the funny thing is... getting people to live closer together encourages empathy.
living in the middle of nowhere reduces empathy... this is why people living in bumfuck are empathy-lacking tools calling themselves 'conservatives'
I was biking a dirt road near my rural neighborhood and saw a sign at somebody's driveway that said "if you can read this you're within range" and wondered how country folk got the stereotype of being friendly and kind. I really miss living in the city.
propaganda from the movies and shows. probably they need economic businesses to thier area, so they make up an image so people would go there, but NOT LIVE THERE. Yellowstone being one of those shows, and many other shows make reference of "southern hospitality"
It seems like a lot of the time they are like "boy, crime is higher".... but if you live in a city that's just a fact of life. It's pretty obvious that there will be less crime out in the sticks. I wouldn't really attribute this to any "blue" policies.
Part of "less crime in the sticks" is a population effect. The rate of violent crime in New York City is 494/100,000 people. The rate of violent crime in the whole state of Alabama, from its stickiest sticks to the 225,000-resident Huntsville metropolis, is 404/100,000, which isn't that different, in my book.
I suspect that's just because of Birmingham, and possibly Mobile. They have pretty bad crime rates, and Birmingham is the state's main "blue city", at least based on how counties voted in the 2024 election.
Birmingham had a violent crime rate of 1440 per 100k, making it one the worst cities in the nation for violent crime.
Mobile had a crime rate of 825 per 100k. Mobile's county was slightly red in the 2023 election.
Meanwhile Huntsville (who was slightly red in that same election) had a violent crime rate of 133 per 100k, and has been proudly claiming a 100% arrest and conviction rate for homicide cases. So to answer @yarr@feddit.nl's question, I guess Huntsville is an example of a successful "red" city (although it may be less successful in coming years due to Trump's NASA cuts).
Rural Alabama (excluding counties that were classified as metropolitan) had a violent crime rate of 248 per 100k, making it less safe than Huntsville but far better than the state average of 494 per 100k.
I'm not going to actually claim that the crime rate is just from politics, Huntsville has a big aerospace industry and it's probably more of an education/class thing than anything else. But regardless those are the violent crime rate numbers for 2023, so feel free to draw your own conclusions.
100% arrest and conviction rate doesnt really mean anything. Sounds like theyre just arresting whoever and corrupting the jury to convict. Iirc only about 1/3 homicides are solvable?
We also see that rural crime is undercounted, underreported. Many studies show that (sometimes) rural areas have more crime. Of course it varies by time and location and depends how you define everything.
I wouldn't say there is less crime out in the sticks. But there's less detected crime out in the sticks.
It's the opposite in Sweden. Countryside leans left and cities lean right.
i think there are different socioconomics in play in sweden. lots of real immigration management issues unlike the united states made up ones.
also, sweden is more than an order of magnitude different in size (< 5% actually) of the unites states. 'rural' sweden isnt the same thing as 'rural' US.
also, i doubt the swedish rednecks are thirsty to get back to their slaving roots.
Make Sweden (pre-christian) Viking Again!
The trend has been true for longer than the last 25 years, well before the current immigration crisis.
The alternate explanation is that the party or parties that has the most pro rural policies eg. farm subsidies are popular among the rural people and vice versa.
They are blue because studies have shown that proximity to others makes you more compassionate.
Staying afloat using tax dollars from blue states
Welfare queens.
Those cities and states should have a work requirement and random drug tests.
This explains the rural/city divide and why conservatives view blue cities as hell holes:
How Half Of America Lost Its F**king Mind
Having lived both sides, the whole thing not only resonates with me, it rings my fucking bell. If there was one article I could force all Americans to read, this is it.
Unpopular things for Republicans to hear:
Thats a pretty good read. I often think about a lot of that. But I never come up with a way to help the rural population much. Thier way of life is dying, has been for a few hundred years. But it is still essential. They don't like handouts or even assistance. So how do you help them?
I'd start by taking to top off Fox News and see them dance the hemp fandango. I cannot overstate how they've poisoned America. Had some education in journalism so I'm better tooled than most to spot media manipulation. Sure they come out with in-your-face lies now and again, but they're mostly subtle, which is far more evil. Next, I'd go after our social media overlords. These snakes have to be decapitated, literally.
Lately I've thought that the best way to heal America's rural/urban divide is to point out that the rich are fucking us. It's not the farmer or the blue-haired girl, not the LGBT folks or gun nuts, certainly not the immigrants. If I could hammer a single message into the American zeitgeist it would be this, "The wealthy are hurting all of us. Fight them every step of the way."
I know Bane's the bad guy and straight psychotic, but his speech in The Dark Knight Rises makes we want to fucking cheer.
