1/06/2017

Fuck You, Rural Elitists

Yesterday, an opinion piece in the New York Times started this way: "One recent morning, I sat near two young men at a coffee shop here whom I’ve known since they were little boys. Now about 18, they pushed away from the table, and one said: 'Let’s go to work. Let the liberals sleep in.' The other nodded." The writer, Robert Leonard, is a local news director at a radio station in Knoxville, Iowa, and he assured us that the young men are hard workers at tough jobs, like washing dishes and cleaning up at a restaurant, and, of course, farming. They are so goddamned salt of the earth because "They are conservative, believe in hard work, family, the military and cops, and they know that abortion and socialism are evil, that Jesus Christ is our savior, and that Donald J. Trump will be good for America."

And all I could think when I read it was "Fuck you, you elitist fucking assholes. Why is your judgmental ass more valid than mine?"

The piece is titled, "Why Rural America Voted for Trump," and it is another seemingly rational argument trying to show that one's neighbors or one's relatives or one's friends didn't vote for Trump because of "ignorance, racism, sexism, nationalism, Islamophobia," or other such things. No, it was that rural Americans have a different philosophy. They "think the liberal worldview creates unnecessary rules and regulations that cripple the economy and take away good jobs that may belong to them or their neighbor. Public school systems and colleges are liberal tools of indoctrination that go after what we love and value most — our children."

We're all supposed to nod our heads and respect these shitheels while they mock liberals and are ennobled by the rank nonsense of those who desperately want to justify the racism, etc. because otherwise they have to admit that they are surrounded by horrible, hateful fucks. But I won't do that precisely because I have more respect for these dumbass motherfuckers than any of the wannabe Jane Goodalls observing the ways of the chimps. How do I have more respect? Because I don't treat them like fucking children or a hidden Amazon tribe whose language is clicks and trills. We're talking about fucking grown-ups who make fucking grown-up decisions, and I'm gonna treat them like grown-ups. And their attitudes towards urban Americans are no less elitist than the dumbass motherfuckers on the coasts who lump everyone else into flyover country.

Here's the deal. There are a whole bunch of us city liberals who came from rural or southern or whatever areas. I've told this story a hundred goddamn times, but this pinheaded, Ivory Tower-humping leftist lived in a trailer park in Florida with a trucker father and a working mom. At 13, I started working unloading semis at warehouses after school. My family was on welfare, including food stamps, and when my father died, we were on Social Security to survive in the south, and we worked our asses off to get out of that hole. I know a shit-ton of other people who have a similar M.O. and now live in New York or L.A.  and a shit-ton who continue to live in rural areas. So don't fucking preach to me about the goodness and grace of conservative rural people or the white working class.

And as for those good hard-workin' young men who love God and country? More than a few of 'em were hanging out in the gay bars of south Louisiana, far from New Orleans, trying to get their dicks sucked in the men's room. I guarantee you that Leonard's liberal-hating boys or ones like them are hoping for a little sinful time with another man.

It's all bullshit. The rest of Leonard's column is about how it seems like cities in red states are taken care of by their government, but not the rural parts of the state, where the roads need to be improved and there is a need for police and firefighters and EMTs: "To rural Americans, sometimes it seems our taxes mostly go to making city residents live better. We recognize that the truth is more complex, particularly when it comes to social programs, but it’s the perception that matters — certainly to the way most people vote."

And there you have the reason why liberals are called "elitist." We actually know that most of our taxes go to the Republican-run states. We aren't fucking hypocrites who condemn government, elect people who want to shrink government, and then are pissed off when the government doesn't offer enough services. We don't get our news from conspiracy theorists and liars. Are there excesses on the left? Of course. We're fuckin' human. But when one group is inclusive of all races and religions and genders and sexual orientations and more, while the other pines for a time when white Christians ran everything, it's pretty damn clear who the real elitists are.

What you're calling "elitism" is just simply not being ignorant. We don't have our heads shoved up Jesus's ass. And when the left gets angry because of how fucking dumb some of the shit coming out of rural and red mouths is, we're told we need to understand what they believe. No, we're just gonna say that stupid is stupid.

You can stop explaining the white working class rural conservative Christian farming folk, hot-takers and self-justifiers. Instead, why don't you explain liberalism to them? Why don't you explain that jobs are drying up and communities are dying not because of abortion and same-sex marriage but because of Republican economic policies that have favored the wealthy, most of whom live in cities, including a certain president-elect they voted for who took advantage of those very policies in order to stay rich? Ultimately, though, it won't matter. Because despite every fucking word to the contrary, the real problem is that those who voted for Trump are racist. They are sexist. They are Islamophobic. They are ignorant.

The whole thrust of these "let's learn about the yokels" articles is to imply that there are real Americans and there are coastal elites. Sorry, motherfuckers. We're all Americans. And if I have to suffer under your stupid, you have to hear about our smarts.