tire wrote:
Have you ever visited (or better lived) in small town america? You would be surprised by the amount of civic engagement. Something cities lack (but not only in america, all over the world). Cities provide anonymity but in response lack community engagement. And multiculturalism makes it worse.
Grew up on a farm in Lancaster Co. Pennsylvania, lived in Salina Kansas for 3 years. Went to an Ag school.
Read the early writings from the late 18th century by a Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville, on the strength of American civic engagement:
https://demmelearning.com/learning-blog ... ivic-life/When the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville visited America in 1831, he was impressed with the level of civic engagement he saw among the American people. In his book, Democracy in America, Tocqueville often mentions his respect for the political activeness of the average American citizen. Tocqueville understood that America is designed to work best when her citizens are involved on the community level.
The degree to which agrarian communities still can hold to civic engagement is praiseworthy. The fact we still see some of this is a tribute to this legacy. It is severely eroded however by the death of small town America, the entrance of box stores, the fact that farmers have become indentured servants and no longer own their equipment or land, they are mortgaged to the hilt and it is the Ag companies and banks that control their fate. How many farmers who lost their farms and also lost their civic engagement and became part of the opiate addiction statistics. Do you even have an idea?
Just open your eyes and look at the death of rural America and what went along with this was the death of much of the civic engagement that Tocqueville talked about. The diners and community centers that were the meeting place for civic engagement have been replaced with Walmarts.
An old friend who had to give up her dairy farm summed it up quite well.... "My husband and I took on every job imaginable in town to earn extra income to try to save our farm. In a recent e-mail she confirmed that for many farmers the loss of cheap immigrant labor is just the latest nail in the coffin.
Her Mexican farm workers brought nostalgic memories; their hard physical labor, the family cohesiveness, their close community connection. They reminded her of how farmers used to be before they put on their ear phones and rode their giant air conditioned combines owned by banks.
I would challenge you Tire to get off the internet rhetoric bandwagon and really truely look deep into what ails agrarian America. Those politicians today who talk of representing small farmers and then spew their racist anti immigrant bullshit are NOT representing the best interest of American farmers.
Don't be duped. Wake up and think for yourself instead of regurgitating bullshit you read on the internet.