We take Gotham from the corrupt! The rich! The oppressors of generations who have kept you down with myths of opportunity, and we give it back to you... the people. Gotham is yours. None shall interfere. Do as you please. Start by storming Blackgate, and freeing the oppressed! Step forward those who would serve. For and army will be raised. The powerful will be ripped from their decadent nests, and cast out into the cold world that we know and endure. Courts will be convened. Spoils will be enjoyed. Blood will be shed. The police will survive, as they learn to serve true justice. This great city... it will endure. Gotham will survive!
There is no hope until the rich live in fear of the masses.
To people from small towns, everyone in a city is 'wealthy', they must be to afford the insane cost of living right? But thats part of the problem. They don't realize the people spending $2500 a month on rent are spending 80% of their paycheck, or that they can't build any savings or eger hope to own a house or even a car because of it. They make no distinction between the actual rich people who live in cities and everyone else, and the state of America right now IS them fighting back against the 'rich'. Until these people understand the orders of magnitude the people actually fucking us are over the rest of us i don't know what can be done. To them anyone with a college degree is a wealthy elite.
This in mind, why isn't Trump a wealthy elite to them? How did he become their savior??
This post hits in a way I hadn't quite figured out to myself. No wonder they still buy into the welfare queen thing. I've got to think on this a bit, woke me to a thing I hadn't considered.
To expand on what @emeralddawn45@lemmy.dbzer0.com is saying, I live rural because I don't make enough to live in the city. My town is rapidly gentrifying and I might not afford to live next to cows any more pretty soon. City folk spend more on rent than I make in a month.
A lot of our 'welfare queen' perspective is colored by the fact that tax-funded services are usually concentrated in the city. I keep petitioning my county transit authority for better rural bus service, but the best they can do is make the city bus lines run every 15 minutes instead of every half an hour. Meanwhile, I'm paying uber $50 just to get to a doctor's appointment and wait to catch a ride home when a friend gets off work. Food costs more for worse quality in rural areas, so food stamps don't go as far as they would in the city. Welfare in the city feels like you could live like a queen off it. It's not entirely true, because the amount you get is scaled to income, but per dollar, you do get more for your welfare in cities.
There's also that city dwellers can get really nasty about rural folk. I've never voted for a republican in my life, but living out here makes people assume the worst of me. I get told that living rural means I'm a bootlicking hick that's too stupid to know what's good for me, so it's hard to sell that they deserve sympathy and we don't.
I know Bane's the bad guy and straight psychotic, but his speech in The Dark Knight Rises makes we want to fucking cheer.
Wft... Bane is a working class hero, and this gives you power over me
I'd also like to point out that the joker burned a pyramid of money. A deflationary move that helps ordinary Americans. What did he get for his efforts? A billionaire takes it upon himself to beat him up.
I think San Antonio is about as red as it gets for a city its size
Salt Lake City obviously but that's a different story
And to be clear, San Antonio may be more red leaning, but is not red still.
Houston is as well considering it's massive but full of mostly sprawled suburbs and tons of oil people or friends/relatives of oil people.
Houston suburbs would not be red if they weren't gerrymandered to fuck
where are all these Utopian "red cities" that people are apparently in favor of?
They do not and can not exist. Conservatism is an antisocial and anti-intellectual, authoritarian ideology. This pretty much rules it out of success in most conventional metrics.
From what I've noticed, cities tend to be more liberal than rural areas. I can't think of a major city off the top of my head that is a republican stronghold. I've got to go to work but I found these two links which may help.
https://townsoftheusa.com/most-conservative-cities-in-usa/
https://www.insidermonkey.com/blog/15-most-conservative-major-cities-in-the-united-states-883419/
Miami, maybe. But I think they're still pretty left in comparison to the Rest of Florida
That second website is horrible on a phone.
From what I’ve found, if we’re going by population, then Jacksonville, Florida seems to be the largest red city.
Did anyone else thought about cities with communist mayor when reading about red cities?
Miami and Saint David, UT come to mind. Outside the US though, lots of the Balkan major cities are much less liberal than western cities.
How do the violent crime rates compare?
Miami only recently turned right wing.
A small town, or a suburb of a city that is described as "a great place to raise a family". From what I have seen, that usually means one of two things:
The town/suburb is closer to the city, but is wealthy, real estate is expensive, usually very car-centric, which excludes anyone poor (or even middle class, sometimes).
The town/village is far away from the nearest city, not necessarily wealthy, but usually ran by a group of people that know each other (good old boys club), probably heavy on religion or other "traditional" values.
Well there's Dayton Ohio which is a successful red city if you look at how they vote and literally nothing else. Jesus fuck their crime rate says magnificent things about the democrats
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