Thread by @OliverBOfficial

To think that nullifying the rural states by abolishing the #ElectoralCollege was going to solve anything other than manifesting a liberal leadership for decades (as Trump did by nominating #ACB for #SupremeCourt), is to ignore the consquences of the urban-rural migration. 1/X

Link: jstor.org/stable/4286374…

As all the jobs like in the great cities, people move to the cities. The first consequence: Cities bloat, ready to implode because space is finite. The only action is to expand outwards, while prices downtown skyrocket. In the meantime, the | 2/X

rural areas decay because there are too few people to hire, while everyone is pilgrimaging to the cities. Without jobs, people seek relief elsewhere, such as in drugs, or otherwise become unemployed or criminal. For most, though, they just turn citywards too, leaving behind | 3/X

the last men and women who have a job to hustle through day by day. Life may be good, but for some, they feel let down by left-leaning POTUSes who care for the urbanites and their issues, forgetting about those in the West between the West coast and, say, New England. To | 4/X

abolish the Electoral Colleges, while it would be reasonable to fulfil the promise of a rulership by the people and only the people, rather than electoral men, would it make possible to abandon vast parts of the nation and focus solely on the metropolis of SanFran or NYC. | 5/X

Such electoral “honey pots” could secure a victory in a general election, but vast parts are going to fall off the rim, into oblivion.
Is this just? Only when we believe the paramount to be to serve the majority of the people, and if they all cramp into the cities, then | 6/X

there is no use in minding about the heartland. 'Let them fall into oblivion, let them vote Republican until there is no longer any Republican to vote for, and let them be racists, sexists and whatever etiquette fits! What would we care?' Such paroles are easy to exclaim as | 7/X

they come with no responsibility; there are going to be no consequences for uttering such malicious words, and this is the whole problem already: Because there is so much hatred bundled in the heartland, it is allegedly appropriate to counter that hatred with equal hatred. 8/X

No-one bothers to investigate the origins of this hatred, although it is the elephant in the room: The existential dread of this living space's desertion. Its deterioration. Pete Buttigieg was one of the presidential candidates I noticed to think about its improvement. | 9/X

Source: reuters.com/article/us-usa…

Maybe the other candidates showed similar interest in flyover country, but then at least I didn't notice. Prove me wrong. But his background as a mayor of a near-forsaken town shows. How many more modern-day POTUSes had a rural background? | 10/X

Few to none. Most of them came from an ivy-league background, Bernie Sanders at least seemed to prefer a modest lifestyle, although I heard that he owned a mansion or anything like this.
Anyway, unless future POTUSes minded the other side of the US, they are only going | 11/X

willingly and consciously further the division between rural and urban America. And while racial justice, uncertainty about the future in terms of climate and the economy are indeed repugnant issues of our time, they are by far not the only ones. The future of the rural | 12/X

is important as well, and by no lesser means. We could link it to issues such as climate change and affordable living space as well, without elaborating on it now. But solar power plants could easily be built in rural areas where the sun shines for sufficient hours to draw | 13/X

profits from it, not speaking about the jobs it creates.
To abandon the electoral college is to think short-sighted and abandon plentiful people too inhabiting the US. But if there should be incentives to move Westwards also meant to water down the Conservative siege. | 14/X

AT least the Left should avoid furthering a division that leads towards the decline not of Capitalism but of the solidary society. It could enforce Trumpian candidates in all ranks.

THREAD END

15/X

@threadreaderapp Please unroll.