Rural Americans are trying to hold back the tide of AI
wsj.com
wsj.com
When are we going to stop talking about Republicans like they are still neocons? Republicans haven’t been the pro big-business party in 10 years (did we forget about the tariffs, trade wars, etc that have happened in the last year alone?)
Because they're still schizophrenic about that. It's not an either/or thing. Trump likes tariffs, and a protectionist strain has appeared in the Republican party, but the pro big-business/small government stuff is there, just not so monolithically dominant.
Rich people love trumps protectionism and MAGA. Neocons and paternal autocrats, but I repeat myself.
Nowhere is this more obvious than in the country. GOP policy blew up farming in the 80s, but doubling down on stupid culture war shit in the 90s flipped the farmers. The democratic parties concluded the juice of a contested small voter base wasnt worth the squeeze.
The same rug pull is in play here. Lots of Catholics are on the MAGA train because of their supposed deep convictions. The anti-immigrant Cuban and Mexicans will be the first to hit the “find out” phase.
This is generational damage for anyone (R), and we’re only a year in. They’re losing elections in Trump +17 districts.
Never interrupt your enemy when they’re making a mistake.
They LOVE the cruelty. The people who hate immigrants most are other immigrants. Brazil didn't end slavery until 1888 and it continued de-facto far longer than it did in the USA. Spain/Portugal were far more cruel/racist than the English and especially french were. Their history is one of extreme, virulent racism.
Even today, they make huge distinctions between the "European" white mexicans who are "untainted" by indigenous blood.
Latinos also are extremely anti-LGBT, and used to be catholic but are having their own evangelization sweeping through their communities (I am personally witnessing it right now). That evangelization is primary in reaction to the precieved liberalism of the current and previous pope.
If you were right and Latinos just loved cruelty, why would this current push make Trump unpopular?
Second off: this is wildly racist. “Latinos” is clearly a massive brush, and then you make some point about how they “distinguish” whiteness, but again that wasn’t what you were trying to prove.
Your understanding of colonial oppression as being “better” under the French wouldn’t go down well in Haiti, or the English in India (or Ireland, etc, etc). Is Belgian Congo and King Leopold II in our class trading, or not?
It’s like you tried for three separate thoughts by shooting from the hip, but started off without basic reasoning and a massive dose of easily dispelled racism?
On the "if they loved cruelty, why unpopular now?" bit: Popularity ebbs and flows. The surge came from voters who prioritized border security, gang crackdowns (MS-13 rhetoric landed hard in Central American communities), and anti "woke" vibes over abstract kindness. Many Latinos (especially newer immigrants or their kids) resent unchecked new arrivals competing for jobs/housing in their neighborhoods. This is classic intragroup competition. Polls and studies have long shown native born or earlier generation Latinos often hold hugely more restrictionist views on immigration than native born whites do on certain dimensions.
Now, the racism card: Calling the observation "wildly racist" while ignoring the actual sociology is lazy. Latin America has deep, enduring colorism and caste systems rooted in colonial hierarchies! Spain/Portugal's systems were explicitly racialized with categories like peninsulares > criollos > mestizos > indígenas > africanos and they are alive and strong today! "Limpieza de sangre" (blood purity) was and is a thing. Brazil abolished slavery in 1888 (last in the Americas), with de facto continuations via labor exploitation en mass. That's the historical record. Modern manifestations: In Mexico, lighter skinned people dominate media/politics/business! Skin bleaching products are huge! Job ads sometimes specify "buena presencia" (code for white passing). Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, same patterns but even stronger. Look at El Salvador especially! I'm acknowledging intra Latino hierarchies that make blanket anti-racism narratives from the U.S. left ring hollow when applied uniformly.
You bring up Haiti and India/Ireland/Belgian Congo. SOME French colonialism was brutal, i.e. Haiti, English in India/Ireland genocidal at times, Leopold's Congo a horror show (note I didn't bring up Belgium at all and will never defend their record given the scale). But the original point was comparative severity in the Americas' slave systems and indigenous treatment. Iberian systems often involved more explicit racial mixing at much larger scales (mestizaje as ideology) but also more rigid caste enforcement and FAR slower abolition. British systems in North America leaned toward segregation/expulsion over integration, but slavery ended earlier (British in 1808 in abolising trans atlantic trade, full emancipation by 1835, U.S. 1865, French colonies phased out even earlier). Spain didn't fully abolish slavery in Cuba until 1886!
French colonialism outside Haiti, in New France (Canada, Great Lakes fur trade regions), was downright cordial by colonial standards! The fur trade economy required deep alliances with Indigenous groups (Hurons, Algonquins, Montagnais, etc.). French traders lived in Native villages, learned languages, intermarried (creating Métis communities), respected customs to secure trade networks, and prioritized diplomacy over mass settlement or expulsion. They armed allies militarily but avoided the large scale land grabs and forced labor systems elsewhere. Historians note the French depended on these partnerships for survival against British numbers, leading to mutual respect and integration rather than domination. Contrast that with Spanish encomienda (forced tribute labor) or British settler colonialism (displacement, reservations).
