Near heaven is very close

From Rural Trump Voters Already Live in the Safe, Tolerant Utopia Leftists Claim to Want by John Nolte.  

Regrettably, it is polemical, partisan, abusive and ad hominem in argument.

Pleasantly, it is full of data and there is an underlying structured argument.

An argument that dovetails with a different argument I have made for several years.  My claim is that part of the partisan bias of mainstream media is likely due to the consolidation of the mainstream media news industry and concentration in a small handful of unrepresentative cities.   Journalists writing for the national audience are overwhelmingly in a small number of cities such as New York, Washington, D.C., Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Atlanta.  

These cities are distinctive in many ways.  They are much more dense than other cities or locations in the US.  They have greater pollution, much higher crime rates and much more political corruption.  They have much larger immigrant populations than the national average.  They have more violent crimes.  They have much more income inequality.  They have much greater government regulation.  They have higher tax burdens.  They have far higher cost-of-living.  

They also, almost without exception, have had uninterrupted Democratic administrations for between 50 and 150 years.  The key exception which tends to prove the rule - New York City had a Republican administration under Giuliani for eight years to 2001 during which the city was revived, crime broken, etc.  Beneficiary progress which has since been, or is being, frittered away.

The point is that national journalists are concentrated in a handful of cities which are completely unrepresentative of the USA and completely foreign to the great majority of the lives of most citizens.  It should not be unexpected that such journalists, living in such a bubble, talking always amongst themselves, would end up with a dramatically skewed and mistaken understanding of the reality of America.

It reminds me of a social media storm several years ago when some right leaning provocateur asked mainstream media journalists how many of them either owned a pick-up truck or knew someone who did own a truck (SUV, Van, Pick-up trucks).  Since pick-up trucks are the number one selling class of vehicles (20%) and the broader class of trucks are 70%, of all vehicles sold, one would have expected that this would be a low bar to cross.

But apparently most of the big mainstream journalists neither owned or knew anyone who owned a truck.  Which is not too unexpected living in dense cities.  Rather than acknowledge the implied reality that they were unfamiliar with a basic and central aspect of life for most Americans (most people drive trucks or who know someone who does), MSM journalists focused on arguing that it was a misleading and uninformative question.  

The point though, is that journalists are steeped in unrepresentative environments which are dramatically different, and in many empirical ways, much worse than those experienced by most Americans.  No wonder they are disconnected from the real world concerns and issues of their ever fewer readers. 

Nolte, in the midst of the froth of rhetorical argument, lays out the bare bones of that reality.  

Life in Rural America (which is where Republican Trump voters live and govern), is clean, safe and racially tolerant. Most places in America where life is dirty, polluted, dangerous, violent, and plagued with racial hate and race riots, are cities that are almost exclusively populated by and governed by Democrats.

[snip]

Leftists say they want to live in a Utopia free of gun violence, free of pollution, and free of racism…

Well, that place already exists.

It’s called Rural MAGA Land.

Out here in Rural America the environment is clean, no one worries about getting shot, and there are no racial tensions.

Let me start with a personal example…

For a total of 20 years now, I’ve lived in rural North Carolina. My wife is a Mexican immigrant. Our interracial marriage has never been a problem with anyone. My wife has never had a problem with anyone.

For six years, my next door neighbor was a mixed-race family. Black and white. They never had a problem.

On the other side of me is a couple with mixed-race grandkids. Black, white, and brown. They’ve never had a problem. 

Up to now, all blustering opinion.  Anecdotes are only marginally informative.  What about empirical evidence.  Well, under all that bluster, Nolte has the goods.

According to the Department of Justice, out here where I live in rural North Carolina, throughout all of 2019, there were a total of only 20 hate crime allegations in our 13 rural counties where the population adds up to 668,000. That means that throughout 2019, there were only 2.9 hate crime allegations per 100,000 people.

Guess what the hate crime number is in some of the most progressive, left-wing cities in America? Well, you don’t have to guess, because I have those numbers for you….

Portland, OR = 5.75 reported hate crime incidents per 100,000

Boulder, CO = 7.9 incidents per 100,000

San Francisco, CA = 7.2 incidents per 100,000

Alexandria, VA = 3.1 incidents per 100,000

Arlington, VA = 4.7 incidents per 100,000

Seattle, WA = 40 (not a typo) per 100,000

Washington DC = 29 (not a typo) incidents per 100,000 (this is where the elite media live LOL)

 I think you are starting to get the point, but let’s close with my personal favorite…

Berkeley, CA = 6.5 per 100,000

There is a whole essay, possibly book, to be written on this very narrow point - why are hate crimes (regardless of your view of the relevance and validity of that concept versus the much more grounded concept of crimes) so much more prevalent in Democratic administered cities than anywhere else?

