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Why Do We Value Country Folk More Than City People?
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/27/opinion/republicans-democrats-trump-urban-rural.htmlWhy Do We Value Country Folk More Than City People?
By Will Wilkinson
June 27, 2018
The great, gradual migration of the human population from the countryside to the city has transformed the world, but weve barely begun to reckon with its political implications. Over generations, urbanization has sorted us on the traits ethnicity, education level, personal temperament that draw us toward cities or keep us away.
The logic of our electoral institutions has always sorted the bulk of American voters into one of two major parties. Whats new is that the sorting dynamic of urbanization now accounts for partisan sorting, too. Democrats have become the party of the multicultural city, Republicans the party of the monocultural country the party of urbanization-resistant white people.
Such a clean partisan break along density lines has thrown our democracy into a crisis of legitimacy and dysfunction. Our federal system of democratic representation has drifted dangerously out of sync with the geographic distribution, demographic makeup and outsize economic role of Americas urbanized population.
Our politics is cracking up over the density divide. Big cities and their distinctive interests are suffering a density penalty and need more visibility in our scheme of representation.
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Why Do We Value Country Folk More Than City People? (Original Post)
dalton99a
Jun 2018
OP
It was all a bribe to the former slave states, first for ratification and then
world wide wally
Jun 2018
#5
unblock
(52,504 posts)1. The senate is effectively hard gerrymandered to favor small states
Which in practice means a bias toward rural voters.
This similarly affects the electoral college, so presidential elections are more aimed at rural voters.
The house is now gerrymandered as well in a number of states, once again favoring rural voters.
StTimofEdenRoc
(445 posts)2. So should we spit up a few of the big ones?
unblock
(52,504 posts)3. That gets complicated, though in theory that would restore some balance
yurbud
(39,405 posts)6. What would stop states from doing that?
yurbud
(39,405 posts)7. How you divide them would be an opportunity for gerrymandering.
PoindexterOglethorpe
(25,930 posts)4. Personally I don't, but the way things are set up
country folk do matter more than city folk, and have so mattered since the beginning of the Republic.
world wide wally
(21,762 posts)5. It was all a bribe to the former slave states, first for ratification and then
for reunification.
Our Founding Fathers fucked up.