Democrat - Republican

What do they have in common?

= Neoliberalism.

I understand the ire at conservative government, especially when society has ills it needs to solve (government, by its very nature, is conservative. It is conserving power in the hands of those that already hold it, de facto, elitist).

I've been all over North America. I've seen democratic strongholds (nimbyism incarnate) and I've spent good lengths of time in places that have been red longer than I've been alive.

I've seen the 3rd world wasteland that makes up half of St. Louis and the rest of the Rust Belt. I've urban explored parts of the 100sq miles of abandoned warehouses in Gary, Indiana. It's a war zone, alright, just an economic one, fought in legalese by bankers and other grifters who've never built anything material with their hands. Republicana is no better than Democrastan. Both of which has seen its institutions usurped and rendered useless by the private equity/private property wealth extraction scheme.

Neoliberalism turns the quest for profit inward, slowly, but incessently ( the real incrementalism) cannabalizing our towns of their vitality and leaving empty, hollowed out, rundown zombie economies, devoid of passion, of care, of attentiveness, of civic pride. We rinse repeat the same freeway offramp as far as the eye can see. Every small town, the same zeitgeist, the same crushing pall in the air. Over policed, every citizen comes complete with their own personal, institutionalized PTSD. The 1000yd stare is how we know our own.

If we look at the end result of small town America, we must deduce the only thing America produces is Trauma.