Chris Gloninger wove the reality of global heating into his forecasts in the conservative heartland of Iowa. Not everyone was receptive.
Chris Gloninger wove the reality of global heating into his forecasts in the conservative heartland of Iowa. Not everyone was receptive.
This patronizing attitude is part of the reason politicians like Trump has become popular. He talks to these people who the “civilized” part of the country is totally ignoring. You care about climate change, and so do I. But what if you live near a coal mine that has slowly been phased out? You see your town which your grandfather lived in slowly rots away. You see America as a failing country - you see stores closing. You see people moving away. People dying from opiate overdose. Unemployment and depression
These people have real and legitimate grievances. Their government has failed them - which is why anti-establishment figures like Trump is such a lightning rod for their energy. Then we go and tell them that we need to make sacrifices for the climate. What are they supposed to think? What more do they have to give?
Ignoring these people and pretending like they don’t matter or are totally irrational is going to help lead to fascism in this country. Any real revolutionary movement will have to incorporate the whole of America. We need these people on our side.
Cry me a river. Clinton had a plan to retrain and retool these coal towns your describing into productive green energy leaders and they rejected it because she eats babies and wind farms kill birds, or whatever. They are totally irrational and I’m not going to keep pretending otherwise. The real government failure is lack of education spending and critical thinking skills (thanks GOP) that is going to take generations to correct.
Edit: I’ll add there are sparks of “hope” in rural america now that farmers are seeing the impacts of climate change effecting their yields, I think they are starting to come around. Probably too late, but it’s something…
So how do we prevent the rise of fascism this generation? There’s already serious and increasing calls to violent action, since of which have been acted on, with little to no consequences.
Impossible to say, there is no easy or immediate fix that I can imagine. I’ve basically accepted the underlying threat of fascism is something we are going to be dealing with for the rest of our time on the planet. Continue to vote to keep fascists off the levers of power, continue to protest whenever they have the levers, and pray the wheels of justice ground finely for enemies of democracy. Perhaps our kids or grandkids will find themselves in a better situation for their times…
We do ourselves no favors by reinforcing the cultural divisions drawn by the
upper classes“media elite”. We have more in common with rural conservatives than with wealthy liberals, and we should stop pretending otherwise. Continued disenfranchisement only serves to divide us more.That’s just reality creeping in past the bullshit cultural propaganda of the last 50 years. It has always been true that low-income rural counties share the same problems and interests as the lower class urban progressives. We just need to stop feeding into it.
Yes, they do and yes, they think it has. The problem is that they have been in the business of voting for people who campaign on the “Government is bad, vote for us and we’ll show you just how bad we can make it.” It’s their own fucking fault that the government doesn’t work as well as it could. And despite their best efforts we still manage to have rural internet to connect them to the world in places where they would never be able to afford it, interstate roads to send their crops to market and bring every modern amenity to their local stores, a national air transport system to bring them a new liver or kidney after they’ve destroyed theirs, working ports to bring their tractors and 4 wheelers and snowmobiles, billions upon billions of dollars in (otherwise unaffordable) crop insurance and price supports for their products, and an army of adjusters with stacks of cash to rebuild after every tornado, flood, heatwave, snowstorm, hurricane, and forest fire.
The government has not failed them, they have failed their government. Their hand is out whenever they have a bad day, but their memory is wiped out every time they see that all those benefits might cost money.
There’s only so much handholding you can do for people who actively refuse to listen to facts and science that tell them their way of life, based on the mining of fossil fuels, is long past being sustainable. The best I can offer is my sympathies that they ignored the same writing on the wall that the rest of us have been reading for a couple of decades. It’s on Daddy and Grandpa for not telling their kids that the “family business” is a bad future career choice and not directing them towards something with a more sustainable outlook.
You can’t engage with people who want to murder their perceived enemies. Sorry that it sucks to live in a rural area, but they have to regain some semblance of sanity before a conversation can take place.
The people who IDOLIZE Timothy McVeigh will never be on your side I hate to break it to you.
And Fascism is already here. The Nazi rally’s at Madison Square Garden in the 1930’s was an indication of that.
And the Civil War, that was Americas brand of Fascism at the time.
These folks believe in Gods kingdom as the ONLY reality, they don’t look at the world through your lens.
The coal mine closing, rural lands becoming industrial, Sacklers killing their innocent kids, that’s not what drives them.
Fighting the spiritual war is the only thing to do because everything else is literally out of their control.
Their ill placed revenge is always going to be a vote against you.
They were bred that way. We can’t change it. They have to, and that ain’t likely.
Check out Deer Hunting With Jesus by Joe Bageant. It’s a rednecks view of his own people and some predictions that came true.
Yeah we absolutely need to find ways to revitalize the rust belt and Appalachia in climate friendly ways. But it should be remembered that when they’re offered compromises that help them I’ve seen plenty get mad. Like yeah Appalachia has suffered for coal’s death, but the jobs aren’t coming back. It just doesn’t take a town to level mountains for coal. And nobody has suffered more for coal’s presence than small coal towns. They’re still poisoned from the mining runoff. And even without decarbonizing coal isn’t coming back. It’s too expensive and inefficient compared to solar and natural gas.
The patronizing attitude is extremely well earned.
I agree with the idea behind this post, and its why I always approach right wingers with an attitude of education. Their opinons (which themselves are caused by legitimate grievances) are accellerated by ignorance. They cant argue or debate because their viewpoint is not a realistic representation of what has to be done. Their platform has turned into a joke, and thats honestly disappointing to see.
The increase in right-wing extremism is only fueling further ignorance, and radicalized ideas never hold up in any kind of evidence-based debate.
That’s a cherry picked example. Most of these people have jobs outside of the coal industry. That isn’t why they are like this
The point wasn’t the rare coal town but the perception that pervades the rural areas of this country. It doesn’t have to be coal towns - there are similar stories for all smallish cities across the Rust Belt for example. You’re focusing on a specific when really the point is that fascism grows only in poor economic situations.
These people are legitimately suffering and they are turning to hate as a response. Trust me, you or me could have easily been in their shoes had we been in their position. But just like they have been swayed to hate, I think it’s possible to sway them to socialism as long as you call it something other than socialism.
Zizek has talked about this before where Trump supporters in 2016 were a hair’s breadth away from being Bernie supporters. While a bit of a dramatic statement, there is some truth in this. When the economic situation is unstable, radicalism grows in both directions - left and right. Which is why around the same time period we saw an openly socialist candidate for president in the US receive about 6% of the general vote - while we also saw massive Nazi rallies in New York City.
Everything is connected. We are fighting for the hearts and minds of the same people.
In theory I agree with everything you said. In this specific example I don’t buy it. The people threatening this weather man aren’t taking that position because climate change legislation is hurting them personally. They’ve just brainwashed by right wing propoganda
Was more to do with the comment I replied to than the original post
Sure, people making death threats to weathermen are nutters. But majority of people living in these areas are not so crazy, even ones that lean Trumpers
I agree, but Žižek has always annoyed me.
If you live somewhere where there’s no work, and you don’t do anything to help yourself, I don’t really have much sympathy. That’s not the government’s problem, it’s yours.
Now if you’re disabled or something that’s a different story, and we do have programs to help those people. But “regular” people who can’t understand that times change shouldn’t hold everyone else back.
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TRhis is an extremely good point. I fear a further polarisatoon of society is almost inevitable, it seems we (different bubbles in society) are slowly drifting apart like tectonic plates. A process like that is hard to slow down, let alone stop or reverse.