a simple fact that lots and lots and LOTS of people just like you (and my mother, who proved this point by spending her life in a decently progressive college town before moving out to the middle of nowhere and rapidly becoming a bigoted neo-libertarian piece of shit through some kind of Rural Stupidity Osmosis) really don't want to admit:
If you're *not* already a dim-witted bigot and you see a racist propagandistic lie on the internet, your reaction is to go "Huh, well that seems like bullshit" and then either discard the notion entirely, or do some googling to verify that you can debunk it.
But if you're inclined to being a nit-wit who wants to believe that blacks are genetically inferior and Mexicans are stealing your jobs, etc etc, seeing a "news article" on Facebook that affirms that view is something you just automatically believe without question and then start trying to tell others is the truth.
A splotchy internet connection is not an excuse, the fundamental reason that "the internet" is a boogeyman right now is because blaming "the internet" is way more comfortable for certain people than acknowledging that "people are stupid."
Another issue is exactly the attitudes expressed in this thread.
Ooooo boy, here we go again!
Seeing as how I'm in the only one who has given any pushback to your attempt at creating a narrative that "city people" get up in the morning and brush their teeth and get dressed and then go out to spend all day at the "let's hate country folk" meetings, when you say "the attitudes in this thread" you're pretty much just talking about me.
But, I'll make note that several pages in you and your defenders have yet to counter a single point that I've made, you're still just braying like mules over how butt hurt you are that I'm vaguely lurid in my prose.
People in rural areas are no different—not less intelligent or less caring or less creative or less patriotic than people in urban centers. They do have different points of view ( note: multiple points of view).
Simple question, should have a simple answer:
if they're not less intelligent, why do they keep doing a less-intelligent thing that causing most of their problems?
One issue is that big city folks are always calling them very ugly names ( see this thread).
You heard it here, folks!
I, personally, am GOD and my meanie-poopy-head owie time words have shattered the veil of physical reality and caused the decline in rural economics.
And yes it's only me, because I'm probably literally the only city person who has said anything about rural people (positive or negative, using polite language or foul) in about 15 years... because you keep trying to peddle this lie that "city people" have an opinion about rural people one way or another. Hint: they don't.
Another is that government ( state, federal) impose policies and make policies that are not in the best interests of rural people. Or are contrary to what people want. And when politics are played with farm programs, it creates a lot of uncertainty and instability for farmers—which ripples through the entire community.
Ssssooooo what you're saying is that rural people vote Republican and then Republicans spend 80 years systematically destroying their way of life, and then they keep voting Republican, and so in the end you completely agree with everything I've said?
Honestly Toni I know you don't get it, but YOU have been badly representing rural people in this thread and doing all the damage to their image - if there's a problem with anyone's attitude about rural folks going on here, it's yours.
You are talking about rural people as being completely identical, nay superior, to any other type of human and won't shut up about how proud and noble and aggrieved they are, which contrasts much more strongly with how utterly fucking stupid they are politically and culturally.
At least I have a notion as to A. why the current situation exists and B. how to deal with it, even if my language seems to make you want to lock yourself in a bathroom and cry.
All you're doing is presenting this vapid and empty soapbox about how the noble rural is so put-upon, and then detailing out precisely how every single problem they have is their own fault, while *still* blaming it on me because I don't lick their assholes delicately enough.
In my home state: An interstate was built through my county when I was a kid. In order to built it, they took big swaths of farmland through imminent domain. One of the farms they acquired parts of belonged to a family member. Oh, they were financially compensated but it ruined most of the farmland and changed a very beautiful vista from a lovely farmhouse into a view of the interstate. That land had been in the family for 100 years or more. I understand that means nothing to most city dwellers but it means a tremendous amount to people who lose their land. Did the interstate need to be built? Of course it did. But multiply that experience many times over and you get one tiny inkling of why people resent people from the outside imposing what is best for other people on them. Changing routes of highways and interstates makes and breaks towns and communities.
What you don't understand is your delightful little stories of woe are completely irrelevant, because nobody for a second has ever suggested that rural people aren't having problems that have been imposed on them by others - hell, that was the main point of my first post in this thread.
But this lovely little tale of yours doesn't explain why: A. the rural people voted for the Republicans who use imminent domain to take people's land all willy-nilly in the first place, and B. why they keep voting for Republicans when Republicans are the one causing all their sorrow, and C. why you keep blaming "city people" for the fact that they keep voting for Republicans who are causing all their problems.
So explain that one, Toni... it shouldn't be hard. You've spent 4 pages crying about how mean I am, and then spewing out what I'm sure you think are flowery speeches about the plight of the rural farmer, so you must have the solution here, right?
Republicans cause all their problems. They repeatedly vote Republican. Republicans continue to cause all their problems. They keep voting Republican. They're just as smart... nay, in fact, they're SMARTER! BETTER! STRONGER! FASTER! than city folk, and yet they keep on voting Republican because Facebook lied to them?
So what's the deal here Professor Toni - you claim to have all the answers, enlighten this besmirched bigot on the brilliant truths you're privy to.
