Posted on 12/01/2012 9:14:27 PM PST by Seizethecarp
The new political divide is a stark division between cities and what remains of the countryside. Not just some cities and some rural areas, either -- virtually every major city (100,000-plus population) in the United States of America has a different outlook from the less populous areas that are closest to it. The difference is no longer about where people live, it's about how people live: in spread-out, open, low-density privacy -- or amid rough-and-tumble, in-your-face population density and diverse communities that enforce a lower-common denominator of tolerance among inhabitants.
The only major cities that voted Republican in the 2012 presidential election were Phoenix, Oklahoma City, Fort Worth, and Salt Lake City. With its dominant Mormon population, Mitt Romney was a lock in the Utah capital; Phoenix nearly voted for Obama. After that, the largest urban centers to tilt Republican included Wichita, Lincoln, Neb., and Boise.
The gap is so stark that some of America's bluest cities are located in its reddest states. Every one of Texas' major cities -- Austin, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio -- voted Democratic in 2012, the second consecutive presidential election in which they've done so. Other red-state cities that tipped blue include Atlanta, Indianapolis, New Orleans, Birmingham, Tucson, Little Rock, and Charleston, S.C. -- ironically, the site of the first battle of the Civil War. In states like Nevada, the only blue districts are often also the only cities, like Reno and Las Vegas.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
Having lived in both. Country living for me is nothing short of Hell on Earth. I don’t begrudge those who enjoy that sort of thing, but I could never do it again. In small towns everyone is up in your business, there is never anything to do, DQ is not a real restaurant, everything is long drive, it’s lonely...and I could go on all day.
Glad you are a reeper in the city. Me II hate cities, I love waking up on this mountain and seeing the deer and sometimes a bear in my yard.I can shoot in my back yard and there is noone to bitch. I heat with wood and could live months with out power. Diverent strokes I quess
I would add one unusual factor. If you move into an urban community....most folks typically aren’t into newspapers anymore, but you do turn on the morning and evening local news. In the majority of cases, I’ve come to notice from the urban prospective (I always lived in the rural parts of America and overseas until three years ago)...that the local network guys are carrying a more slanted view of the news. After a decade of watching it...you probably would become more capable to believing a liberal view than a Conservative view.
That’s just the difference between people. Some people, like you, love the excitement of the big city and all the services. Some people like seclusion far away from the bright city lights and the hustle and bustle. I live about 15 miles from any semi-major metro buildup almost in the country but not quite (there’s farm acreage outside my backyard). I like it that I don’t have close neighbors. The really big city is 140 miles away, and that’s alright by me.
I gotta ask....WHERE "in the country" did you live?? I grew up in "deep country" in Louisiana, and there was never a lack of things to do or a shortage of good restaurants within reasonable driving distance. With today's electronic access to virtually everything, the situation is even better.
And yes, I spent many years in a city of >100K population (Baton Rouge), and a couple of years in Houston.
I hope never to live in a city again.
My sister and her husband live the same way - and in the same part of Pa as you. It’s the ideal lifestyle, IMHO. We live away from the city as well, in a small coal-mining patch town. Only a few homes left here, so it’s not too bad. At least we all mind our own business. I loath the city. You couldn’t pay me to live in any city.
Same here. The first and last time I visited Dallas I decided to walk from the hotel to downtown and back. On the way back I walked from garages costing $20 / day (and this was many years ago), to lots charging $10, to $3 lots to $1 lots to some open lots that were apparently free. Then came a completely decrepit neighborhood, then commercial areas and difficult to cross highways and finally my hotel.
The cities might not be too bad in some spots and some respects, but they attract and are surrounded by filth, isolated by traffic-clogged roads and utterly dependent on cars (e.g. my hotel and many other venues). Melas complains that everything is a long drive in the country but neglects to mention that there are no traffic lights and natural beauty the whole way.
Actually, rural and small town USA is disappearing, has been since WWII. But, now the tipping point has been passed and the small towns are no longer able to sustain themselves. The hub or focal point of small towns and surrounds rural areas has alway been the local school, the glue that held them together. But, sadly their head count has dropped so low it has become necessary to close many and consolidate where feasible. As a couple of others have stated, the young are fleeing just as soon as the are able as there is absolutely nothing to hold them, zero, unless your family is int farming and the farm/ranch is large enough to support multiple families. Even then, many of these have become absentee owners, living in the nearby metropolitan area and paying a manager to run the property. Most of the people remaining are old, run down, many lame, go into a grocery store and watch the transactions ahead of you, virtually all purchases paid with an EBT card. Sad, sad, sad......
