poverty, obesity, and politics
started by MaxEntropy_Man 3 mnths agoReplies
Just like you can't stop eating Indian food and start eating Caesar salad with Worchestershire dressing, steamed salmon, grilled veggies, and cantaloupe for lunch and dinner everyday, more often than not. You have to have eaten it on a regular basis before the age of 21 to like it everyday.
Reps gel fine with conservative and Dems gel well with liberal.
Obesity has nothing to do with political support. It's just based on lifestyle & industries involved. Most of midwest and south has agriculture, lifestyle & industry suited for putting on more weight.
"but those states that consistently elect republicans are also some of the poorest in the country."
That shows personal income is not a factor as far as people's affinity towards a political party is concerned. The dem. party is known for raising taxes and soft on crime. In the south, gun control laws are very important. A lot of people perceive the dem. party as being too african-american friendly. So, there are many factors involved in choosing a political party. Virginia is predominantly a rep. party state. However, we have had two dem. governors in a row, and the virginians elected a dem. senator in the last elections. IMO, there are a lot of moderate dems and reps in majority of the states, who could vote either way, depending upon the candidate(s).
Have you considered the link to education? Poverty results in an ill-educated electorate incapable of seeing through demagogery and knowing where their best interests lie.
Hence that inability to see the sense in gun control or the undue importance given to marginal issues like abortion, lapel-pins, school prayer etc.
I am in one of those states with plenty of slack-jawed southerners.
However..I don't think it has much (perhaps just a little with politicians and politics)...I do not know how they collects the stats, but it certainly seems slanted and too generalized.
*While the Senators and Gov are Republican...MOST of the local politicians (Mayors, State Rep, State Senators, County Commissions) are Democrats..so there are enough politicians who are to be blamed.
There are certainly the- "Two Americas" very obvious here...where I am...within a few miles of where I live..we have the poorest of the poor in the US (predominantly Black- but also about 30% white).....but, within a few miles of where I live...we have a huge lake with lake front properties of home which cost not less than a few million dollars- with all the state-of-the-art amenities and very wealthy people...we have all the latest cars on our rural roads.....but, one hospital for six counties..the disparities are glaring...with plenty of contradictions.
*Yes we have state-of-the-art Gyms and plenty of diet foods, and plenty of people who are in their 70s and 80s who are still healthy...but the the hereditary factors..for diabetes, obesity, hypertension, hypercholestrolemia...can't be ignored.
M
The irrationality of man. It's so easy to distract people from their real problems with contrived issues that appeal to the basest of their instincts - hatred.
It's no different in India. This guy could be a daily-wager living on the footpath, struggling to earn one square meal a day but will happily spend half a day listening to some hate-mongering demagogue and then go out and join some mob out to create trouble.
Yes. Hate-mongering works across socio-economic and geographic boundaries. It blinds people to the real and more immediate problems.
But while a prosperous shop-keeper loses nothing sitting in his A/C store in Chandni Chowk and blustering about chasing "them" all out of the country, that daily-wager pays a real price for losing sight of his real issues. Instead of fighting for a better public transport system, for example, which would let him travel farther, to a better-paying job, Mr. Easily-Distracted is likely to end up wasting his energy (and losing the day's wages) burning down a blue-line bus protesting (a) on behalf of some pilgrims interested in gawking at a penis-shaped icicle in faraway Amarnath or (b) against some cartoon published in faraway Denmark.
But interestingly,
One recent (2006) experiment suggests that men, but not women, enjoy seeing "bad" people suffer. The study was designed to measure empathy, by watching which brain centers are stimulated when subjects inside an MRI observe someone having a painful experience. Researchers expected that the brain's empathy center would show more stimulation when those seen as "good" got an electric shock than they would if the shock was given to someone the subject had reason to consider bad. This was indeed the result for their female subjects, but for male subjects the brain's pleasure centers also lit up when someone else got a shock that the male thought was well-deserved.[20]
If so , I can easily guess the quality of your work.
If you really read any of the news where that came from , all of them mentioned the cooking habits and diets of the southerners.