Solutions for those 'left behind' in small town America

For Independence Day, I'm about to talk about small town America, the tragic/hurtful fix they are in... and some possible solutions. Though I'll finish with some fierce political commentary on the stated intention of Donald Trump to meet privately with Vladimir Putin, without any U.S. officials or other parties present. 

== Are small towns the soul of America? Well, then save them… right ==

First a telling statistic: there was a clear overlap between counties that had high opioid use ... and the vote for Donald Trump.  After correcting for demographic variables such as age and race, researchers found that support for Trump in the 2016 election closely – and by very large multipliers - tracked opioid prescriptions.

Now, to be fair, a lot of this correlation could be chalked up to social factors and economic woes. Also, name a metric of moral and healthy living that is not worse in Red America, from teen sex to STD and pregnancy rates to obesity, dropouts, divorce and domestic violence, gambling and so on. Name an exception. 

Sure, it can be hard to tease apart cause and effect. Whether it's the poverty that leads to both pain and political rage … or if the political monsters who voters in these counties keep electing have been instrumental in keeping them in poverty and pain. Though the way local politicians bend over for big Agri-Biz and casino lords says plenty about the voters who elect them.

Given that the rest of the Union has poured hundreds of billions in aid and support into those counties, across the last century and a half – especially since FDR – the political rage that keeps electing lunatics and corrupt SOBs would seem suicidal... yet...

... there's a plausible reason. Deep-down, nothing imaginable could be more rage-inducing.  For 150 years in Red (or gray) America, each June, the good folk of every small town have seen the pride and joy of their community - their best and brightest high school graduates – scamper off to universities and city lights. Effectively to Mordor. To Sodom. Even when they return, they come home changed, with urbane attitudes and sophisticated ideas. 

Across human mythology, there is no story more terrifying than aloof, snooty, elfin creatures who steal your children. Or turn them into alien beings, into changelings. From this angle you grasp – at last – a root cause of the pain. 

Heck, I might pop pills, too.

Is that insight ironic, given their cult’s horrific recent behavior, stealing kids from immigrant parents, at the border? History and anthropology show many tribes did that, when when demographic extinction loomed… stealing the children of others, when your own have been taken from you.

This appraisal is supported by a study of political rage in small town America by Robert Wuthnow, a sociologist at Princeton University, who spent eight years interviewing Americans in small towns across the country.

"They recognize themselves as being left behind because, in fact, they are the ones in their family and in their social networks who did stay where they were. Most of the people I spoke to grew up in the small town they currently live in, or some other small town nearby. Often their children have already left, either to college or in search of a better job somewhere else."

This genuine pain is not culpable, because universities and their youth are made for each other and their kids have a right to grow. The larger beings they become aren’t monsters. Sure, they can be snooty, at that age! But it is a good thing, and don’t apologize. Our colleges and cities aren't Mordor. Mostly.

But at some level, we need to understand… and sympathize. Robert Wuthrow finishes with a caution:

"Point one is that rural America is quite diverse. People live in farm towns or coastal towns or mining communities, or they live in the North or the South or in Republican states or Democratic states. So we have to be careful about lumping people together under one category.

"Point two is that rural America does have real problems — population decline, a brain drain, opioid addiction, etc. We can make of that what we want. But that’s not the whole picture. Not every small town is full of people who are suffering and bitter and angry at Washington."

Yes, sympathize and understand. But I will no longer sigh and accept when I am told the urban and educated are less moral.  That's diametrically opposite to true.

== Solutions for small town America ==

So what can be done to ease this enmity, undeserved as it may be? The demographic problem is very real, as many small towns keep shrinking, feeding into a sense of gloom and doom.

One approach is to keep investing in infrastructure like high speed internet for rural areas (an Obama program), that would let more folks live in healthful rural dispersal while keeping urban jobs. Better transportation systems – e.g. hyperloops, efficient trains and (why not?) flying cars, will likely do the same.  Note that both call for willing transfers of wealth and technology, as Blue America has happily done since FDR’s time.

