Rural Americans felt abandoned by Democrats in 2016, so they abandoned them back

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I've got to say, Eharding's making some pretty good arguments for prying health care out of the meathooks of the insurance companies.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I think the basic problem here is that seemingly all the Very Serious People involved in this debate in the United States are bound and determined to treat health care as a consumer good rather than a piece of infrastructure, which strikes me as a morally far sounder way to think of it given that it's, you know, not optional.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

You can't be any more unfree than dead.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

You can't be any more unfree than dead.

-Liberty is negative in nature, not positive.

If that's what you need to tell yourself to sleep at night then I suppose it would be unkind of me to stop you.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

You can't be any more unfree than dead.

-Liberty is negative in nature, not positive.

If that's what you need to tell yourself to sleep at night then I suppose it would be unkind of me to stop you.

-That's not "what I need to tell myself to sleep at night"; it's self-evident.

If it were self-evident, wouldn't it be uncontroversial?

If I thought you were a principled classical liberal or a principled early-twentieth-century social Darwinist I'd have a more genuine respect for your honesty on subjects like this, but the fact that you go out of your way to combine the most repulsive aspects of both worldviews into a squamous mass of amorality and cant raises some pretty serious questions.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

They are, but the reason I say "cant" is that you're making what's fundamentally a moral (albeit dramatically incorrect) argument in this thread--that putting systems in place to ensure that poor people don't needlessly die of treatable chronic illness is something that makes other (richer) people "less free"--while trotting out the profoundly anti-moral "conservatism is an ideology of the strong" excuse in another thread.

FYI, I'm not really that much more convinced by the equality argument than by the liberty one--on certain points of theory, I actually prefer Red Toryism to the mainstream left. What I'm concerned about is justice--which entails upholding contextually appropriate degrees of liberty, contextually appropriate degrees of equality, and so forth. To the extent that the terms on which American political debate takes place and the political philosophy on which American institutions were founded deviate from that, it's those terms and that philosophy that are in moral error and ought to be discounted. In that sense I'm actually in agreement with Trump that we should be patriotic because America is the country we have and pointedly not as a form of assent to its ostensible principles or values. If you and I have any common ground at all, it's probably on that.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

They are, but the reason I say "cant" is that you're making what's fundamentally a moral (albeit dramatically incorrect) argument in this thread--that putting systems in place to ensure that poor people don't needlessly die of treatable chronic illness is something that makes other (richer) people "less free"--while trotting out the profoundly anti-moral "conservatism is an ideology of the strong" excuse in another thread.

FYI, I'm not really that much more convinced by the equality argument than by the liberty one--on certain points of theory, I actually prefer Red Toryism to the mainstream left. What I'm concerned about is justice--which entails upholding contextually appropriate degrees of liberty, contextually appropriate degrees of equality, and so forth. To the extent that the terms on which American political debate takes place and the political philosophy on which American institutions were founded deviate from that, it's those terms and that philosophy that are in moral error and ought to be discounted. In that sense I'm actually in agreement with Trump that we should be patriotic because America is the country we have and pointedly not as a form of assent to its ostensible principles or values. If you and I have any common ground at all, it's probably on that.

-I see conservatism as expressly justifying inequality. Thus, it is an ideology of the strong. It's not an excuse; it's a description of conservatism. My brand of conservatism is also rather accepting of liberty. The moral argument here is my actual one.

I see. That's uncommonly repellent, and uncommonly forthright in its wickedness.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

They are, but the reason I say "cant" is that you're making what's fundamentally a moral (albeit dramatically incorrect) argument in this thread--that putting systems in place to ensure that poor people don't needlessly die of treatable chronic illness is something that makes other (richer) people "less free"--while trotting out the profoundly anti-moral "conservatism is an ideology of the strong" excuse in another thread.

FYI, I'm not really that much more convinced by the equality argument than by the liberty one--on certain points of theory, I actually prefer Red Toryism to the mainstream left. What I'm concerned about is justice--which entails upholding contextually appropriate degrees of liberty, contextually appropriate degrees of equality, and so forth. To the extent that the terms on which American political debate takes place and the political philosophy on which American institutions were founded deviate from that, it's those terms and that philosophy that are in moral error and ought to be discounted. In that sense I'm actually in agreement with Trump that we should be patriotic because America is the country we have and pointedly not as a form of assent to its ostensible principles or values. If you and I have any common ground at all, it's probably on that.

-I see conservatism as expressly justifying inequality. Thus, it is an ideology of the strong. It's not an excuse; it's a description of conservatism. My brand of conservatism is also rather accepting of liberty. The moral argument here is my actual one.

I see. That's uncommonly repellent, but I guess I can retain a sort of grim respect for it.

Perhaps you can, but I certainly can't.

