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I recommend reading Politics of Resentment by Katherine Cramer. It is specifically about Wisconsin, but it is relevant for all of rural America.
Rural folks get a lot of their identity from where they live. Their town is essentially their identity, so they can't ever fathom leaving. And that's fine - they grew up there, they were educated there, they got married there, and they worked there for decades with no problems. And then all of a sudden, they start noticing people moving out. They're noticing roads aren't being fixed, they're paychecks aren't getting any bigger, and the town no longer seems like the same one it was decades ago.
But what IS growing? That big city a couple hundred miles away. They're getting all the big infrastructure projects, all the news headlines, all the recent graduates. Even worse, they see urban places trying to increase taxes when their rural town can barely even keep itself afloat. So that's partly where the sentiment that urban people don't know what it's like to live in rural places comes from, along with the sentiment that urban people are being subsidized by rural communities.
This is also compounded by a lot of social and racial sentiments, because for a long time, urban was code word for poor communities of color and crime. Well, still is, but at least it's changing, and this isn't necessarily true everywhere (Cramer explicitly states there wasn't that much racist sentiments in 90% white Wisconsin, for example). It doesn't help that the US has essentially encouraged people to spread out as much as they can, so people think this happened naturally even though it was mostly policies doing this. Because all you really need to do is look at pretty much any example in the history of the world to disprove the claim being made.
First and foremost: the Scandinavian ancestry and cultural values that came with it.
Pretty much everything else people have listed flows from that: work ethic, practicality, emphasis on education, mix of capitalism can-do attitude and well funded social programs.
Scandinavian countries usually rank really highly worldwide in all of the things you mentioned. Minnesota is an extension of that.
It's a good reminder that "white" people in America are not homogenous. Check out the book American Nations by Colin Woodard. He doesn't go into Minnesota so specifically, as I recall, but he covers the vastly different histories and backgrounds of the people that regions of our country were populated by and how much those original values and principles still explain politics and such today.
American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America https://www.amazon.com/American-Nations-History-Regional-Cultures-ebook/dp/B0052RDIZA
This is what we used to think.
Then Libertarianism got a hold on a town, and the town got invaded by bears, and the bears started attacking people and the town didn't get enough money to fend them off, and people started dying. In a span of 10 years. True free market capitalism collapses harder and faster than government-regulated sociocapitalism.
Obligatory reading: https://www.amazon.com/Libertarian-Walks-Into-Bear-Liberate-ebook/dp/B083J1FXY8
And my favorite quote(unknown source) about libertarians. It really does sum up the examples in New Hampshire.
>Libertarians are like house cats: absolutely convinced of their fierce independence while utterly dependent on a system they don't appreciate or understand.
A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (And Some Bears) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B083J1FXY8/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_BH9P4M8YBBTQVD5WMJYE
That book is fantastic, particularly because it is basically a real life account of people getting their faces eaten by leopards that had totally promised not to eat those people's faces.
Hmm, bear attacks are a symptom of a libertarian infestation. Has there been an increase in interest about cryptocurrency and age of consent laws in the area? Maybe some random copies of Atlas Shrugged left around?
"Soonish" by Zach and Kelly Weinersmith. Fun read about future technologies by the guy who makes SMBC comics and his scientist wife.
"A Libertarian walks into a Bear". Fun upfront, didn't quite stick the landing, but still an entertaining read about what happens when internet libertarians interact with small town folks and honest-to-God wildlife.
Cannibalism: a perfectly natural history. Good read about the topic, from species that eat their mates or their young, to modern case studies on the subject.
Are the outcomes better? Is it cheaper? Yes. Good enough for me, because I'm a smart practical guy, whereas you're a libertarian. You should read this book about how well the Libertarian ethos worked in New Hampshire
https://www.amazon.com/Libertarian-Walks-Into-Bear-Liberate-ebook/dp/B083J1FXY8
How many times does libertarian "no government all privatization!" crap need to lead to a dystopian failure before people realize its a giant scam?
Well, makes for some fun reading at least.
They also had massive issues with sanitation because, it turns out, no one really wants to clean sewers or pick up trash. That's another reason why they had a huge issue with bears and wild animals.
The book about it is a complete trip. I definitely recommend checking it out.
There's also the Minerva project where a bunch of libertarians tried to proclaim that they owned a coral reef outside of Tonga. The king of Tonga showed up with a group of prisoners to assert ownership of the reef. Didn't stop the libertarians from conning a bunch of investors out of their money though for minted coins.
Then there's Colorado Springs where a "big business" libertarian was voted in, and pretty much every effort to de-regulate and limit costs led to significantly higher costs afterwards. For example, they decided to only light 2/3rds of the street lamps so they could drop people's taxes. They saved about a million dollars on electricity.
Problem was, thieves then showed up in the cover of darkness and ripped out the copper wiring from the unpowered, unlit lights. The cost to fix the damage? More than $5 million.
Libertarianism makes for a fun thought experiment, but taking it farther than that almost always explodes in their faces.
>Amash is a Libertarian and when he was a Republican was a very anti-Trump Representative.
Libertarianism is a scam and that political movement is only good for splitting the GOP vote. That and making funny subjects for books about bears. and the GOP has been rotten long before Trump. Nixon and Reagan were corrupt assholes too.
>The wars in the middle east were supported by Democrats and continued by the Obama administration
Yeah and I voted against HRC and Biden in their primaries in part because of their Iraq war attitudes. Old line liberals tend to have problems like that. Hopefully a new generation of leftists can buck them and lead in opposition to the authoritarian right instead of making constant concessions to them.
>The wars in the middle east didn't put us in direct threat of war with Russia and thus nuclear war.
