I grew up in a rural area. I have read both the literature explaining what a food desert is and the literature critiquing that idea. I still have no idea what any of this means.
This is the problem with “progressive” Democrats like Swearingin. They claim to speak for the poor/working class/etc., yet it is painfully obvious most are completely out of touch with them. Even the minority ones in urban areas who actually vote Democratic, as evidenced by Eric Adams winning blowouts in most of the poorest parts of NYC. Even AOC only won mostly because she got woke white gentrifiers to vote in a normally low turnout primary while the actual working class in her district largely stayed home or didn’t vote for her. “Progressives” are totally fake and refuse to accept the reality that their infatuation with the working class is completely one-sided and non-consensual. And not because they haven’t heard their ideas or don’t understand them. They do. It’s just nobody wants what they’re selling. Maybe if they would spend less time pontificating over abstract theories from PhD programs speculating as to what the working class hypothetically should be like, and more time actually visiting or living in these areas in the real world, they’d have a better understanding.
This is so true, and it hits on something that a lot of liberals and progressives don't understand, which is that working class and poor people are much less disgusted by billionaires specifically than they are by out of touch affluent people, especially the college-educated suburban middle class. I'm convinced that the Democrats' endless nosedive in these areas is in large part due to their decision to appeal to the same suburbanites that wouldn't know true financial struggle if it beat them over the head.
Also, the leftwing fascination with the working class strikes me as a sort of woke version of the "White Man's Burden" to bring civilization to foreign lands. That's what all these gonzo journalism articles about NYT reporters leading expeditions into rural America seem like to me.
