Yes. It's very effective, very dangerous, and it's not at all unique to America; the exact same approach results in high-minority vote shares across Europe.

I think a lot of it comes down to the rural/urban divide, in a rural setting there's a lot less convinence, fewer services. A need to be more self suficcient. While urban settings have many amenities and services, they also tend to be hotspots for mental illness, crime, lack of housing for those who don't or can't make enough money to afford increasing rent and food costs, it's harder to police (more resources needed) illness from concentrated pollution. Theres some who see the conservative side of politics as fiscally conservative, and the liberal side aiming for more social support. This is a gross simplification of U.S. politics (I'm Canadian, we have a rural divide as well, take a look at how the urban Canadian centres vote vs rural, the difference is our party colours are backwards to yours!) So many rural folks see the tax bill and say "what do I get for this" and many urban folks see the need for stricter regulations, more social support etc. And say "We need more resources, let's throw money at the problem". Coming from a small town if you see someone in need it's not too burdensom to lend a hand, in a dense urban situation it's neccesary to turn your back on the many individuals and say this is a social problem that is more comfortable to abstract to the government to handle. Now subsides for farmers seem weird from my vantage point. On one hand the scale of operations for a farmer do seem lofty compared to my experience as an individual earner, I don't have to budget for sub $1M equipment upkeep/replacement etc. But on the other I'm not beyond considering "conspiracy theroies" like "sugar makes us more susceptable to influance, and lowers immune response, leading to higher healthcare costs" - bassically we are the product not the customer.

More importanly there's a rift between "I care" and "I'm paid to care" that's common for social support, just like it's common for the tech industry.

All this is an over simplification, but I'd love for us to do better as a whole. I think that starts with people using their empathy and curiosity to understand the divide. Maybe through understanding we can be less judgemental of each other and find ways to work together, or at least understand and build boundaries to make the divide more livable.

Voting for Democrats is the alternative.

If the Republicans get voted out and become powerless, they (or the successor party) will have to be better to regain power.

Anything else is some accelerationist nonsense.

i would love to hear Farm-To-Taber answering this. she, a farmer and farm worker, ran as a democrat. i really like and recommend her podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@FarmToTaber

she regularly does episodes about politics in regards to farming.

Democrats write constantly about trying to reach rural americans. I've never seen democrats meaningfully position themselves as the party for city dwellers. Instead I've seen democrats simply refuse to describe cities as hellholes full of crime, laziness, and sexual promiscuity like the republicans do.

> What is the alternative when the Democrats appear just as much beholden to corporate finance, and position themselves as the party for city dwellers?

For the love of God, please don't "both sides" this stuff.

When is the last time you took a look at the bills coming before Congress and how they were voted on? Like, literally go to the congressional website and view bills and vote tallies? Would you believe it if I told you stuff like "Prevent rich people from stealing wages from their workers" are voted SOLELY ON PARTY LINES.

In fact, we have the most divided congress in like 100 years. There has not been a point in the last century in which the 2 parties were so different.

Lastly, there are at least 50 Dems in congress right now who explicitly aren't beholden to corporate finance and regularly introduce bills to remove money from politics.

You are correct, no replies but people don't like your message.

>farms get all sorts of special treatment for taxes, bankruptcy and inheritance

When I see the amount of exploits the wealthy use to avoid taxes and maximize profits, I realize working a 9-5 job is for fools, considering how much taxes I'm paying on my salary.

    > rich folk like the Treasury Secretary who maintain farms for ... financial benefits

    > Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is an investor in North Dakota soybean farmland but has stated he has divested from his holdings to avoid conflicts of interest, addressing criticisms regarding his personal financial stake in agriculture.

> I think it's actually because of the gun control crap that Dems push.

Anything specific? Because from where I sit, the Dems aren't anywhere near as strict as they should be wrt to gun control.

Or are you just believing the stuff you're hearing from conservative media? Are you really of the belief that "farmers" need assault rifles? What about bump stocks?

