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So… do you find extermination of these people is a more tolerable course of action than getting to know them?

False dichotomy. I never said I'd start the fire. I said if they died I'd feel nothing, not that I want to go out and start killing them.

The “rural swathes of MAGA chuds” (keep drinking the 1%s rural vs urban division of the middle and lower classes why don’t you) are a large enough group/voting bloc that they cannot simply be ignored.

I fucking live in the rural areas myself and I'm surrounded by mostly contemptible people. I'm not "drinking" anything.

And I can ignore them because there is nothing realistic that I can do about them with out suffering the absolutely massive waste of my finite time alive interacting with them trying to "turn" a small percentage of them less evil.

But you're right it doesn't have to be me. Could I go that route? Sure, but there isn't much in the way of ROI and I don't owe these people shit. I also can't endorse anyone else do so in my stead though either. I don't think I could with a straight face tell people to waste their own time if I can't justify myself doing it.

You can resign yourself to try and just outlive them. You could just keep trying to outvote them every time, forever. Sad, but tolerable and entirely understandable, attitude.

I mean, technically rural areas are going to slowly and naturally disintegrate economically. Which is good, but its not going to happen fast enough to meaningfully fix the problem in a time frame that matters to me. As for "outvoting", dude I'm really blackpilled on political engagement after Trump won a second time I don't even want to talk about voting anymore. I think we're all getting what we deserve. A very loud part of my mind is extremely vindictive and wants almost all of US voters to suffer even if it includes me at this point. In so far as is possible: we deserve it.

Or we could all start making concentrated efforts to start treating people with god awful views as people where some amount of them might be able to be changed. Not as subhuman mosters (the term “chud” is pretty disgusting when you get down to it), as unredeemable fools, as non-entities (wouldn’t care if they dropped dead), or at best as roadbumps to be driven over on the path towards the future.

I'm not even concerned with the world's future. We lost. I'm just trying to salvage whats left of my life after wasting so much of my time, mind, and body on politics. The only reason I'm still engaging with it on Lemmy still is because I'm at work with nothing else to do. The only reason I still engage with it elsewhere is algorithmic influence. I'm outside of this actively trying to escape politics as much as feasibly possible. I'm putting effort into me and my loved ones now to survive and thrive in the upcoming slow grind collapse. That's it.

Willingly and intentionally saying “but those people are so backwards that I could never work with them” is just a disgustingly elitist concept.

bonus ramble

You know, when I was younger growing up in mostly rural areas, I thought I was a worthless fucking idiot weirdo. I thought all my peers around me had their shit together and understood the world better than me. My peers noticed this and early life for me was fairly awful as a result. Redneck dipshit bullies that TBH I probably would smile at their death if I had learned of now-a-days but back then I thought I deserved it. I thought I was a loser and I just needed to keep my head down. I thought everyone else around me was more competent and put together. I believed this so firmly that I barely engaged with employment early on in my life as I thought the only way for me would be faking my abilities. I ended up barely getting a college degree which I also thought was a fluke. Hoping that just having the degree would "trick" an employer into hiring me for some decent paying but easy office job. Every interview I was a shaking insecure mess and I was stuck for a long time in that state we call "NEET".

Then I finally got a job and I finally started working and realized that holy shit: the people around me are actually moronic. I excelled in my job. Constant remarks from people in disbelief at my performance reviews. I literally had a performance evaluator tell me they had never seen anyone manipulate the UI the way that I did in the 7 years they worked there. At first I felt a blip of pride. Yet later I felt nothing but utter and total horror at this revelation. Not smug satisfaction. Not relief that I was actually smarter than I thought. Pride drained away. Just horror remained. Terror. Shock. Despair. And now bitter anger that I had wasted so much time thinking I was an idiot but that actually I was surrounded by people so stupid they barely managed to do the bare minimum of their jobs, but kept them because they were the bosses nephew or a good christian or vapidly likable or some similar shit. No one fucking tries.

I tell that story because the 2024 re-election of Donald Trump felt like that moment of horror in my life but a million times over. I had spent an absurd amount of time and energy on politics for about 15-20 years because I thought that people were capable of getting better because we lived in an age of abundant information. I joined organizations, I canvassed for Harris, I engaged with my rightwing family members and annoyed my boss and co-workers (risking my job). I hoped people were getting smarter about their own self interest and would start voting in ways that reflect that and but we needed to just dodge a second Trump term. I now feel like I've wasted my life on this. Time and effort I could have spent fortifying my own personal situation because most people are so painfully self destructive and stupid they act as a vortex and will drag you down into them if you let them. And I have been doing that. I'm done doing that.

These people do not deserve another ounce of my respect or time. I've spent too much of my life humbling myself and they almost never returned the favor. FUCK THEM. I'm getting out if it fucking kills me, and it will. No one is going to make it, but I'm going to make sure that on my ride towards the grave I enjoy my remaining chunk of life as much as feasibly possible and giving up on trying to help people who would never do the same for me.

So no, I hope rural communities crumble and everyone is forced to move into cities. People become sociopaths or religious idiots living out so spread out. Let it rot.