Undoubtedly you’ve heard Obama’s closed-door fundraiser remarks about small town folks being bitter people who cling to guns and religion. The thing that I never hear mentioned, though, is the rift between big city folks and small town folks. Obama’s comments are just a symptom of a problem: big city folks don’t don’t understand small town people, they don’t care how they think, and they write them off as hicks. And small town folks basically do the same to the big city people.
Now Clinton and McCain are talking about how his words are so condescending, etc. etc. They aren’t any better, though. Most of their money comes from the big city folks, and when it comes right down to it that’s who they’ll side with every time. No matter how many times they talk about growing up in small towns.
I know I’m generalizing here, and I’m not saying one side is or isn’t right. This is just something I was thinking about this morning, based on my experience as someone who lives in a bigger city but spends plenty of time in more rural places.
The sad problem is us little folks have to choose the lesser of all evils. Believe u me there is very very very little to choose from.
If you were stranded somewhere on a deserted island and you had to have one of the presidential candidates with you – which one would you want watching your back?
There is only one answer! Its sure not Obama or Clinton – PERIOD
Really, the issue is that people don’t understand people different than themselves. It’s not just big city vs small town. It’s rich vs poor, asian vs black vs hispanic vs white, muslim vs christian vs buddhist, democrat vs republican. One of the things that is so fundamental to humans is that we each think that our own experience in the world is “normal.”
So people who group up in single-parent Welfare homes with a revolving door of mom’s boyfriend’s think that a life in a trailer park somewhere is just “normal.” At the same time, kids who grow up in mansions and whose daddy’s fly around in private jets while their mom’s are at the spa and the nanny is taking care of them think that their lives are “normal.”
If we don’t appreciate the diversity of human experience, we can’t understand how to bring more equality and justice to everyone.
What I think is that Obama is trying to understand other’s experiences. He is learning about how rural voters think. And I think he’s a lot more right in doing so than McCain or Clinton are in saying he’s elitist. Educated is a better term.
Obama’s association with various people such as Ayers and his wife, Bernadine Dohrn – bombings of U.S. government facilities and police stations, and Jeremiah Wright – nutjob – Fun loving people! Yeah this is the kind of people I want my president to be associated with. Way to go Obama…ROFLMFAO
I grew up rural, lived on a farm for the first two decades of my life and I can indeed vouch for the observation that rural folk, especially farmers, are prejudiced.
They will not trust anyone who has not proven that they will WORK for a living. Once you show that you can pull your own weight and that you can be counted on to be responsible for your own crap that prejudice disappears.
In the two decades I’ve spent in the urban arena I have grown to suspect that the relative ease of life and lack of struggle has made it possible for insane prejudices like those against race, creed or colour to flourish. It is my suspicion that when humans reduce the natural threat threshold below the social threat threshold insanity must be the result.
Thus you get insane reactions to revelations that Obama has associations with Ayers or Bush with Bin Laden.
I grew up rural, I live urban.
Frankly I’d rather help my neighbour shovel 3 feet of snow from his 200 foot long driveway than help my neighbour shovel 6 inches of snow from his 25 foot driveway.
That sort of work ethic does seem to be pretty scarce. I do agree that city folks have too much time on their hands. They are also quite removed from the processes that keep them alive, like where their food comes from.