Some towns have navigated toward the future with a process called ‘shrink smart,’ re-inventing themselves for small scale industry or culture or tourism, providing jobs that their own college grads may want to return to fill.  

Another concept is combine-to-survive.  Three or four villages may have enough industry or farmers and services to support one in vibrant style. States could subsidize in-filling four into one.  

But won’t that leave several effective ghost towns?

Then why not turn lemons to lemonade? Truly, I am appalled that we’ve not seen more attempts to utilize near-abandoned towns for a wide variety of purposes.

- As attractive refuges for the homeless, offering spacious shelter at extremely low – and subsidized – cost of living. Many cities are investing heavily in new homeless housing, but the number of units is shrunk by the sheer price of building in a metropolis, when large homes are going begging, out in farmland. Oh, village life won’t be for everyone! Many displaced persons still want to dwell in urban centers, amid the bustle and job opportunities. But won't it be easier to help many of them if the savings truly went to services for the indigent, while rescuing a declining town from extinction. Should it be tried, in at least a few test cases?

- As communities for the undocumented.  Right now, the confederate right is justifying their insupportably vile and racist oppression of refugees fleeing oppression and death in their homeland with a talking point: that once these folks are registered and get provisionally released, they tend to disappear and never show up for their hearings.  While this is a gross exaggeration, the germ of truth could be eliminated, if refugees were released into a Halfway Village.

Not an internment camp!  But a pleasant place without walls and the potential for some work.  If they leave? Well, that becomes an assertive action and they’ll know that it won’t help their eventual case. I would oppose walls! Anyway, with a little help, who would need walls? (Have a look at what happened with the Hmong refugee community, that innovated exactly this approach successfully, on their own.)

- Okay, maybe you'd need some fences, for this next use #3.  A deceased rural village could make a good and cheap minimum security prison, where honor convicts live and work in a farm-and-town economy, getting practice and putting away savings for the outside world. Farms and businesses that barely failed in the regular economy might work just fine, if slightly subsidized by the State, as a hyper-cheaper means of incarceration. Other than daily roll call and a few extra cameras, what more security would be needed? The savings could go to psychological and transition services.

Can you think of other uses for a rural village or town that’s dying?  Remember that if the state buys up such a village, it raises property values across the county, and surrounding towns will probably benefit in other ways.

== Finding new leaders ==

Okay no reasonable suggestions will move a centimeter, so long as one of our political parties is pure treason, waging war against every single fact-using profession, at the behest of foreign enemies. So, we'll finish with some fierce politics.

Many of you have already seen this video  for another woman veteran of three Afghanistan tours, now running for Congress in Texas. Is this what we need? Hell yeah. Girl gotta go up! And no, that isn't the only mold. I'm fine with Santa Monica electing a Santa Monica liberal and Berkeley electing a lefty nut. I know some residually sane republicans... there are still a few... and I've urged them to run. But the battle, this round, is in the districts that Two Scoops is swinging into battlegrounds.   

These are places where decent folks need to be drawn away from the madness, And hell yeah, these ex-officers are our heroes. They are rising up to defend the nation they swore to serve, in the best possible way. And Rupert Murdoch is going to so regret turning them -- along with every other fact-using profession -- into enemies of his treasonously revived confederacy. 

Oh, the distinguished flying cross is no mere lapel pin. She's gonna use that corrupt, confederate SOB as a mop.

And hell, yeah. Give the folks who made this video a lot more to do.

== Here's why this is war ==

When President Donald Trump takes his first official meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin later this month, the two will spend a portion of that time alone, CNN reported Monday. The very same Kremlin-Politburu schemers who your uncles deemed satanic, when they wore hammer and sickle lapel pins,. are now okay guys, when they are billionaires wearing Orthodox crosses.

This must be screamed across the roofs of the world. Your mad uncles need to be told this is the final smoking gun... no, flaming gun. And they must choose - now - whether to be complicit in treason.