Poor, white rural areas also struggle
Boy am I tired of suburban virtuecrats, including one particular ex-priest and an ex-college professor, using whatever is left of their “bully” pulpit to denigrate and insult the citizens of Baltimore City and assert their superior morals, work ethic, family values and lifestyles. Such bullying has consequences. On the same day the latter of the who expressed his usual tiresome reactionary rant about fatherlessness in a letter to the editor (“Incentivize stable marriage to end Baltimore violence,” Feb. 6) a man from the neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen and his girlfriend were arrested and charged with wanting to “completely destroy” Baltimore City by sabotaging its power grid in order to “inflict maximum chaos” (“Catonsville woman, Florida man charged in plan to attack Baltimore power grid to ‘lay this city to waste,’ ” Feb. 6)
Rhetoric has consequences, and it isn’t a great leap from reputable men of the cloth and a tenured academic relentlessly disparaging Baltimore City to supporting neo-Nazi terrorism. Particularly since the screed against fatherlessness came with the suggestion of incentives to promote stationary fathering. But I read and reread the letter, and sure didn’t see any incentives mentioned.
Speaking of which, last week there was an article by Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman, who reported that means tested welfare recipients utilizing Medicaid and food stamps were currently higher in rural areas of the U.S. than urban places, such as our much-maligned Baltimore.
Since the unemployment rate is the lowest it has been since 1969, it is not hard to interpolate that poor white rural areas are experiencing the same sort of dysfunction as Baltimore City. Why is it that it is only people of color who reliably vote Democratic that are in need of parenting? There might be plenty of hate in Baltimore City that I don’t know about, but I haven’t heard of anyone here like the Atomwaffen that aspires to cleanse the nation from Jews, LGBTQ persons, the U.S. government and journalists.
— Paul R. Schlitz Jr., Baltimore