How many school shooting have we had? What legislation came from those? Can you even name any?

A currency swap absolutely isn't "basically a line of credit". Any swap is a credit agreement insofar as each party is committing to future possible liabilities, but a currency swap is a very standard instrument which is part of central banks' monetary policy toolkit and helps them in their mandate to ensure currency stability. Swaps can be extremely flexible so the terms differ wildly, but they're not generally a line of credit that can be drawn from, they're an agreement to pay or receive amounts based on future movements of some underlying rates.

So what is a currency swap. Well any swap is an agreement with at least two legs, a pay leg and a receive leg. The normal type of swap is a interest rate swap so say I agree to pay you every month 3% fixed interest on 10m USD and you agree to pay me some floating rate (say 3m usd libor + 100bps) interest on the same amount. So every month we do a calculation where if libor+100 is greater than 3 then I pay you otherwise you pay me. We might do this to hedge our interest rate exposure. Like say you're a bank and I'm a bank and most of my borrowers are fixed rate mortgages and most of my savings accounts pay floating rate interest. I want a hedge so the floating rate doesn't end up costing me too much.

A currency swap is like that but with different currencies. So say we change things so it's 10m USD on one side and 15m EUR on the other side and we agree to exchange principal amounts. So that sets an exchange rate of 1.5 as well as the interest rate thing from before. If interest rates or exchange rates now move, this provides a hedge. So the hedge now is not just against the rate changing but also against the currency moving adversely. Central banks use this to ensure the import/export vs domestic balance of their economy is appropriate given the levels of trade between nations and also as a hedge against adverse currency movements affecting both assets they hold (yes they hold bonds etc) and their outstanding debt (which for the Fed will include "Eurobonds" they have issued in other currencies than USD).

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/currencyswap.asp is a general explanation

https://www.ecb.europa.eu/ecb-and-you/explainers/tell-me-mor... is the perspective of a central bank on currency swaps and their use

I buy all this, and I think your analysis is spot on. There's z log of cognitive dissonance going on here.

>> One common theme has been that farmers are by necessity highly independent.

I think they like to think of themselves as highly independent. But in truth of course they are highly dependent, on city customers for their product, on foreign countries for exports, on federal govt for subsidies (both direct and indirect), on suppliers for machinery, seed and fertilizer, and in some cases on immigrant labor.

Just as we are dependent on farmers. It's all interconnected.

Ironically they may tolerate local govt, and had federal govt, but they are most dependent on fed govt policies.

They do of course have many legitimate grievances, but I'm not sure that voting for the party that seems to hate them is a winning strategy.

> They don't see the effect of their taxes being spent,

They are quite aware of taxes because 13.5% of their income on average comes directly from federal subsidies paid by taxes on "city folk".

https://usafacts.org/articles/federal-farm-subsidies-what-da...

> The voters will vote against their own interests over and over and over if they keep hearing something that resonates with what they feel.

Most large farm owners are very well off and are absolutely voting in their own interests for the party whose primary goal is to cut taxes on the wealthiest while cutting government support for the poorest.

The rural working class and poor on the other hand are however often voting against their economic interests, but their economic situation has long been ignored by both partie, so having given up hope for economic change, they often vote on culture/identity issues.

"because everything and everyone is potentially an hour's drive away."

Which only 1h because of federal subsidies as rural communities learn. Without health subsidies many hospitals will close, and it's no longer a 1h drive but a 5h drive.

People often live in a delusion on why things are the why they are - their explanation often is the one that suits them most (also see USAid).

>and I listened to some pro-Trump people who seem otherwise intelligent that tried to explain this effect.

If all you know is by listening to people recently on TV then you don't know farmers very well.

Nah. This is not true. They voted, because they looked forward the harm to liberals and cities and lgbt and women who dont conform and non whites. They wanted other to be harmed and openly talked about it. They thought they will be harmed only a little, like the last time.

Historically, republicans were not making policies good for them. By they promissed to be cruel and that was appealing.