Yeah. I became much more aware of some of those places when I started watching US storm chasers live youtube channels. And when tornados hit or threatened tiny places, I started using google streetview to study those places. Various signs of isolation, poverty and being left behind are highly visible at every turn. And there are an incredible number of these places.
Yes. And making the same sort of claim using more overtly political terms often leads me to stuff like: The rise of right wing populism is an inevitable consequence of many decades of failure of the mainstream neoliberal stuff. And the neoliberals dont often come up with some meaningful sense of hope or of modifying their ways when faced with this threat. They dont promise people something different, they just turn the right wing populist threat into a hollow reason for people to back them as the only alternative, even though that alternative only offers more of the same old shit, with no new offer, no compromise of the agenda that got everyone into this state in the first place. They raise the spectre of populist right-wing bogeymen like Trump and then use it for their own purposes, with decidedly mixed results. I dont know for how long this particular dodgy balancing act will persist, it could carry on for decades or something more dramatic may happen at some point that ends this particular status quo. Of course other possible responses to the stale, corrosive neoliberalism are possible too, other than right wing populism. But when those other possibilities have been marginalised and crushed for decades, with many battles on that front lost many decades ago now, when they dont even feature in news narratives, arent positioned as a credible alternative that could actually get into power, arent perceived by marginalised rural etc communities as being on their side or having anything to offer them, arent aligned with the socially conservative values that dominate a lot of these small places, dont have visible charismatic figureheads, dont have the support of any billionaires and corporations, its no surprise those dont seem like any kind of relevant force for change.
This further illustrates the point I was making about how invisible and overlooked this demographic really is.
It’s not that they’re ignored. They’re more than ignored, they’re invisible, or if seen at all dismissed as irrelevant, meaningless.
Those tiny towns are pretty invisible even when you drive through them.
And the church is sometimes the only option for socialising outside the home, often a significant drive away.
And those towns where the church and the feed store and movie theatre are, they’re also pretty small.
Schools that serve these districts are often out in the middle of nowhere, with no off site local amenities. Essentially captive. If Project 2025 comes in and the schools are given back to the states, they’ll become even more isolated.
Your second larger point is the important bit. Ignoring them is increasingly dangerous. It’s amongst this group that we see the more extreme dropping-out and self sufficiency coming from. Not the ones who will raise arms and wage war against the establishment, they’re more motivated by current events as they read them. These small town folk will just disappear further, hunker down further, and if they do vote at all, will vote to support and protect their own immediate needs.
If the USA breaks up, it won’t break into city states revolving around existing cities, it will break into communities made up of smaller communities like these. People from elsewhere will migrate in and swell their number.
Obviously not all of America is like this. There are also towns and small cities with theatres, art galleries, transport links, parks, even down town areas and independent shops. But if you do an
elbows and look at small town America with Google Earth, you’ll see a significant number of medium sized towns with no transport links other than the roads, and big distances between them and anywhere else.
The scenario I’ve outlined above is similar (albeit on a different scale and expressed differently) in these larger places.
Very insular.
If everyone you talk with and everything you see in the local news pretty much aligns one way, and you were born and raised here, you’re a rare rebel to go the other way.
If libraries aren’t allowed to stock certain books things get shut down even further
With the internet, it’s possible to explore other ideas, and some do. But not everyone.
If Trump wins, we may yet see efforts to curtail the internet too.
.
