‘I Can’t Afford This’ Trump Voters in Rural America Stunned as Cost of Living Keeps Rising

I am convinced that gun owners should be required to carry gun insurance... (policies for every gun they own) and I say that as a gun owner.... we have to carry car insurance, another lethal weapon that at least has a plausible other function. I live in a Blue State. Liberals also own guns, we just don't post pictures of them or open carry them in public. We actually follow the laws of our state for permits.

If you asked them what their dogma is and where it comes from, they wouldn't have any reply. These people are narcissistic, unserious and willfully illiterate.

It kinda makes sense to me. If I believed in the judeo christian god - an omnipotent being that has a vengeful, murderous history and has the emotional maturity of a 3 yo - yes I'd be living in fear of it.

"I have no Ethics or Morals, so I only ever do the right thing because I fear the wrath of an All Knowing and All Powerful entity if I don't"

Firstly because it's a meaningless platitude that doesn't actually make sense

The world runs on meaningless platitudes for these people!

I am not disagreeing with you; you're very much correct. But I think it's important to point out and not just let it pass by.

It's all part of the talking point conditioning and conforming that the right leans on so heavily. You need to superficially signal the right virtues with your appearance and speech.

Exactly.

It's a coping mechanism for having a purely emotional relationship (i.e. pure tribalism) with a political "side" that has now been going on for so long and so intensely that it has become part of their personal identity, and then being negativelly impacted by the choices of the leaders of "their" side.

By this point such people would have to accept that what is now a huge part of their personal identity is bullshit, and people with the psychological and intelectual maturity required to be able to accept something like that and move on wouldn't have become tribalist muppets in the first place.

They will never, ever do that, rather what they do is invent excuses and deflections of blame.

This but unironically.

It's called Sunk Cost Fallacy, a basic concept in economics that even explains how gambling addictions begin and why it's so hard for people to stop until they've lost everything.

purity on their ideals otherwise they don’t vote.

and somehow too dumb to realize their immature reaction drastically hurts those ideals.

I am no longer getting pleasure or carthasis from this. I need the old white leeches to be choked with the bare hands of the people

Look up First Past The Post to learn why you accidentally supported Trump.

The person you responded to was also bashing third-party voting.

Honestly, I'd rather people educate themselves and vote third parties than not vote like 40% of the country did. If third parties got a large piece of the vote, they could get public funding and make their voices heard more. Sure, there's only two sides to every issue, but you could have coalition style like in Europe.

But our two parties conspire to monopolize the seats of power just like the corporations that buy them.

As a third party voter, you're either really stupid or you know you voted for this.

Average Adult US reading level is between a 5th and 6th grader.

At least 15% are at 2nd grade or below, ie, functionally illiterate.

Only around 5% to 10% can read at a level where they can perform their own critical analysis of different news sources covering the same topic, evaluate for bias, emphasized details, left out context, etc.

... Most Americans are indeed thumb sucking morons.

Yeah, you're talking about people, many of whom can only read on a fourth grade level and it's not possible to cram all the nuance of Government and Economics into a ten second TikTok video.

They're heartless morons. Idk why they're so heartless but their idiocy has been planned and implemented for decades.

As an expert on the subject who has spent my life working with farmers around the globe.

70% of them are fucking superstitious idiots who believe the craziest shit.

25% of them are of average intelligence who do their best and work hard.

5% of the are intelligent wonderful people who are highly technical and skilled.

The socio-economic reasons for why this occurs is interesting (at least to me). Remember farming has had centuries of pressure for migration for rural living to urban. Rural populations are isolated and historically have lacked access to higher education, healthcare, mental health, etc. So you have a constant brain drain, combined with lower relative mental and physical health.

So how the fuck do these morons manage to grow a crop? They outsource the decision making to "trusted advisors". Government agents, agronomist, fieldman, etc. these are the people who are actually making the day to day decisions on most of the these farms. What to fertilize with, what to spray, when to harvest, when to plant etc... they do it all the thinking while the idiots ride around in the luxury tractor cabins letting the GPS stear as they listen to talk radio or watch videos.

Oklahoma, 1936: "I'm going to ignore centuries of established dry farming techniques here on this semi-arid plain. What could possible go wrong?"

Oklahoma, 2024: "I'm going to vote to re-elect the guy whose economic policies nearly bankrupted me the first time. What could possibly go wrong?"

Farming isn’t farming anymore. It’s all automated. And owned by corporations.

