While that's one interpretation, there's Long been conflict in the US on the rural-urban axis - see Andrew Jackson's vision versus Alexander Hamilton's vision
Race is only useful in this sort of thing as a predictor of rough economic class, and even then it's less than useful. IOW, I don't think it's specifically race.
A better resource is "American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America" http://www.amazon.com/American-Nations-History-Regional-Cult...
Indeed. Although I am not (currently) among the rural poor, I can't imagine ever trusting someone who openly refers to me or mine as "those people".
Or is there some deeper insult that I am missing due to not having experience of it?
That's a bit smug[0].
>"Urban elites" have long advocated for policies that would benefit the rural poor but the white rural poor are dead set against any policy that would also benefit black people.
Certainly these urban elites could enact these beneficial policies for their (largely black) urban poor in their own cities without the interference of the white rural poor. How well is that working out?
[0]http://www.vox.com/2016/4/21/11451378/smug-american-liberali...
I'll provide a starting hypothesis for discussion's sake: maybe urban disdain for the suburban and rural lifestyles (exemplified by complaints about "subsidizing" rural areas) turns people off before they hear the good ideas?
An alternative hypothesis based on my own rural extended family: maybe one group decides based on what they are led to believe is practical or effective, while the other group decides based on what they are led to believe is "right" or moral, and the rhetoric of either side cannot penetrate the thought process of the other?
[1] http://www.syracuse.com/state/index.ssf/2016/02/poll_two-thi...
I'm not going to claim to answer for anybody but myself -- in large part because (a) I'm an urbanite too and (b) my politics can be least inaccurately described as "anarchist" -- but to me, this question really comes down to one point: respect/maturity.
Much of the modern progressive social policy package sounds to me like somebody saying "Tsk tsk, daddy's little princess deserves better! You sit back, I'll deal with this!" (Wages too low? Have a horrid health insurance plan that doesn't cover what you need? Housing in short supply? Don't fret, Just vote Progressive! We can legislate your woes away!)
That attitude is OK if "princess" is only 8 years old -- but only because a child is not mature enough to make many decisions, nor expected to be capable of executing on them. Should the target of this attitude be 18, it becomes mildly condescending since "princess" is on the verge of being a legal adult. However, should this be directed toward someone who is 28 or 38 [as all universal government policy inevitably must], the concern arises that whomever carries this attitude will never be treating "princess" like a capable, autonomous adult peer.
You may find concern and compassion in the progressive social agenda, but all I will ever perceive is condescension and thinly-disguised contempt.
At least for me, the question is not, "How can I show these 'little people' how to live better," it's, "What resources would I need to get back to where I am now if I found myself in situation X?" I don't see how that is condescending.
> At least for me, the question is not, "...
Look, I'm sure progressives don't mean to sound patronizing when pushing for any of their pet programs -- however, the truth of the matter is you are no more able to dictate how people feel about what you say than you can the weight bearing capacity of a bridge or the speed of a computer program. [That is -- you can exert some control, but it's not done by directly writing the answer on the blueprints.]
I even read your original post in this thread as asking the right sort of question to exert that control: "When progressives put forth a program, what is it their opponents hear that seems distasteful?" and I gave you my answer to that question.
> I think this is why the only reasonable end-game for progressive ideas is ...
Just... stop right there. First off, I wasn't trying to address any sort of ivory tower, idealized "progressive ideas" -- yes, I'm sure there are academics who want something like universal income, healthcare, education, etc. I'm talking about the ones agitating in the streets for a $15 minimum wage, or the politicians who were willing to pass Obamacare instead of single-payer programs. In fact, I find it highly likely that such ideologues are ostracized even among left-leaning groups in the US, because that is not what is put forth by most progressive (Democrat) politicians.
Second, I don't really have any feelings one way or the other about those programs. Like the examples above, I don't think human beings have direct, final control over (or even enough knowledge to say in advance) what systems will or won't work. Instead, we need to attempt a great many different things -- yes, UBI among them -- to sort out which ideas are good or bad, because not all possible flaws are immediately obvious. [Remember in my last post how I said I'm 'nearly' an anarchist? This is most of what I meant -- making sure there's always room for experiments in governance, in order to reduce our ignorance about the mercurial nature of things.]
Violent gun crimes are nearly non-existent in rural settings. Plus, gun plays an important role for rural folks including: hunting, pest control on farms, self-defense when the police are 30 minutes away, etc.
Is it that surprising that rural folks say "Hey, that sucks you have a lot of gun crime, but why do I have to give something up that has value to me?"
This cannot be the basis of a rational policy, because it's false. Gun violence is much higher outside of cities. Please go to this site and set the stats to "Intent of injury: Violence-related" and "Mechanism of Injury: Firearm".
https://wisqars.cdc.gov:8443/cdcMapFramework/mapModuleInterf...
I wish this site had a reasonable way to make permalinks, then I would just paste it here.
The unsupported assumption here is that those policies would be beneficial.
What factors (emotional, moral, intellectual, cultural, derived from propaganda, whatever) feed into a decision to support or not to support UBI, as an example?
Well, I strongly doubt that a UBI that could actually achieve that is actually sustainable in the near term, especially absent a concrete policy that prevents zoning and other related policies from being used to prevent adequate housing affordable to those made more theoretically able to afford it by the UBI from being produced.
And I'm kind of an enthusiastic backer of UBI as a general concept after spending considerable time looking into it and thinking about how to make it work; I suspect that a lot of the working class is going to be even more skeptical of "free money" promises to start with.
At the core of it, they don't trust you. Nothing you can say matters after that.
The questions are, why are positional concerns so obscenely powerful here as opposed to elsewhere, and why are positional concerns so obscenely powerful now as opposed to earlier?†
†Note the latter is somewhat questionable, as we had a black underclass to systemically persecute for a long time, and this action is blamed for everything from our lack of a public healthcare system to the gaps in our educational policy favoring high-income areas to suburban roadbuilding to the prevalence of private neighborhood & household swimming pools.