Yes, "Latinos" is a broad category, Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Venezuelan, etc., have different politics. But the trends hold: Trump overperformed with men (Latino men went +33 points margin shift in some data), working class, evangelical leaning segments (rapidly raising right now because catholocism is too liberal). The ongoing evangelical wave among U.S. Latinos (fastest growing evangelical subgroup, with projections of major shifts by 2030) is real and reacts against perceived Catholic "liberalism" (Francis era stuff). Anti LGBT attitudes remain stronger in many Latino communities than in the broader U.S. Your statistics claiming the opposite are from a decade and a half ago.
Anglo French (Protestant/Enlightenment-influenced) traditions produced the intellectual forefathers of modern liberalism. Locke (natural rights, limited government), Montesquieu (separation of powers), Voltaire/Rousseau (individual liberty, secularism), Smith (free markets), Mill (utilitarianism/liberty). These ideas fueled abolitionism, constitutionalism, and eventual democratic expansions. Iberian colonialism, tied to absolutist Spain/Portugal and the Inquisition's legacy, leaned toward hierarchical, corporatist, Catholic monarchical structures. This is literally the opposite of liberalism's emphasis on individual rights and equality before law. Mestizaje ideology mixed races but preserved sharp color/class distinctions. liberalism's universalist ideals (however imperfectly applied) came from the Anglo-French orbit. My disdain for Iberian influenced cultures is rooted in history.
I don’t think they were counting on so much hate that ICE agents were quitting long before getting their bonuses, or being so reviled; in their fantasy they were lauded as saviors, not mocked so badly that ICE agents quit.
I increasingly notice people say they were “never MAGA, I was always independent”. It’s been a noticeable shift.
What did they think they were voting for?
It's not really surprising as conservativism and liberalism are both main pillars of capitalism, because the idea of property is based both on authority (like authority, you get the property ostensibly based on your past performance and you keep it indefinitely) and liberty (you can do what you want with it).
A notorious example was/is xAI's Memphis data center. They started out using a loophole that let them power it with dozens of gas turbines without permits that didn't have to meet air pollution standards. (I don't remember for sure, but I think they were using them under a rule that is meant for emergencies like natural disasters).
The surrounding communities, mostly poor and minority with not much political clout, already had air that was significantly worse than wealthier and whiter parts of the area, and the data center pushed that to levels health officials considered to be alarming, like a 79% rise in peak NO2 nearby.
This was actually bad enough that even the Trump administration had to act and the EPA now had a rule making it harder for data centers to exploit that loophole.
But they are still using gas turbines, 15 instead of dozens, and they now are permitted and have more pollution controls, but independent data suggests it remains a major source of the smog in the surrounding neighborhoods. They are expected to be fully on the grid later this year.
Maybe it's better to just say that they're shouldering more of the burden?
> Very little daily benefit? I think they have to agree that the magic of applications like Waze or Google Docs or OpenAI don't magically happen without some data center somewhere. It's like people complaining about the smell of hog farms but insisting on eating pork.
Are you being deliberately obtuse? Pay attention to the context.
It seems like since the AI boom, people have been building more datacenters, that are bigger, and using more power. I mean FFS, memory prices are through the roof and NVIDIA is pulling back from the consumer market. This isn't about building data-centers for "Waze or Google Docs," or any of those applications people actually benefit from.
AI Data Centers are different than other plants. They provide very little in employment in the region. The few high-paying jobs that may exist can be located in other countries. All that is needed is building maintenance, and that can be contracted out, so no permanent work for the area.
All the Data Center does is use resources, electricity/water, without giving anything back to the community except discounted property tax. The residences, they only see higher utility costs for themselves.
So no wonder people are fighting back.
These datacenters will likely be hastily abandoned once the AI-flavored expansion pops and will be a blight on the land that would have otherwise been growing beans and corn.
At best, they will be a poorly guarded structure that local high school students will break into and do what high school students do.
Nearly half of all corn fields in the US go to feed our cars.
25% of a massive number is still a massive number.
> Because of provisions in the Federal Agriculture Improvement and Reform Act of 1996 that permits farmers to make their own crop planting decisions based on the most profitable crop for a given year, corn acreage in the United States has increased from a Government-mandated low of 60.2 million planted acres in 1983 to close to or exceeding 90 million since 2018. Much of this growth in area and production is a result of expanding ethanol production, which now accounts for nearly 45 percent of total corn use.
https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/corn-and-other-feed-gr...
It does look like its dropped a bit since that time though.
Still, one wonders if we'd bother with so much of our fields going to grow corn if the main use was just DDGS. I wonder how the economics of everything else in the corn industry would change if we stopped requiring E10.
It is not surprising in the least that suits from Washington and execs from Silicon Valley descending upon the land like vultures aren't exactly given a warm welcome from regular folk. Even if electricity prices stayed the same there would be damage done that goes beyond NIMBYism that would need to be fixed.
This neatly encapsulates a big part of what I’ve been trying to say on HN for years: those outside “rural America”/“red states” simply do not understand those inside - and to only a slightly lesser degree, vice-versa.
