Comment by overthemoon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by overthemoon | Hacker News Reader

This guy found a handful of the dumbest people in America and concluded people in rural areas are morally degraded and their problems are their own fault.

The arrogance of dismissing their contempt for the government is overwhelming. Just because they don't express their hatred of the elite class of people who rule them in just the right way doesn't somehow add up to their anger being misguided. They're using "the government" as a lightning rod for the myriad elites who do basically dictate the shape of their lives--the media they consume, the state of the market they could never control, and what options for their future they have. It's not expressed clearly, but it's not hard for someone with an ounce of empathy to suss out.

I could come up with a laundry list of the moral failures of the white rural poor, sure. My family tree is full of people just like this. But this researcher and people just like him cannot see past their own ideology. They want to believe they're objective, but they're not, they're caught up in the same sort of scientistic neoliberalism that can't help but see anyone outside of their elite class as a curious primitive and any other value system from theirs as a totemic anomaly. They want to know what character flaws led people to do such a horrible thing as to vote for Trump, but cannot for a moment consider how it was that we got to this position. Hint: it's not the rural poor's fault.

I think a bigger problem is the unholy conflation of fiscal and social conservatism, by the interviewer, possibly by the author, and quite likely by the people being studied themselves.

It is one thing to support fiscal conservatism. The very nature of these towns lends itself to the ideology, and it has its merits - cf. tech leaders who supported Trump.

It is quite another to have "outdated" (for lack of a better word) moral beliefs (anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-<whatever>), to _know_ that the majority of the country does not agree, and still somehow _expect_ that these views to be enforced in their little part of the world. It's a kind of selfishness that is not unique to small towns or their people by any means, but it is there.

I wish the author did more to differentiate the two, although the interview is pretty terrible overall.

> It is quite another to have "outdated" (for lack of a better word) moral beliefs

There are plenty of better words. "Unfashionable" works.

> anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-<whatever>

I find it interesting that the left think of the right as the "anti" crowd, while the right think the same of the left.

> to _know_ that the majority of the country does not agree, and still somehow _expect_ that these views to be enforced in their little part of the world. It's a kind of selfishness that is not unique to small towns or their people by any means, but it is there.

First, the assumption that social conservatives are a clear minority and reside in a "small part of the world" doesn't really hold up. Second, minority or not, since when is a political group advancing their own interests "selfish"?

Indeed. A majority of Americans support making late-term abortions illegal. (With good reason. It really is a baby human that's being slaughtered.)

42 states already have bans on late term abortions. Federal law tends to be purposefully general on issues like this.

I thought about the "anti-" phrasing after posting, and of course you're correct. It's not really relevant to my point, though. I agree "unfashionable" is a better term too.

As an example, less than 20% of Americans believe abortion should be totally illegal (2015) [1]. Granted, this is only one "social issue", but I think it's somewhat representative of my point.

There's a difference between advancing your political beliefs and not accepting the current status, and participating in antisocial behaviour in response, as the article suggests. Whether or not this behaviour is commonplace, is, well, a separate point entirely.

[1] http://news.gallup.com/poll/1576/abortion.aspx

> There's a difference between advancing your political beliefs and not accepting the current status, and participating in antisocial behaviour in response

I'm a little unclear on what you're talking about here. What antisocial behavior in particular? I'm part of that 20%, and wondering at what point does expressing my opinion become "antisocial".

For reference, roughly 6% of the population is vegan[1]. Are they antisocial for protesting what is, in their opinion, murder?

[1] https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/4959853/top-trends-in-pr...

A few weeks ago I walked past a group of people with huge (2m x 3m) posters of aborted fetuses outside one of the biggest buildings of my university campus. These same people have been accused of berating people who disagree with them. I find that behaviour and form of protest. Do I think it should be illegal? Definitely not. Do I think it's anti-social? Yes. As a mirror to this example, if in my (liberal) home state anti-gun nuts were to lobby for a change in gun policy with pictures of dead school kids from shooting <x> outside my university, I'd be similarly displeased with the nature of that political rhetoric.

There are leftist groups that protest in anti-social ways to varying degrees, so it's by no means unique to the right. An extreme example would be groups masquerading as Antifa destroying property. (Like I said, varying degrees of anti-social behaviour.) One of the positions of the author, it seems, is that anti-social political discourse is particularly dangerous in small towns, due to the echo chamber effect.

So, to answer your question simply: ideally, political discourse is well-reasoned, and measured in its intensity. One person expounding on their political beliefs with the intention of causing genuine emotional distress in another individual would be anti-social, in my view.

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