I think it’s understandable with so many US perspectives. Rural communities have been through suburbanization AND deindustrialization, leaving behind specific extractive industries (mining, CAFOs) and people with no expectation of upward mobility. Besides that, there might be tourist traps or artsy places, but that’s often something trust funders participate in while locals work minimum wage.

The city folks and country folks should all join hands and do something they can both agree on: shitting on suburbia.

single industry exploitative extraction has probably got to be generally the most negative. petrochemical, animal processing, strip mining, clear cut logging, shit like that is rough. dangerous work. fucked on the environment. especially mining and wells, because the formations hire in lots of labor in boom-and-bust situations and those industries absolutely fuck water sources so they know they have to proactively undermine community cohesion too or else enough people might come together and point out all the benzene and shit coming out of the taps. you couldn't pay me to try and exist within 2 days drive of a "man camp" or a regional meat packer. i've visited some places and heard stories from more, and no fucking thanks. i used to work near a massive chemical plant and holy shit the smell on some days was frightening. "you get used to it" ... yeah, ok, that probably just means that part of your brain died. also, when it's single industry, it creates this zero-sum mentality where anything the big dog doesn't enjoy needs to be killed off asap.

there are some isolated exceptions, like being near certain tribal lands/reservations. they have historically had energy extraction industries happening and there are water problems etc, but if the people retain communal control of those assets and are trying to also live around there, there's at least some tension and potential for community re-investment. i worked on the border of a reservation with some guys who lived on it and there was a lot of wild stuff going on in the region, but their communal land management systems for agriculture were pretty fascinating. i was lucky enough to have made friends so i had an "in", but most of the white people around there are some kinda nuts, racists, or religious zealots. i was probably in the "kinda nuts" category. by that point, i had a lot of experience in different types of smaller commercial agriculture enterprises and had gone to ag school for it too, so there was a shared interest in land stewardship, opportunity for sharing of experiences, talking about small scale systems, weird crops of interest, stories of people doing something dumb, etc. plus i could help fix fencing, jiggle wires under a hood, and just be an extra pair of hands, make jokes, etc. i've been back that way a few times and i could picture a life in that community, but the lack of water was too wild for me. still, i told them if i was on the run from the law, i'd probably be back. i had been informed before that was a common story for whites on the reservation: they are hiding from the law or looking to get hitched. "must work out at least sometimes then right?" lol

agriculture is variable. giant CAFOs and monocultures? generally speaking: no thanks. CAFOs are a nightmare and brutal on water quality. many are owned by foreign nationals who realized the US doesn't give a shit about agriculture-induced environmental damage in many states, so no money is staying in the community to do anything except pay off a few assholes to chase away/threaten anyone who might report on illegal practices. small holder/community agriculture (i'm talking like less than 5 acres) can be more interesting, as they have an interest in protecting water, worry about infrastructure/flood controls/climate issues and can't really afford to hire a worker with expensive rents. i saw it in east asia and northern europe in very rural places. the small holders were in favor of keeping boundaries on urban development, but also wanted accessible high density/affordable housing for their workers and just people in general. that tension is important because it informs boundaries. there's generally a recognition that to improve the community they need more people to live there, teach at the school, work at the clinic, etc. the US has barely scratched the surface with conservation easements and planning housing and development in agricultural communities. the kind of land that it's easy to build on is also the kind of land that lends itself to cropping. it's also the kind of land that floods lol. agriculture vs housing varies wildly by state with some states land use policy ruled by large farm owners with plans on retiring by selling it off to a suburban developer to build mcmansions. seems like places that have been farming for more than a few centuries know that's not sustainable long term.

tourism is weird. it has localized but major impacts on property values and causes issues with affordable housing. this is multiplied by the short term rental housing absolutely eating up housing inventory. unless steps are taken to mitigate these issues with creative zoning/property tax and reinvestment into infrastructure that benefits the tourism workforce (walkable communities, public transportation, etc), it can be a total shitshow instead of like... half a shitshow.

the short term rental shitshow's only benefit is that the income is generally more widely distributed than a few hoteliers and resort owners. i think ideally it would be tightly regulated and require the prospective short term landlord bring the entire property into some kind of ideal energy efficiency/environmental land use conservation status and maintain it while also forking over like a third of their net to the tax base. basically making it borderline communally managed land that the community gets a huge bite of every rich fuck that stops by. like instead of airbnb, the tourist community should own the actual app and if you want to get a taste, you play by their rules and the whole thing is democratically managed to make sure there's enough housing for all the workers. only after that do the surplus housing owners get to play hotelier, and the community gets to eat from that too.

i dunno if i would call it bigotry. more like the confusion of not being able to interpret something one had no context for.

the clearest example was i went on a road trip with my boss at the time several states away to an auction-type sale, and we traveled from one corn/soy/cattle community to another in a similar configuration, but between those two points we went through some mountain/forested areas. little tiny towns with stretches of pine and not much else. not even much logging to speak of could be seen, though i bet there was some. he could not understand what the people who lived there did, how they survived, etc. to be fair its an area with limited infrastructure and a poorer part of the state, not part of its agricultural system (historically or currently) so maybe just some tiny gardening for subsistence. an area (Nickajack part of alabama) with an intense, but mostly forgotten history of insurrection against settlers (a last stronghold of Cherokee-Chickamauguas) and later against the plantation system with an attempted secession by the non-plantation small holders from the southern secession, with its giant export systems and wealthy families.

my boss didn't know any of this historical context. he just saw a landscape he couldn't imagine making a living in, didn't see any businesses/employers, and couldn't even guess what the residents of little scattered trailers and small houses along the old country highway were doing out here in the "middle of nowhere", besides waiting on the day's mail. it made me laugh because most people would describe him as living in the middle of nowhere. if three or more cars were pulling into a driveway, he'd call it "grand central station" only semi ironically. he didn't own land, but he leased it from giant landowners so his cultivated ability was to evalute what part of some land might he pay rent on, work, and make enough to pay himself. the sort of land we were passing through didn't make sense to him in this way and he found that kind of life baffling. not in a negative way, just mystified.

I've gone ahead and run it through AI for @came_apart_at_Kmart@hexbear.net , it's absolute shit now - I'm submitting it to publishers under my name