I've been thinking about this a bit, lately. Australia is in the middle of a massive flooding crisis (again), which has mainly affected rural areas. Yet it has been extremely noticeable that, each time this has happened in the last year or so, the media has been far more concerned (to the point of it almost being comical) with flooding in the respective capital city impacted, rather than the much heavier hit rural areas...
Population size and density plays into this. I realise that. As does proximity, with media orgs and journalists mostly being based out of the capitals. But it is so blatant, when it gets to the point where even specific "regional networks" are more concerned with the city than the country, and when regional areas are almost completely ignored, even when people actually die in the flood.
So there's that. Which is nothing if not representative of a trend that we have seen in this country for at least a decade.
But there's more than that - when the journalists do get out to these country towns (varying in size from a few thousand people to literally 100K), and interview the people there, it is immediately apparent that they see the world in a completely different way, both to the journalist asking the questions, and to most... "Elite" city folk.
They're not worried about climate change. They don't view these floods as "apocalyptic", or "the worst we have ever seen". They're just going about their business, trying to survive and get by, and actually banding together to look after each other, and the vulnerable members of their community. It's actually remarkably wholesome to see (what we see of it, which is not much).
This, in complete contrast to the city/suburban folk who got flooded out, who have... Already literally turned on each other, and started apportioning blame. Despite the fact that they are the ones the government mostly focussed on, and they got the most support, before anyone else.
This, despite the fact that people in those "rural communities" are poorer, less "educated", and generally... With worse health outcomes than people in the city.
It was the same during Covid, of course, but I've never seen it to quite this extent before. These are "the forgotten people", whose votes are generally discounted (because rural electorates, which get swamped by city voters) and who are, I have to be honest, largely ignored, by not just the media, but by... "City folk" more broadly.
Obviously you see this trend even more clearly in the US, and arguably the UK. I think this phenomenon is pretty much part of most "human societies", for at least the last 200 years or so, but it's still... Really jarring when you see it. The level of disenfranchisement be real. And we should really do better.
Arguably, this was a big part of the Trump phenomenon, and Brexit. And perhaps Meloni, and the recent Swedish election, even, too. It's just... Stunning, frankly, that the "elites" continue down this same path, even here, and don't seem to have learned a single fucking thing from those examples...
So yeah. Thanks for coming to my TED talk. I've been wanting to get that one out of my system, for days, since I really started to think about it, lol...
So I guess the next question is: How long before city-dwellers seek to disenfranchise people out in the country who simply will not vote the way they are directed to by their betters?
There's any number of ways to do it, down to simply shutting polling stations in the country in the name of efficiency.
Also, my family's not so rabidly elitist as yours (my mum's side are from Wales, my grandfather was firmly working-class) but I do see an awful lot of middle-class people telling working-class people what they should think rather than simply asking them.
Bear in mind, though, the UK is considerably more class-conscious than the US, which seems to have decided to have similar fault lines along a racial basis instead.
They do and have for decades.
On the other points - completely, completely agree with all of it.
This has already happened with churches here (Anglican ones, mostly), and then banks, and then post offices. It is almost inevitable that this trend will eventually continue, as you say, to that point...
Though bear in mind that voting is compulsory here, at all levels now, so... If they did that, it would be a bit harder for them to revenue-raise by sending out all those warnings and fines to people who didn't vote, then, wouldn't it..?
Lol, I used to work for the electoral commission. In rural areas, sometimes (and also in super working class parts of the city I lived in). I can't tell you how quickly the smirk gets wiped off the face of city slickers like that when they count the ballot papers and realise it hasn't gone the way "they expected", lol... Especially in federal elections.
The US has a very fluid class system, and people tend to think they can move around more than they are likely to. But they actually can move around. There are some "old money" snobs, but most of the money isn't that old due to the youth of the nation. If you get money, you can become upper class.
Race-based division was sown by commies (inc. the Soviet Union) since they didn't see much of an opportunity to divide us into serfs and kulaks and nobility or whatever. Cultural Marxism is an appropriate term, whatever its origin, because they are looking to reframe the Marxist dialect in terms of new divisions.
The class system does show up in the US and has been getting stronger. In Seattle we didn't know or care if it was a billionaire or a homeless guy we were talking to. Then San francisco moved in and the lines got drawn and double drawn. Before the riots I could look down one side of a street and see homeless people, and the other side had a rich people's mall. The next block would have the same and then again. I hated it but didn't know what to do.
Fair. I'm in Aus, so... Slightly different situation again!
One set of my grandparents were very working class (to the point of my mother having no running water, as a small child, because they lived in a shack), which makes... The raving elitism even weirder, I suppose. "Overcompensation", you might say...
My family has been in the city where I (sort of) grew up for a very long time, though (like 100+ years, on every side, I think), and is fairly prominent (oddly, the working class ones, mainly), so perhaps that is part of it...
They're all utterly obsessed with genealogy, or, at least, the unembarassing bits of it, to the point of weaponising that against me ("you could have been a great footballer, you know!"), so...
Idk, hey?
"You always had the makings of a varsity athlete" - Bruce "Junyah" Soprano, Australian gangster from hit TV series Sopranos: Down Under
Hehehe, yeah, my lot are quite fond of the genealogy stuff, too, although weirdly, quite a bit of the controversy is on the Italian side for my lot, rather than the Welsh. That merely had people drinking inherited fortunes away, the Italian lot left Italy because they didn't get along with the local government ... the local government built a road through their land and even though it had done that it still didn't give my ancestors the right to be highwaymen, though they didn't see it that way at the time...
It had to be done.
Eh, I mean, I wouldn't be here if they hadn't, half of my gene pool would be on the wrong side of the continent, but still...