Comment by jfengel

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.