I was thinking about this a little further, and neither can I. I thought I could--I regret thinking that.

I actually came back into this thread to edit my post to say that it's not only uncommonly repellent, but uncommonly forthright in its wickedness in a way that's worthy not of respect but of praying that some exigency or contigency might move Eharding's heart, because clearly human decency has been tried and found wanting.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Nothing Trump or the Republican Congress does will help rural Americans. It'll likely help megafarms and other big businesses but that won't translate to the little guy in the country. The question you need to ask with that make them turn on Trump or will they believe more of the lies? If you look at Wisconsin with Walker, the rural areas are hurting now more than when he was elected in 2010 but they still strongly support him since he's still against the "evil city Dems".

There's something deeply, even if not overtly, nihilistic that's wormed its way into the rural/small-city white American world-concept in recent decades--I say this as a rural/small-city white person. I have my ideas about why this is, but I'm increasingly at a loss as to what can be done about it, especially since I don't think doubling down on making American economic life a constant hunger games to move to and survive in one of a few big cities is an acceptable option either morally or prudentially.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Nothing Trump or the Republican Congress does will help rural Americans. It'll likely help megafarms and other big businesses but that won't translate to the little guy in the country. The question you need to ask with that make them turn on Trump or will they believe more of the lies? If you look at Wisconsin with Walker, the rural areas are hurting now more than when he was elected in 2010 but they still strongly support him since he's still against the "evil city Dems".

There's something deeply, even if not overtly, nihilistic that's wormed its way into the rural/small-city white American world-concept in recent decades--I say this as a rural/small-city white person. I have my ideas about why this is, but I'm increasingly at a loss as to what can be done about it, especially since I don't think doubling down on making American economic life a constant hunger games to move to and survive in one of a few big cities is an acceptable option either morally or prudentially.

I imagine a true infrastructure bill with apprenticeship/retraining of blue collar rural workforce into skilled trades would go a long way to help. Plus eliminating farm subsidies for large/mega farms while increasing it for the small family owned farms.

But then you have one side not wanting to do anything of that and saying "if we do this it's socialism/the black man will come kill you all" and they fall for it.

That would help a lot of the economic problems. I'm not as convinced as I'd like to be that it'd help the cultural despair.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Nothing Trump or the Republican Congress does will help rural Americans. It'll likely help megafarms and other big businesses but that won't translate to the little guy in the country. The question you need to ask with that make them turn on Trump or will they believe more of the lies? If you look at Wisconsin with Walker, the rural areas are hurting now more than when he was elected in 2010 but they still strongly support him since he's still against the "evil city Dems".

There's something deeply, even if not overtly, nihilistic that's wormed its way into the rural/small-city white American world-concept in recent decades--I say this as a rural/small-city white person. I have my ideas about why this is, but I'm increasingly at a loss as to what can be done about it, especially since I don't think doubling down on making American economic life a constant hunger games to move to and survive in one of a few big cities is an acceptable option either morally or prudentially.

I would be pretty nihilistic too if I'd lived the life of my grandparents. They grew up in a beautiful and thriving small town in Upstate New York with a vibrant social scene, good schools, a healthy local economy that supported numerous small businesses, and where someone could move through every stage of life with their friends and family beside them. And then they had to watch that come apart, decade after decade. Their children left to build their careers and raise their families elsewhere. The businesses closed. The social organizations are gone. The school is a mess, with a majority of students living in poverty and a close to two-thirds from single-parent families. The streetscapes have deteriorated - the village is a hollowed-out shell, with numerous abandoned or derelict structures. If anyone builds a new house, it's a modular monstrosity at the end of a long driveway on a rural route or state highway a couple of miles outside of town.

And who else is left, other than the old? Most remaining younger residents from are shiftless or disturbed (drug addicts, mentally ill, developmental disabled, abusive families, etc.). Many of them, even those who have never lived anywhere else, are essentially city people - they hold the same values, like the same things, adopt similar habits, and try to wear the same clothes and listen to the same music. They're not interested in the way of life that has sustained the community, and most of them will leave when they have an opportunity elsewhere. You might have a few urban emigrant Torie-types in the mix, and it's worth chasing after their money, but in most places they aren't present in sufficient numbers to re-build anything real, even if they get along well with everyone else.

The Republicans have nothing to offer them other than a vaguely credible story about whom they should blame. But that's more than the Democrats have offered them in a long time. The cliché is real. I have no difficulty getting the people I know in these places to criticize Republicans, but the idea that the Democrats are an alternative worth considering is literally treated as laughable.

I don't disagree with any of this. Pull the happy shiny neo-hippie skin off Western Mass and it's pretty much the same here for most people. I'd imagine unconcern or even rapacity on the part of the New York City and Boston people who run our state governments is another point of similarity.