There is a deepening sense of fear as population loss accelerates in rural America. The decline of small-town life is expected to be a looming topic in the presidential election.
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America’s rural population began contracting about a decade ago, according to statistics drawn from the U.S. Census Bureau.
A whopping 81 percent of rural counties had more deaths than births between 2019 and 2023, according to an analysis by a University of New Hampshire demographer. Experts who study the phenomena say the shrinking baby boomer population and younger residents having smaller families and moving elsewhere for jobs are fueling the trend.
According to a recent Agriculture Department estimate, the rural population did rebound by 0.25 percent from 2020 to 2022 as some families decamped from urban areas during the pandemic.
But demographers say they are still evaluating whether that trend will continue, and if so, where. Pennsylvania has been particularly afflicted. Job losses in the manufacturing and energy industries that began in the 1980s prompted many younger families to relocate to Sun Belt states. The relocations helped fuel population surges in places like Texas and Georgia. But here, two-thirds of the state’s 67 counties have experienced a drop in population in recent years.
The existence of close minded, bigoted people automatically renders them in violation of just about every societal norm and contract.
Punching a racist/homophobe/terf/Mazi is always justified. Their existence is a threat to others because of their beliefs.
Would you tell an abused spouse to tolerate or be less close minded about being hit or emotionally abused?
Go f off with your fence sitting.
You’re confusing my lack of a double standard with fence sitting.
One person being bigoted and close minded doesn’t preclude other people from also being bigoted and close minded.
I could be a racist piece of shit and drop the n word. If a black person then turns around and calls all white people racist pieces of shit, we’re both bigots.
I’m not tolerating bigotry, I’m calling it all out. It’s you, right here, that’s defending bigotry. Not me.
Except… 2 people being assholes when the power dynamic is still very stilted is NOT a level playing field. Context matters. You’re not some enlightened sigma with this hot take.
Suffer a few generations of systemic oppression and you might get the parity you think you have
I didn’t say the playing field was level; I understand that I’ve been granted many benefits due to my race and sex.
I said they are both bigots. Are you really arguing that a black guy saying all white people are pieces of shit is not a bigot?
But youre analog doesnt working with most social bigotries. There arent many folks who are say gay or trans who hate cis or straught folks. Sure an antifascist may want to set a Nazi on fire and watch them slowly die, but the track record of fascists as a whole is covered in so much blood ya cant see a record.
The closest ya may get is someone like myself who hates say the Seventh Day Adventist to the point that it seems like bigotry, but even then bigotry is usually irrational I hate them because of a long list of slights both big and small against my family going back a hundred years. Also theyre cultists.
Ya aint calling out a double standard, tolerance is a social contract if broken civility is right out. When we dont have civility we have savager, the rules of savagery is violence be it social, verbal, economic, psychological, or physical.