I highly doubt Russia would use a nuke on America because it was one of many nations that gave Ukraine supplies. That is such a massive escalation. If giving supplies to a country was enough to justify nukes we wouldn't be here to talk about it by now. That was the cold war in a nutshell.
All the nuke bullshit is just saber rattling. No nation wants to commit to mutually assured destruction because they got a bloody nose after they fucked around and found out by accident.
- Libertarians would never attempt to make a "paradise" or "utopia". Those concepts simply aren't a part of their beliefs.
- The "invasion of black bears" was actually one lady, who was a local and didn't move there, who was feeding them and letting them get into her trash.
- Literally every article and report on the incident is based on the same comedic book: "A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (And Some Bears) by Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling".
- Libertarians still live in Grafton, quite a few of them. Its fine.
- Just check out the Amazon page for the book. Some of the reviews explain how the book is a fictionalized account of the town. The excerpts are basically all about "capitalism bad, government good". https://www.amazon.com/Libertarian-Walks-Into-Bear-Liberate-ebook/dp/B083J1FXY8
The book is a good read:
<em>A Libertarian Walks into a Bear</em>
Basically, not only were the Grafton NH libertarians a bunch of chucklefucks, but they also didn't count on the Statehouse being taken over by the Free-State movement, which predictably, redirected what little funds were available the wealthier communities to do all then normal government stuff... you know stuff like fire departments, land managment, and friggin' bears, lol.
Libertarians constantly try to establish their own "countries" to demonstrate their ideals and it's hilarious every time.
https://www.amazon.com/Libertarian-Walks-Into-Bear-Liberate-ebook/dp/B083J1FXY8
Es lo mismo... tampoco se puede ser libertario y pretender que el estado no es necesario. Si vives en USA, puedes leerte https://www.amazon.com/Libertarian-Walks-Into-Bear-Liberate-ebook/dp/B083J1FXY8 o pedirlo en tu biblioteca... Es un trabajo de investigación real, bastante sui generis sobre las primeras comunidades "free town" en norteamérica. Cero estado es una locura también.
I've got a great book for 'anarcho-capitalists':
A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear
Story of a real town that managed the 'impossible', and defunded near all government programs, and 'freed' the people from its tyranny! It was the 'ideal' libertarian paradise!
Wherein then the town received a whole bunch of sex offenders moving in, the police became effectively useless as they could not afford to repair or replace any of their equipment, and then came the bears.
Because there were effectively no mandates against disposal of waste, people would just throw away their trash wherever, which attracted the local wild life. Bears are a part of local wild life.
Great read showcasing the logical conclusion of a number of their ideals in practice. Shame it happened to a real place though.
> That's funny, I don't see you making this comment on any of the stories that get posted a dozen times a day by all the regulars in the sub.
Because they don't post the same thing 3 times a day for days on end.
> Is there something specific about this story that upsets you? Is it the threats made by the BLM thug?
Mostly that you appear to act like a rather repetitive racist.
Did you want to spend some time on one of my reading suggestions instead of spewing your garbage all over the internet?
their point wasn't that they're willing to "let us slide" into handmaid's tale
their point was that it's clear this is an inevitable and foregone conclusion given the current make up of leadership which we cannot even address for another year a minimum.
Our power as voters is being taken from us by gerrymandered maps in the midwest reducing the overall power of democrats in the house. It was taken away by the census fuckery. It has been consistently suppressed by the undemocratic senate. It is suppressed by the supreme court being stolen by Mitch McConnell.
Biden won the popular vote 51.3% to 46.9% and by 7 million votes. The house is 51% Democrats, and the Senate is 50% "Democrats" (if you count Machine and Sinema as Democrats).
I suggest people start reading American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America to learn how the Union is going to start breaking up into separate discrete nations, because we're staring down the barrel of the fall of an empire, and it's blatantly obvious.
While I’ve only read the summary, it looks like a counter piece to Gormley’s book “Left Out” Left Out: Saskatchewan's NDP & the Relentless Pursuit of Mediocrity https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B004CLYO96/ref=cm_sw_r_awdo_navT_a_SJ10QK2VH83SF47NPMNA
You don't understand.
Libertarians never stop at advocating for their own "freedom", they want everyone else to be as "free" as them. Firsts it's the government shouldn't regulate raw milk. Then it's the government shouldn't regulate regular milk. Then its the government shouldn't get to decide what milk is supplied to kids in schools. Then its school choice over public schools. The slide goes on, and on, and on until society is effectively an ancap hellscape where the person with the most guns gets to decide who has the freedom to be turned into biomatter fuel.
This is what I mean when I say libertarians will often advocate against the best interests of people for the sake of some bullshit concept of freedom. Its a dumb ideology that is often contradictory to the values which they claim to espouse. Let alone the fact that right libertarian movements often have a cadre of Nazis and pedophiles.
If you want to learn more about how dumb libertarians are and how a libertarian project played out then look up Grafton and the Free Town Project.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_State_Project
https://www.amazon.com/Libertarian-Walks-Into-Bear-Liberate-ebook/dp/B083J1FXY8
All you ever need to know about any and all libertarians gets summed up by the book on the New Hampshire town that was taken over by them and promptly run into the ground with their "utopian government ideology".
This is a fine approach...if you are the sole, immortal inhabitant of a planet with abundant resources and no predators. Otherwise, a it's laughably naive philosophy that fails every time it is tried.
They tried it, didn't work out all that well.
A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (And Some Bears)
I found American Nations by Colin Woodward to make a lot of sense with respect to Canadian and American cultural overlaps.
I figured Clinton would come up. Ever since reading this book I've been less black-and-white about whether edge states like Arkansas are true Southern states. Certainly the book makes a good case describing Arkansas as more Appalachian in history and culture outside of the plantations in the Southeast corner of the state.