Couple months back I posted Confronting Ruralphobia, a diary about some of the frustrations I've had with metro-centric progressives. Suffice to say that diary was a lightning rod that attracted a horde of angry responses. It also attracted a lesser number of compliments from rural folks and even urban folks that understand rural issues. Smitten, I cut back my blogging on DKos and started my own Buffalo Ridge Blog. Part of my disillusionment with DKos was with DK4, and as it got debugged I came back. Most of my diaries died the usual quiet death, but I was heartened when Theft in Progress- Your Post Office was well received and promoted by one of our communities to the top of the page. I'm working on more content, including a 2nd post on the Postal Service's plan to close main sorting centers and further degrade rural service, and a post on the need for a joint Democratic Party/labor/environmentalist progressive "high plains strategy" to turn the Dakotas into a progressive powerbase.
And then this morning I ran across this quote from Rick Geddes "To the extent that people make choices about where they live, they should assume the costs of that decision."
in a DKos diary, and the diary's author seemed to agree with the statement. Mr. Geddes is a serial supporter of privatization, and despite writing a whole book about the Postal Service, he doesn't seem to know much about the Postal Service. Either that or he's playing dumb and hoping we're dumb enough to accept his myths about the Postal Service.
"People make choices where they live" sounds a lot like the anti GLBT republican's assertion that sexual orientation is a choice, and can thusly be changed to something more to their liking. Fact is, a lot of us don't have a whole lot of choice where we live- that "choice" is often dictated by family, jobs, access to medical care, finances, etc.. I ended up in rural southwestern Minnesota because I couldn't afford to fix my deteriorating home in crime ridden North Minneapolis to the city's expensive and unreasonable standards. Neither could I afford a $200,000 home in the safer neighborhoods of Minneapolis or it's suburbs. But after I retired and was freed from a daily commute to work in Minneapolis I was able to buy a modern earth sheltered home out here for $40,000- That's barely a down payment in some urban housing markets. I have friends out here that commute into metro areas for work every sunday night and come home on friday night- they have no choice but to go to the big cities for work, and they're hanging on to their small town home because they couldn't get much for it, and they want to move back here full time when they retire. A friend of mine that grew up in Northeast Minnesota is stuck with a house in Northeast Minneapolis and commutes to his job 50 miles north in a small town. He'd love to move back to the country where he works, but unless Minneapolis' property values recover he's stuck. Same with folks I know who have paid for homes in the 'hood or small towns and can't afford to move.
So the reality is that unless you're relatively wealthy, you don't have much "choice" of where to live. So Kossacks, please quit beating up on us country Kossacks for where we live!