When we say “Don’t Tread on Me”, it’s largely not a political slogan; it’s a shorthand that represents an entire worldview. When others see that as on par with “Yes we can”, “I can’t breathe”, or “Defund the police”, they’re making a mistake.
What’s seen as politics on the coasts is seen as a direct attack on our culture and way of life in the middle of the country.
As always, I want to be clear and say that I’m neither complaining nor offended here. My fear is that the factions in the US will cross each others’ red lines without even understanding what they’re doing. Historically, that’s been the left doing something the right finds untenable without realizing the consequences. These days the opposite is looking more and more likely.
And the framing of "middle of the country" matters, too. There are many rural parts of New York and California, too, some of which are as deep a shade of red as parts of the South.
I'm in the South - Arkansas - but have lived in other areas (Appalachia). This applies to both Southern and Midwestern cultures to my knowledge, and likely others.
Obviously, I'm greatly generalizing here, but I think what I'm saying is clear enough to be understood.
They'll save you money, increase your independence and increase your resilience.
Those are 3 core rural values. In practice, in my experience, most rural folk tend to be anti-solar. But there are a sizeable chunk of highly conservatively voting rural folk who are proponents of solar.
I don't have solar now because I live in a neighborhood. It's a quiet, older neighborhood in a small town, but a neighborhood nonetheless. I'm planning on investing in long-term stuff like that once I find the right property to start a farm and ultimately turn into a "family compound". It makes little sense to invest $20-40k in a solar system for a home that I may well sell in the next couple of years - especially since that particular improvement doesn't translate into a higher sale price in this market.
I'm pro-solar in that I see no reason to see it in a poor light. There are definitely applications that don't make sense that are being pursued, but I'm dealing with a roof leak now and am considering either replacing my asphalt shingles with solar shingles, or will get a roof that will support solar installation in the future if and when the economics make sense. I've not done the math yet, so that may be now.
I'm pro-EV, too, but again - context matters. I drive a '91 GMC pickup because it fits my needs, is in good condition, and I drive very little compared to most people in my situation. The numbers don't work for me to buy an EV. When I bought a car for my daughter, I went with an ICE vehicle because that's what made sense given the requirements (fairly small, "peppy" (esp. acceleration), capable off-road and in snow and ice, reliable, and as inexpensive as practical. I went with a '24 Subaru Crosstrek Wilderness not because it was ICE, but because it was by far the best value I found and met all her needs.
But yes, I know what you're saying - lots of people here are politically motivated and wouldn't even consider installing solar or getting an EV. I see those people as being defined by the political alignment, and that's not really who I'm talking about. The vast majority of people feel like they're more "center" than they really are, which means they're not tied to illogical positions as a result. That's a good thing.
I don't know, a lot of people say that "city-dwellers" (an obnoxious term) don't understand rural Americans and the left doesn't understand the right, but from where I sit the left has been trying to warn everyone about the creeping approach of fascism and the far right within the Republican party for years, and rural people are the ones just now realizing the leopards are coming for their faces too.
Rural Americans still talk about Hillary Clinton's "deplorables" comment as if it were the greatest insult to their honor and dignity since the burning of Atlanta, but she was spot on. And predictably, rather than clean their own house, rural Americans preferred to trauma bond with Nazis and pedophiles than admit a "New York liberal" could have a point.
Rural people aren't as special as they think, you'll find Gadsden and Confederate battle flags in big cities everywhere. I promise you that people in Portland and New York understand "Don't Tread on Me" and that "Defund the Police" came from just as serious a place. It just happens that black activism gets commoditized, sanitized and rendered inconsequential by the same system that romanticizes the Lost Cause and right-wing activism.
My own thinking is that the prestige media memeplex really hates AI and has a big problem with silicon valley tech companies, and this colors all their reporting about AI datacenters. See for instance https://andymasley.substack.com/p/the-ai-water-issue-is-fake, and https://www.wired.com/story/karen-hao-empire-of-ai-water-use..., particularly the parts about prestige media journalist Karen Hao getting the amount of water datacenters use wrong by multiple orders of magnitude in order to make AI datacenters seem like a problem. Plenty of people who clearly hate the concept of AI also throw around "datacenter water use" as a general attack against AI, completely thoughtlessly.
I strongly suspect that the prestige media journalists Anvee Bhutani and Amrith Ramkumar who wrote this article are doing something similar. Are there really significant numbers of people in rural areas who object to a thousand-acre data center project? That's not that big in a rural farmland context.
The one thing that strikes me as something rural people might organically care about is if the presence of a data center near them appreciably raises their power bills or makes the local electric grid less reliable. Data centers really do use a lot of electricity, and that's the specific issue the Republican Missouri senator was quoted as addressing. Still, if power bills are actually going up in a way that meaningfully affects people, it shouldn't be hard to find quotes from people who have seen their power bills go up. Increased local energy cost should be the focus of this entire article if that is in fact a problem, and I'm suspicious of the fact that it isn't.