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This is a screenshot of a bluesky post from “The Tennessee Holler” posted 12 hours ago. The post reads: “If you’re zip-tying grandmas protesting losing health care maybe you’re not the good guys in the story?” The post includes a repost from Joe G posted 2 hours ago that says “Arresting people in wheelchairs protesting Medicaid cuts.” Below the text is a video thumbnail showing what appears to be law enforcement officers restraining an elderly person in a wheelchair in what looks like a government building or office setting.
This is Tennessee. My sister in law just left there after working in rural areas the last few years. She spent time as an aid worker in Kabul and found Tennessee to be worse off.
That's why people in deep red states think the government is filled with waste, fraud, and abuse - they don't realize that crumbling infrastructure, a lack of social services and societal blight aren't the norm.
They just see other poor people getting help from the government in blue states and wonder "well where's my handout?" Without realizing they are in fact voting against those measures every election.
The cons keep telling those voters that the government is broken - so they re-elect them to prove it.
Why in the world is this the first time I’m hearing this – immediately believable
The perception, real or not, of uneven attention from the government is more than enough to keep the feedback loop going.
Universal programs are typically the best shot at breaking through that stasis. And that's, well, acting in the public interest: the anathema of American politics.
People would talk about Baltimore as being a really scary place.
And I wished they talk more about Tennessee being just a sad awful state.