[somenameforme]

I don't think most really realize how neglected rural communities are. It can take something like a miracle to get the government to fund paving a road off the beaten path. Now put yourself in their shoes, and imagine how it feels when you see a government sending hundreds of billions of dollars to countries half way around the world.

This is why things like 'America first' resonate so strongly with rural communities. It's not some jingoistic message, let alone some sort of a secret dog whistle for some sort of a race nationalism thing. It's just people seeing tremendously large amounts of money and interest being spent on things like countries halfway around the world, with little to nothing to show for it all domestically.

[oblio]

The thing is, depending on what kind of rural community type we're talking about, there's no amount of money available in this world that could save them.

Even if you could theoretically build all that infrastructure, the maintenance burden would just crush you 20 years down the line, it would crush your kids and your grand kids.

The real tragedy is that cities are unaffordable.

[somenameforme]

With all due respect, you have to appreciate that nobody everybody thinks as you do. People in rural areas don't want to be "saved", and the vast majority have no interest in moving, let alone to a city - especially in current times, regardless of cost. Surprisingly there was a very recent poll on this exact issue [1].

As for maintenance, I'll elaborate on that story. People on the road of this town had been petitioning the government for years to get their road paved. Each time it'd rain, the road (made of mostly compacted dirt) would get into pretty rough shape. There'd been several accidents precisely because of this, particularly with kids, and it was also pretty rough on people's vehicles. People, as in people - not the government, would patch it up, but that'd take time, and it was non-trivial.

The government clearly had no interest in paving the road, so eventually the people raised the funds themselves over a rather lengthy period of time, and then paved the road themselves. As for maintenance, spot repairing potholes is a whole lot easier than dealing with part of a road getting washed out by rain. It wasn't cheap. And so things like this really make you wonder why you're paying taxes. And then you see headlines of a government and president seemingly gloating about sending hundreds of billions of dollars to countries half way around the world. It just doesn't inspire positive feelings, and makes the government seem desperately out of touch.

[1] - https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2021/12/16/america...