Nolte preemptively tackles some of the probable objections, focusing primarily on the fact that while minorities are fewer in rural areas, it is not a big difference and rural America has been integrating without incident increasing numbers of immigrants in recent decades.

Next, Nolte focuses on a different aspect of crime, gun violence.

Almost everyone in rural MAGA Land owns guns (plural). I own nine guns. And yet, the gun violence crises happen in cities that have been populated and governed by Democrats for years. In some cases, decades.

If guns cause violence and Trump voters are violent, why are there no gun violence crises in Rural America?

If gun control ends gun violence and Democrats are less violent, why is there so much terrible gun violence where there’s the most gun control and in Democrat-run cities where Democrats live?

If Trump voters were indeed violent, instead of being idyllic and peaceful, Rural America would look like Dodge City circa 1875.

Here’s a list of the top 15 cities in 2020 with the most murders and which party runs those cities…

1. Chicago – Last Republican mayor was 1931
2. New York City – It took Democrat Bill de Blasio six years to destroy Republican Giuliani’s miracle.
3. Philadelphia – Only Democrat mayors since 1952
4. Baltimore – Only Democrat mayors since 1967
5. Houston – One GOP mayor since 1974
6. Los Angeles – One Republican since 1961
7. St. Louis – Only Democrats mayors since 1949.
8. Dallas – One Republican mayor since 1995
9. Kansas City – One Republican mayor since 1930
10. Indianapolis – Since 2000, eight years of GOP rule, 12 years of Democrat rule
11. Washington DC – Only Democrat mayors
12. New Orleans – Democrat mayors since 1872 (not a typo)
13. Jacksonville – Two Republican mayors and one Democrat since 2003
14. San Antonio – officially a non-partisan office, but leftists have run that city for two decades
15. Atlanta – Run by democrats since 1879 (not a typo).

Except for Jacksonville and Indianapolis (which have had both Republican and Democrat rule in recent years), every one of America’s most  murderous cities has been run exclusively by Democrats for decades, and not a single one of those cities  — not one! — has been run exclusively by Republicans.

Here’s a list of 2020’s top ten most dangerous cities per capita (violent crime incidents per 100,000 residents) and which party runs those cities… Spoiler alert: Democrats.

1. Detroit – 1,965 per 100,000 – Democrats have run Detroit since 1962
2. St. Louis – 1,927 per 100,000 – Democrats have run St. Louis since 1949
3. Memphis – 1,901 per 100,000 – Democrats have run Memphis since 1992
4. Baltimore – 1,859 per 100,000 – Democrats have run Baltimore since 1967
5. Springfield (MO) – 1,519 per 100,000 – mayoral office is non-partisan, but the city is left-leaning
6. Little Rock – 1,517 per 100,000 – ruled by Democrats for decades
7. Cleveland – 1,517 per 100,000 – Ruled by Democrats since 1990
8. Stockton – 1,397 per 100,000 – Alternates between GOP and Dem mayors.
9. Albuquerque – 1,352 per 100,000 – One Republican since 1985
10. Milwaukee – 1,332 per 100,000 – Only Socialist and Democrat mayors since 1906

Want to know the violent crime rate out here in Rural America where I and a whole lot of other gun-toting Trump voters live? Ready for this… 132 per 100,000. The overall crime rate in my Trump-loving county — even though our poverty rate is higher than Baltimore’s (more on this below) — makes it “one of the safest regions in the United States.”

Here are the violent crime numbers from my neighboring cities and towns: Lenoir (pop. 19,000), 436 per 100,000. Wilkesboro (pop. 3500), 434 per 100,00. Hickory (pop. 41,000) 401 per 100,000.

In the rural and more Republican areas outside of those small towns and cities, it’s even safer.

How is this possible in areas populated by “violent” Trump supporters who almost all own guns? 

There are some additional points rounding out his argument.  Click through to the article for all the links.  

His central point is a valid and interesting one.  The MSM narrative is that the MSM characterizes Whites in general, more especially white Republicans, and most especially white Republican suburbanite, small town and rural citizens as the most racist and violent of the demographics in the US.

But all the metrics, criminal and sociological, point in the other direction.  The most racist, violent, dysfunctional parts of the US are in those areas, primarily cities, which have been under one-party Democratic rule for decades.

There is neither a right or wrong here.  There is an immense complexity.  But the MSM narrative is clearly inconsistent with the facts as we understand them.  That the MSM is wrong is not too hard an argument to make - they clearly too frequently and aggressively are.  Social Justice Theory and Critical Race Theory are also patently wrong in their particulars when held up against objective reality.

But if the SJT/CRT theories are wrong as the data suggests, what are the problems we should be focusing on in order to raise the standard and quality of life for all Americans.