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Comment by jbhatab | Hacker News Reader

What part of this has to do with the problem I brought up? Rural white America which is a large portion of America has a lack of opportunities.

I'm not talking health care. And I 100% know that it is not reasonable to bring those schools to rural America. But where is the dialog around helping them? At least a conversation around fixing the heroin problem and finding them jobs. If you have that conversation that was brought up during the election in big debates during the election, please link it.

there are countless examples of Trump at least putting together a plan, even if its stupid, to help them.

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Access to medical care, therapy, especially for the poor have always been a top-3 Democrat platform item. Here is one plan HRC had: http://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/29/clinton-proposes-plan-to-addr...

w/r/t the Heroin problem, for a generation, Republicans have pushed an agenda of criminalizing drug addiction, labeling it a moral issue and throwing victims into prison. That worked to their agenda when it was a big urban problem affecting swaths of minorities. As a bonus, it also ups private for-profit prison populations, another Republican agenda. Now that it is a rural scourge amongst white Americans, Republicans are having a difficult time reconciling their previous lack of empathy, so they are mostly silent.

I'm a "city-dweller" and while I'm registered Republican I generally vote Democratic. My taxes go up as a 1%-er, but i'm 100% to have my taxes go up to support my fellow Americans.

> w/r/t the Heroin problem, for a generation, Republicans have pushed an agenda of criminalizing drug addiction, labeling it a moral issue and throwing victims into prison.

Don't forget that Dems were also strongly for this platform in the 90s under Clinton.

They weren't strongly for this. They edged towards it just enough to win enough of the white people who had fallen for scaremongering (and often racist) propaganda put out by Republicans so they wouldn't lose and then have no ability to change the policy.

"Both sides are the same" is a rallying cry of people who know that one side is actually much worse.

If a political party is not entirely for the end of the drug war... they get tossed in the trash. They're lucky they get to hang out with the garbage IMO.

I think the disconnect is in what "help" looks like. From the "city folk" point of view, help means removing barriers: healthcare, education, affordable housing, child care, etc.

Creating jobs in where they don't geographically make sense isn't helping, it's passing the buck.

>But where is the dialog around helping them?

Is this a joke?

The discussion around how to humanely deal with drug addiction has been completely shut down by the right wing. they have made it a literal WAR against drug users.

Rural america dug its grave by pushing for the drug war for decades, and now that white americans are having a drug problem its finally time to step back and look at this issue more seriously?

And you think its the cities that lack empathy? How disconnected from reality can you be?

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