If the rural areas, tired of being dictated to by urban centers, just said - ‘grow your own food’, or ‘make pianos and furniture from your own trees’, or make your subway trains and tall buildings with steel made from ore mined from your city’, etc., etc. the urban centers would have a problem.
This is one of the reasons why it seems to me so many FReepers don't understand how outnumbered they are, or how fringe some of their views have become.
Canada and Australia are leftist, but their overall population density is very low. That's because they mostly live in cities. If their governments want to create more happiness for their citizens, they should use the internet and other technologies to get their people to spread out. Humans were never meant to live like insects. From a national security perspective, cities are nuclear sitting ducks.
http://conservativebyte.com/2012/08/obamas-plan-to-eliminate-suburbs/
Obama’s Plan to Eliminate Suburbs
“It’s all about people fleeing, wanting a better life, and leaving behind their poor neighbors about whom they cared nothing. How basically the suburbs are made up of a bunch of selfish, greedy people who don’t care about their fellow man. That’s how Obama was raised. And, indeed, it is what many leftists believe. And I have to tell you, folks, the constant push by Democrats to get us into mass transit is all about destroying the cities. Let’s take a look. In California, Moonbeam Brown, the governor, is intent — what are they, $16 billion in debt? $16 billion state deficit, right? Maybe even higher. And what are they focusing on? What is one of Governor Brown’s primary objectives? This bullet train, a speed train from nowhere to nowhere.
Why? Mass transit. And the key word in mass transit is “mass.” As far as liberals are concerned, leader liberals, central planners, we are the masses. I remember Reagan I think in that famous Goldwater speech in 1964 made a point of saying how much it offended him to be considered a member of the masses, that we don’t have masses in America, that we are made up of beautifully, wonderfully free individuals, pursuing happiness and liberty. That we’re not a nameless, faceless conglomerate. We’re not “the masses” under state control. And yet this is the dream of the American left. That’s what Kurtz is writing about. Mass transit. I mean all these light rail trains, every time I see one there’s hardly anyone on ‘em. Mass transit cannot support itself in most cities. There’s no interest in it. America still has its love affair with the automobile.”
I’ve lived in large cities, Miami and Ft. Lauderdale, and small cities, Asheville, NC and Greenville, SC. I will never live in a big city again. I am now living in a small city suburb of Greenville and love it. People are friendly, the weather is good, Christianity is accepted, we have everything the big cities do except a lot of democrats!
And I saw Lindsey Graham at our Christmas (not holiday) Parade last night. He was in the parade and I didn’t hear anyone yelling obscenities at him.:)
-—— what remains of the countryside.———
Josh, son, This is your ass, that over there is a hole in the ground.
You need to get out more, further out into the real country. I know, I know, you have allergies and the country makes you sneeze and it is hard to find Norwegian snow melt bottled water, but take the risk.
You have however correctly noted the problem. The cities are where elections are and were stolen. There is no way to correctly count votes nor prevent fraud.
America will be a better place when New York is realy destroyed and the Big’un wrecks San Francisco.
There are still plenty of "rural/small town USA" places available. You just have to look a bit to find the successful ones. And although the young may be abandoning "some" rural places, a great many of them are being rejuvenated by retirees who are moving BACK to the country after a career stint in "the big city".
A state can be totally red and have a blue city and still win the Presidency because the city is where all the people live. It actually makes plenty of sense. When you have 10,000 people spread out among the state that makes it red and then you have a city with 1,000,000 people living there, it can EASILY make the state Democratic. Not a tough concept.
Yes, like a cancer feeding on the body and eventually bringing death
The only “Community Organizers” in the small towns are the members of the “Lions Club Chili-Feed Committee”. In other words, BitterClingers. And, man, do the “big city dudes” hate them.
Indeed! My company is located in a rural area about a half-hour drive to Tacoma. We garner business and do sales all over the globe, get raw materials, subcontract operations. Without the internet, our company could not exist. As it is, we are a going (and growing) concern.
"On the other hand the internet greatly lessens privacy, with the younger generation posting to the world forever what they ate last night, watched on TV, and their every half-baked thought. Is the net effect of the internet a bigger world or a smaller one?"
Yes, but the intrusiveness of the internet is something "you"/I have control over. The intrusiveness of urban governments is "not optional".
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.