Small town values, I'll pass thank you

[grantcart]

For the last 8 years we have been governed by people with 'small town values'. I grew up in a medium sized city and spent a lot of time in those small towns. My brother is on the ballot in a small town.

Those small town values? Yes there is a nice degree of informality in small towns and if you need somebody to help you out they will. There are a lot of nice things to be said about small towns.

Small towns also retain some of the worst of what is wrong with America. They remain bastions of intolerance and suspicion. They are deeply divided and the fact that everyone knows everyone else's secret's not only means that there is a complete loss of privacy but that people are continually being divided into ongoing splits and schisms. Palin takes over Mayor and takes retribution against folks, well I am sure that happened before and after.

Small towns and rural areas hold on to all of those "individualstic traits that made America great".

Thats just bullshit for "if you don't fit in we couldn't care less".


Interesting that all of those places that Palin and the rural folks think are the greatest places also happen to be the places that rank highest in suicide.


Here are the states that lead the country in suicide:

http://www.zelfmoordpreventievlaanderen.be/upload/2005dataUSA.pdf

Montana
Nevada
Alaska
New Mexico
Wyoming
Colorado
Idaho
Arizona
South Dakota
Oregon
Oklahoma
North Dakota
Arkansas
Tennessee
Utah
West Virginia
Kentucky


The states with the least suicide?

Washington DC
New Jersey
New York
Rhode Island
Massachussettes
Maryland
Hawaii
Conneticut
Illinois
California


Small town America isn't filled with people that love their country more or who are less likely to commit crime. While no comparison is found on the US, this study shows that in Canada rural communities are much more likely to experience crime than their counterparts in the city:

The study found the overall crime rate in small urban areas was 43 per cent higher than in large urban areas and 58 per cent higher than in rural areas. Rates of total violent crime, total property crime and break-ins were also highest in small urban centres.
http://www.thestar.com/News/article/230766

While small town people are not more or less patriotic or moral than city folk they do excel in one area; the gulf between what is preached on Sunday and the reality of the day to day life could not be greater.

And we know who are spiking those suicide statistics in small towns.

Young people who have no one to confide in that they are stuck in a body that doesn't make sense or attracted to people of the same sex. How many young girls have committed suicide because they have heard their parents harangue about remaining virigins until marriage all the while planning their own death oblivious to the hyprocricy that their own birth may well have been conceived before a marriage license was obtained.

I think its time we started to talk about Big City Values.

Big City people hunger for more information, not less. They are curious about science and don't resent it. Big City people are tolerant. Tolerant about race, ethnicity and what kind of food you like as well as what kind of people you fall in love with.

Big City people are tolerant about religion, but you won't make much of an impression if you are arguing how pure your belief is rather than how the ethics of your meataphysical truth effects people.

Big Cities are advancing technology, health treatments and entertainment. Most of what Ameica exports comes out of big cities.

I could go on but its pointless. All you really need to know is here

http://www.worldhungeryear.org/fslc/faqs/ria_072.asp?section=14&click=8
Poverty and unemployment rates are higher and earnings growth lower in rural America than in metropolitan areas.4 Additionally, poor rural Americans may stay in poverty for longer periods of time. According to the Center for Rural Affairs, in nearly 25% of all rural counties, one in five people have been living below the poverty level for at least four decades.5

Rural America is not only poor and getting poorer, they continue to vote against their own economic interests, why would we follow that?

For the last 8 years we have let the administration idolize rural values with two hicks from Texas and Wyoming. They fight common sense and peer review science.

I think its about time that we started taking pride in our cities and the great things that our cities have accomplished. We should also insist that the country elect leaders that are interested in leading people in cities who want to use the resources of the state to improve the quality of life in their communities. Those cities are filled with great individualists who are smart enough to know that some things can be done individually and some we have to do together. There is a reason most people want to live in metropolitan areas.

[skooooo]

1. What the Republicans purport small town values to be....

...are not small town values, imo, they're just radical rightwing values.

[grantcart]

7. true but if you have lived in these small towns you know that there

is a cultural war between these places where the most literate person in the town is likely to be the minister or the priest and there is no one to stand up and question the right wing religion.

On a recent trip I told my brother (who has advanced degrees and is one of the few professionals in his entire county) that he should tell all the gay people in the county to come on down and get married in California and that we would take care of them and love them as if they were our own.

