Political Divide Splits Relationships — and Thanksgiving, Too

Several tales of people cancelling Thanksgiving/Christmas family get-togethers because they cannot stand to be near someone who voted differently. My favorite is the woman who moved her wedding from Chicago to Italy so that her fiance’s family cannot attend.

Yeah, that’ll help heal those familial bonds.

Similarly, here’s a surprisingly insightful piece from an avowed Leftie at Cracked:

How Half Of America Lost Its F**king Mind

This one starts out with some cultural references that help explain things:

1. Star Wars: Farm boy fights elitists who literally live in orbital splendor
2. Hunger Games: Rural folks rebel against evil urbanites who dress funny
3. Braveheart; Farmer rebels against foppish castle-dweller

The point being that in our culture, it’s ingrained that not only are “urban” and “rural” people different, but the rural people are the relatable heroes. Well, one question not really answered is why that might be. We are, after all, a more urban than rural culture now. So why are the farm folks the heroes and the city folk the villain? There is one line in one movie that I think really does explain it:

4: Serenity: Rural outer worlds rebel against civilized dominant worlds. Why are the rural outer planets upset with the urban central ones?

In the world of Serenity, as in the United States, the urban areas dominate the rural. I think the US would be a happier, less fighty place if these regions were politically separate to a larger degree, but as things are, the laws that urbanites find appropriate for themselves they want to impose on *everyone.* Because high density cities cannot well tolerate firearms, farm folk shouldn’t be able to have them. Because city dwellers apparently have real short fuses, *everybody* needs to be controlled. Because you can’t really do much agriculture or have big powerplants in cities, you can’t do them outside, either, and screw you you privileged racist pig if you are upset that the only industry in your worthless little town pulled up stakes and left you with nothing but debt. Because people in cities are *forced* to be all up in everybody else’s business, anybody who wants their own piece of privacy and quiet out in the sticks is to be mistrusted and accused of all forms of cultural heresy.

It may take a few more decades, but once self-contained manufacturing systems – evolved 3D printers approaching “replicator” capabilities – become available, cities will start to have less need to be centralizing infrastructure will make a lot less sense once there’s simply no need for it.

Thank God we live in the quiet, little, redneck, podunk, white-trash, kick ass U- S- A-!