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Saturday, May 28, 2022

FARM SUBSIDIES: There is talk of the rural-urban divide. There is too damned little attention paid to rural welfare queens. Taking big money. Carping about urban family assistance.

 Ag. Dept. link.

This is not to say helping agriculture is not in the national interest. We need farms.

However, an educated populace is in the national interest. We need student loan debt relief.

We need balance. We do not need to be at one another. Common good is best.

PLEASE NOTE: The headline, using the term of that bastard Reagan (Lee Atwater assisted). Because it is such a mean usage, put it in the context of helping boost agriculture, via welfare payments, and it shows how flat out dumb and mean the welfare queen term is. (Dumb and mean --- Two qualities Reagan epitomized.)

SO - The headline was intended to strike irony to show something else. 

And yes, many farmers taking subsidy payments are not mean spirited toward others being assisted. Most are basically kind hearted, more or less likely so. The loud, ignorant. doctrinaire and bombastic ones are the problem. They are the ones who concentrate toward Republican political rhetoric. They are the ones against a living wage for the working poor. Against educated poor people under a debt burden arising from gaining an  education - against their also being assisted while happily getting Ag. benefits.

And, big surprise, FOX is counterproductive in our becoming a better nation. 

Consider

Food stamps? Link. Food Assistance Welfare goes where it is needed. And that is good. Yet Reagan sold urban-black-welfare-queens and used the meme against doing good by helping needy people. Why? 

Another post, similar data equivalence.

A rural-urban study with findings, but no ability to answer, "Why?"

The susceptibility to propaganda and the tailoring of propaganda seem well honed truth, rural vs urban, but, again, WHY?

Try this. Similar but differing; here, here. For now, leave it there. At a still simplistic level. To be UPDATED in all likelihood. The thought here is that educated people cannot help but be more sophisticated. And that sophistication can see each of the two parties as flawed servants of Mammon; but are willing to tolerate lesser evil compromise, while knowing precisely what it is and hating it greatly. Simple folksy bullshit probably sells better with less educated, e.g., Reagan, Trump, FOX.

Yes, that seems both condescending and smug, and depressing. Perhaps Pew Research might have helpful content.

Looking at Presidential candidates, 2016 and 2020. Subjectively: People knew the Clintons and how they'd adversely impacted the Democratic party, Trump was an unknown; and make the test less egregious, more egregious; rather than greater or lesser evil. We all knew how galling and egregious the Clintons are. Then, after seeing Trump, it seemed Biden was more flat out mean and as duplicitous; while Trump was dangerously narcissistic and unhinged, and lazy. Neither a cultural giant. Biden less egregious. Yet education and consequent sophistication could see that, while among uneducated, some even liked Trump! Does anyone like Biden? If you do, see a shrink. Trump was a litmus test but Reagan was the real litmus test of discernment between educated and uneducated. For those whose memories do reach "back that far," But the two, Reagan then Trump, are twin sons of different parents. Each with a simple and genuine message, in the sense a rattlesnake has a genuine message.