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There is less cultural output because there are fewer people. There's probably a thousand new bands that started in Brooklyn this month. You just can't have those numbers out in the sticks because you don't have the people. There literally aren't enough singers.
Culture matters. People interacting and inspiring each other matters. It's not that there's nothing happening out in Wisconsin or wherever, but there's less. There are fewer people to be doing stuff!
I almost wrote a preemptive response about "where does your food come from". I don't think most of the people living outside of cities are farmers.
A quick search says
I don't know if https://usafacts.org/articles/farmer-demographics/ is a real site but it would be awkward for someone to make up these numbers.
That's a lot of people in the sense of like "I couldn't have that many people at my birthday party" but not a lot of people compared to like, who lives in major cities. Bushwick, Brooklyn is one neighborhood and has like 130k people.
Food is important but probably not a justification for holding everyone else hostage. Especially when most people living in those areas aren't even growing food. (Some are second order involved, like the guy who works the Laundromat helps the farmer or whatever). Also especially when the efforts being stymied would help people, like student loan forgiveness or federally funded school meals.
The rural conservative POV is utterly poisoned by decades of racial violence and regressive policies. There's like a mass shooting every day. Climate change is going to fuck us. Conservatism is not an okay world view.
That said, the answer is probably local government for things that are actually local. Environmental issues cannot be local. You can't have this town dumping mercury into the water and pretending that's just fine. But for something like "we want a bike lane here" or "we want a library that's open weekends" that's doesn't need to be federal. But if "local" means "no queers allowed to get married here" then the locals can fuck themselves.
Guns are a whole separate wedge issue. I think they should at least be treated the same as cars- license, registration, insurance, mechanisms to remove the license like DUI. I don't know how close to reality that is.
I wrote this on my phone so it's not my best work.
For guns, I've recently run into a point of view that I think is valid: the above structure (insurance/license) disproportionately favors the wealthy. Ultimately it just adds a barrier for the poor.
I fully understand that the stats show that gun control laws DO indeed decrease GUN violence. However violent crime in general doesn't really change. The ONLY statistically effective way that guarantees a reduction of violence on the whole is lifting people out of poverty. The less poor we have, the less violent crime. Social programs can lift us out of so many issues.
This is true. The same problem applies to transportation, health care, food security, etc. Poverty is terrible. Unfortunately, the right wing also seems to hate any effective programs to deal with it. No school lunches, no basic income, no nationalized insurance, etc etc.
Right, it's especially rich because that the demographic that's overwhelmingly "Christian" despite consistently voting against policies that align with "Christ's" teachings.