[adderthorn]

I can speak as someone who lives in the US and in a state that has a republican super majority in our government. Without making this an issue specific to republicans, the US two-party government often creates an citizenry who views elections as a zero-sum game. One where one side wins and therefore the other must lose. Increasingly, republicans are attempting to foster an environment where the larger, democratic cities are "the problem" and therefore legislate to "punish" them by removing things like broadband for the poor.

Part of this is because the new GOP is mostly rural voters and they generally don't benefit from city investments. But part of it is to make a political point. Again, they only "win" when the other side "loses." Democrat politicians will do this too, but often not as much (in my experience) and often with less punitive motives. For example, killing coal plants wasn't punitive, but it ended up hurting a large section of rural economy that depended on the mining of coal for a living.

[josefresco]

Coal mining represents a very small part of the American and rural economy. It was simply used as a wedge by wealthy Republicans to divide Americans.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/215790/coal-mining-emplo...

[toomuchtodo]

Arby’s employees more people than the coal industry.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/03/31/8-sur...