Know how I finally understood what the quadratic equation was used for IRL? Ag class. Bet you couldn't handle a single simple acre of monoculture, given all the time in the world to make it happen. Money says you'd fail to harvest a single bushel of tomatoes.

BTW, you'll be living in the country, so you'll need shitloads of self-sufficiency skills, both for the home and field.

It's the one-two punch of poor education and the propaganda of our media environment.

"Home delivered freshly made"

"Directly from the producer"

The jokes on that one just write themselves.

Did he leave a phone number or Etsy link? The lawn sign guy...

Their racism is ancillary and it’s not that simple. MAGA exploits several rotten elements in rural American society; racism is just one of them

I think the simplest explanation is that they have been conditioned to hate and fear first and do not consider any person innately equal until that person has proven themselves to be worthy of value. To enter the American south, you walk into a minefield of social faux pas and a mire of shibboleths. You fucked up just by driving in with “Yankee” license plates. Hell, you can fuck up by having the wrong county on your plates (which is a thing in the south). For a group of people who hate anything “woke” or involving critical theory, they are a textbook example of intersectionality; their identity is complex and why they don’t like you is even more complicated.

They have been conditioned to distrust anything they don’t immediately understand, dwell peacefully in contradiction, be selectively empathic, and ignore their own self-interests whenever it does not exclusively benefit them. This is the “temporarily embarrassed millionaire” and “my true reward awaits in heaven” crowd. You can’t reason with them because they answer to a higher power and it’s all part of god’s plan. And if you make the mistake of quoting scripture at them, they write you off as a know-it-all who has read the Bible but hasn’t read it with your heart.

They are generationally impoverished, both financially and intellectually. The south suffers from massive brain drain and financially successful people are just those that God has blessed. There’s no charity for those outside of their immediate social circle. There’s no such thing as southern hospitality, just public manners. Bless your heart, they’re talking shit before you walk out the door.

Southern society craves authoritarianism and aristocracy because blind respect for authority and power are deeply rooted in their culture and religion (and that’s exactly what the antebellum south was; that’s their “heritage”). Trump promises to make it all great and lift them back into their rightful place because they all think they will be the plantation master.

Hammer a sign that says thatninto the ground next to it. Or, maybe write that on it with a sharpie?

That ^

and

Sunk cost: They've invested 40-60 years of their life programming their worldview with the propaganda.

Scapegoating: It's not them and their bad choices, it's the immigrants/democrats/poor siphoning off their resources

The state runs the media. The media informs the masses which people are the enemy/stupid, the masses join together to feel good that they're not stupid. They put more money into campaign funds to buy signs from the government that's holding them down, all while feeling self-righteous.

and they'll win because blue team wants to do anything but accept any sort of responsibility by constantly laying the blame on others.

if you heard the first time the farmers said when trump first did his soybean tariffs in his first term, there isnt any hope. they still think he come through for them despite him not doing that. ALso its a sign if the news doesnt report how bad the tariffs affected the farmers.

They're not gonna kill themselves, just sayin

There was no first great flood

This is their main issue. They always complained about paying property taxes in New York or some other northern state, but then also complain about the cost of housing, driving distances, car prices, and insurance. You also have to deal with politicians taking away your rights and passing shitty laws constantly that hurt you. So glad i don't work retail anymore, hated hearing them complain about that crap.

Did they vote for Trump?

The better question is, why do you not use an adblocker?

Is schadenfreude still schadenfreude if you're wading in the shit alongside them?

Yeah, I guess it is.

Is an open conservative billionaire-lover.

Well at least now they're getting worse! Mission accomplished.

They were getting better though. Just not better enough.

Definetly but why make it much worse by voting GOP ?

Not even half are run by democrats. Magats think they are. You know democrats like musk.

Yeah, know there's variation even with where I live. Fair enough though, just that it'd be nice to have better job access than I do now. As well as generally better social safety nets. Had a friend be let go from a position in the area and while it took a while, his unemployment was like 80-90% of his income. Here, 40% is the best you get. The states I live in or nearby rely on a revolution of unemployment and employment for many people.

The ability to learn defines our survival, since the dawn of time.

how many refused masks and took ivermectin? I witnessed the idiots refusing that Covid actually existed. Those assholes ceased to exist- there are some life lessons those idiots have to absorb to their new lives.

And that is exactly why it all falls apart on Trump's death. No, Vance can't take over. He'll catch the heat for ALL the things. Right now they're scrambling for pole position as Trump sundowns.

Surely the Blue States with Dem governors and legislatures are suffering less, though, right?