This is one of those where you start laughing because it's very clever and then the chuckles slowly turn into sobs because it's so true right now here in the US.

Pretty much all of outstate MN and WI is like this (elsewhere too, I'm just from this area so I can testify firsthand). Working poor. Reliant on food banks (govt grants), Medicaid healthcare, subsidiaries for their healthcare insurance, government grants for housing starts or multi family housing, government funding for low income childcare and preschool, government jobs, and on and on.

But these people read at a sixth grade level and do math lower than that. Younger people only get information from TikTok. Older people from Fox News or Facebook. Most have never earned a post secondary degree or even attended college. Most adults haven't read a book since highschool. Many have never traveled more than 150 miles from home their entire lives.

It's like the absolutely perfect group to be duped again and again by propaganda and ruled by robber barons. When viewed as a group, it's easy to say, "haha get fucked." But interacting with many of these leopard victims, especially the young ones, I just kind of feel bad for them. Unpopular take here I know, I enjoy the schadenfreude as much as the next person.

Yet, I usually end up talking to someone at a bar or somewhere and we talk about a lot of other things first, animals usually or kids or the weather. And I think, "hey that's cool... they adopted 3 shelter dogs and are volunteering at the school and so on." But then the political shoe will drop and I'm like, "Really? You too? Don't you know x, y, or z are all the things you, well, need to survive?"

They're just ... Well... Dumb. Dumb in the way little kids are dumb. Naive and unable to tell truth from fiction, mentally and emotionally stunted people who will never grow out of it. Lied to and taken advantage of so many times they eventually become diehard bigots and lonely assholes.

Sigh...

Best comment.

Sluggo can do better.

Forgot their brown shirts at home.

I have high school aged children so all of the sabre rattling is unsettling to me. I would love my kids to maybe explore degree programs outside of the US because I don't see things getting better anytime soon. I don't want them sucked into some bullshit conflict started by that guy.

Lol. Get fucked.

I don't live in Iowa but have a small farm and live surrounded by farmers and ranchers. You have to understand that these people have the tiniest of perspective to the world. They spend almost their entire lives on one property, rarely go anywhere due to the nature of farming, and constantly have right-wing radio on in the truck and the barn and fox news on at home. You combine that with limited education across multiple generations and you have a group of people perfectly suited to consistently buy into propaganda and almost never able to identify things that will eat their face in the end.

Gross. Just gross.

The fact that you even weighed the pros and cons of your proposal puts you light years ahead of most hiring managers.

This is an editorial. Mr. Ludwig, the author, is providing statistics from his own institute. Doesn't mean he's automatically wrong, just that the article should be viewed as any other editorial, rather than statement of fact.

He's not wearing a tie at all. (Gasps)