It’s become somewhat of a meme now when there is a story on crime, or other bad things happening in a city, people pipe up and say “That’s how it is in blue cities!” “This could only happen in a Democrat city!” However, I noticed they never say “… and that’s why only want to live in X” or “… that would never happen in Y”.
If living in “blue cities” are such a nightmare, where are all these Utopian “red cities” that people are apparently in favor of?
the funny thing is… getting people to live closer together encourages empathy.
living in the middle of nowhere reduces empathy… this is why people living in bumfuck are empathy-lacking tools calling themselves ‘conservatives’
I was biking a dirt road near my rural neighborhood and saw a sign at somebody’s driveway that said “if you can read this you’re within range” and wondered how country folk got the stereotype of being friendly and kind. I really miss living in the city.
propaganda from the movies and shows. probably they need economic businesses to thier area, so they make up an image so people would go there, but NOT LIVE THERE. Yellowstone being one of those shows, and many other shows make reference of “southern hospitality”
Southern hospitality is just using polite language to be an asshole.
It seems like a lot of the time they are like “boy, crime is higher”… but if you live in a city that’s just a fact of life. It’s pretty obvious that there will be less crime out in the sticks. I wouldn’t really attribute this to any “blue” policies.
It’s usually lower per capita. Right wing media likes to report in nominal numbers, because have 10 crimes sounds like a lot more than 2 crimes. But when you see it’s 10 out of 1000 (1%) people vs 2 out of 50 (4%) it doesn’t look as good.
Per capita is always the way to go, otherwise the only cities considered free of crime would be the nearly deserted ones in the Midwest with 100-500 people.
Part of “less crime in the sticks” is a population effect. The rate of violent crime in New York City is 494/100,000 people. The rate of violent crime in the whole state of Alabama, from its stickiest sticks to the 225,000-resident Huntsville metropolis, is 404/100,000, which isn’t that different, in my book.
I suspect that’s just because of Birmingham, and possibly Mobile. They have pretty bad crime rates, and Birmingham is the state’s main “blue city”, at least based on how counties voted in the 2024 election.
Birmingham had a violent crime rate of 1440 per 100k, making it one the worst cities in the nation for violent crime.
Mobile had a crime rate of 825 per 100k. Mobile’s county was slightly red in the 2023 election.
Meanwhile Huntsville (who was slightly red in that same election) had a violent crime rate of 133 per 100k, and has been proudly claiming a 100% arrest and conviction rate for homicide cases. So to answer @yarr@feddit.nl’s question, I guess Huntsville is an example of a successful “red” city (although it may be less successful in coming years due to Trump’s NASA cuts).
Rural Alabama (excluding counties that were classified as metropolitan) had a violent crime rate of 248 per 100k, making it less safe than Huntsville but far better than the state average of 494 per 100k.
I’m not going to actually claim that the crime rate is just from politics, Huntsville has a big aerospace industry and it’s probably more of an education/class thing than anything else. But regardless those are the violent crime rate numbers for 2023, so feel free to draw your own conclusions.
100% arrest and conviction rate doesnt really mean anything. Sounds like theyre just arresting whoever and corrupting the jury to convict. Iirc only about 1/3 homicides are solvable?
https://www.al.com/news/huntsville/2022/07/no-homicide-case-went-unsolved-in-huntsville-in-2021.html
Here’s an article on it, it was actually in 2021 (where the rest of the data was from 2023) so the 100% rate probably isn’t the case anymore. Basically they attribute it to having a really low base crime rate compared to other cities, saying that it frees them up to give a lot of attention and resources to each one.
I live in Huntsville. We are not a red city. Best description would be a blue oasis surrounded by red.
NASA is a conspiracy to get smart people to move to the south
We also see that rural crime is undercounted, underreported. Many studies show that (sometimes) rural areas have more crime. Of course it varies by time and location and depends how you define everything.
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Uh oh! Don’t tell the reds that.
ive seen some ytubers kept parroting that, california and nyc specifically. they have no minds of thier own.
I wouldn’t say there is less crime out in the sticks. But there’s less detected crime out in the sticks.
Not saying you’re wrong, because I believe I’ve seen patterns like this (but can also think of quite a fee counter examples). But do you have any evidence for this, or is it just a hypothesis?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban–rural_political_divide
the empathy is an inference from a documentary i saw where people have had some success in rural communities changing hearts and minds by befriending them. it turns out its easy to lack empathy for people youve never associated with and you have always been told are less than yourself.
Kind of a big statement to make based entirely on vibes.
It’s the opposite in Sweden. Countryside leans left and cities lean right.
i think there are different socioconomics in play in sweden. lots of real immigration management issues unlike the united states made up ones.
also, sweden is more than an order of magnitude different in size (< 5% actually) of the unites states. ‘rural’ sweden isnt the same thing as ‘rural’ US.
also, i doubt the swedish rednecks are thirsty to get back to their slaving roots.
Make Sweden (pre-christian) Viking Again!
The trend has been true for longer than the last 25 years, well before the current immigration crisis.
The alternate explanation is that the party or parties that has the most pro rural policies eg. farm subsidies are popular among the rural people and vice versa.
and alot of people that live in the moutains are “cray cray” there was a post/thread on reddit where vairous people accounted men in the woods that were not right in the head, in large numbers.