It stunned him. He had nothing to say. Of course they are against 'gay marriage' but when they were confronted with somebody that was willing to be more 'neighborly' (the supreme virtue in rural America) it literally left them without a response.

The clear difference in suicide rates by geography is a clear indication of how rural culture deals with people who might be 'a little bit different' or 'in a an embarassing situation'.

I think its time we called them out on it. They keep lifting Rural america up like it is a place of great virtue and friendly communities. It's not.

[roguevalley]

14. I really, really hate the generalization that is going on with the

small town, rural v urban areas. we are not what they say. Generalization is crap. (I am not calling you out, grantcart. I appreciate your anecdote. my post just fell this far.) I am saying generally that we are not like these people and it bothers me to see generalizations applied to small town america as much as urban america.

[Betsy Ross]

2. Nice work. K&R eom

[d_b]

3. the suicide rate

in rural alaska is the highest in the nation (per capita), especially the teen rates. It's a major problem in the Alaska native community.

[no_hypocrisy]

4. "Main Street" by Sinclair Lewis permanently turned me off regarding

"small town values" which usually means small minds.

[southpaw]

5. Having lived most of my life in a small town

I have to say that one of the most common small town 'values' is the belief that EVERYONE is privy to your business. A desire to live privately is met with rumors, allegations and lies.

[krkaufman]

6. Or how about Palin's hometown, specifically?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/04/wasillas-meth-problem-mad_n_123996.html

[cali]

8. Brattleboro is a small town. Burlington is a small town. In fact all Vermont is

made up of small towns. And that's replicated in small towns in many other places. All small towns are not the same. I'll put Vermont values up against any. They're liberal. They're compassionate. They're about environmentalism and sustainability. Nothing wrong with those values.

[grantcart]

10. yes and they are filled with small colleges and inovative cottage industries

Not at all like the rural areas where one in 5 is below the poverty line and their biggest concern is making sure that the school is teaching creationism. The small towns of the northeast are completely different than those of the rural west and south.

[Celeborn Skywalker]

9. How about

we not talk about "small town values" or "big city values"? I would rather just leave any divisive talk out of it altogether.

[grantcart]

12. How about we start pushing back against this decade long attack on the

culture of the cities.

We didn't start the culture wars but that was what was presented at the Republican convention. People aren't ambiguous about what we are fighting about here, it is same sex marriage, the assault on science and the attempt to justify political ideology on religious beliefs.

It has become axiomatic that we must have leaders that represent a rural America that doesn't exist. Even Clinton and Gore had to have 'rural' credentials. When was the last time somebody actually ran that professed a clear intention of representing the majority of people who actually live in metropolitan areas - John F Kennedy, almost 50 years ago.

[Patiod]

11. Although not everything is black-and-white, as you know

I agree with many of your points, but white racists in cities like Boston and Philadelphia are ugly and numerous.

My SO's old friend from college lives in an inner-ring suburb that is part of the city limits here in Philadelphia. It's where most of the cops and civil servants who HAVE to live in the city limits reside. He and his neighbors are some of the most virulent racists I have ever encountered. I avoid these people when I can, and speak up then leave the room when they start throwing out the ugly talk. (He has been very generous to my S.O. a few times, helping him out of some tight situations, though, so S.O. feel indebted to him, while repelled by his views.)

Lots of angry white people in poor areas of major cities, feeling marginalized.

[grantcart]

13. obviously you are correct

but what I am talking about is falling back on the cultural war that seems to allow rural America put itself as a paradigm of virtue, values and progress it is not.

It is intolerant and its economic base is eroding and while their poverty increases they have no interest in pushing for the government programs that will help their fellow rural cousins put food on the table.

[Beausoir]

15. LOL. What a ridiculous post. So, small towns are the enemy now?

I live in a VERY small town.

I'm a liberal, my two neighbors are liberals.

Our Superintendant of Schools is a liberal.

My pastor is a Liberal.

How ridiculous.

[phrigndumass]

16. People who live in small towns sometimes have a fear of being "shunned"

by the loudest and most opinionated among them. When you live in a town that small, everyone knows everyone else and the rumor mill works overtime.

This is why gay people from small towns usually move to larger towns or cities when they are old enough. Their parents themselves live in fear of being "outed" as someone who didn't "raise their children just right."

It's also why people who move away and educate themselves are sometimes reluctant to go back, even for a visit.

Good post, gc