If you live in the farmlands of
America, or in the vast mountainous regions far away from cities, a
University of California Berkeley instructor wants you to know you're a
bad person who has made bad choices and you deserve to be uncomfortable.
The obviously brilliant person who came up with these groundbreaking
conclusions is named Jackson Kernion, a self-described "Graduate Student
Instructor at University of California." The since-deleted tweet that
got him in trouble read, "I unironically embrace the bashing of rural
Americans. They, as a group, are bad people who have made bad life
decisions. Some, I assume are good people. But this nostalgia for some
imagined pastoral way of life is stupid and we should shame people who
aren’t pro-city.”
Kernion began the thread by advocating against affordable healthcare solutions in rural America, saying that “Rural Healthcare Should be expensive! And that expense should be borne by those who choose rural America!”He argued that promoting a need for “affordable rural healthcare” is equivalent to arguing for rural Americans “to be subsidized by those who choose a more efficient way of life.”“Same goes for rural broadband. And gas taxes,” Kernion added.“It should be uncomfortable to live in rural America. It should be uncomfortable to not move,” he wrote.Kernion tried to justify his statements with economic arguments about not making rural life “*artificially* cheaper,” but quickly devolved into personal attacks against rural and not “pro-city” Americans.
The good
news is that Kernion had the self-awareness to realize he had insulted
half of America and deleted his inflammatory statements, issuing a
half-hearted apology. “Pretty sure I did a bad tweet here. Gonna delete
it,” he wrote. “I’ll want to reflect on it more later, but my tone is
way crasser and meaner than I like to think I am.” We've all put out a
bad tweet here and there, but Kernion's long rant about rural folks sure
seemed like he meant every word and that his tone was exactly how he
meant it.
Since
the online kerfuffle, Kernion has either been banned from Twitter or
has left, because his page no longer exists. But the Twittersphere isn't
going to let it go any time soon.
How can you a be a PhD student, after receiving so much education, and still be so ignorant? I think he should get a refund on that philosophy degree
Plain Ol' Johnny Graz @jvgraz
Because when I see a trust-funded fancy lad who's never had to worry about a single, material thing in his brief life telling those who didn't win the birth lottery why they're less human than he is, I always look at tone.
The bigger fact at hand- folks like #jacksonkernion (“city dwellers”) are simply co-dependent leeches for conveniences found in the city, whereas the “rural dwellers” are self-reliant & independent. (Darwin’s Survival of the Fittest will naturally weed out the co-dependents)
I'd like to invite Kernion to
come spend some time in the woods in rural America with the locals and
see how long he lasts without a latte and a salon appointment. It's a
shame that the young men of today don't seem to understand what is
necessary and good about knowing how to survive without modern
conveniences. Rural America isn't looking back and pretending to live
some nostalgic former pastoral life. That life never stopped.
I
have chickens that need food and water every day or they'll die and I
won't be able to trade fresh eggs for produce. My neighbors have
livestock to feed and care for so that our community can fill our
freezers with fresh meat that never sees the inside of a grocery store.
Small farmers were concerned about hormones and corporate farming abuses
for years before PETA got involved.
The vineyard owner across the
way tends his vines like small children so that wine can be sent across
the country to the parties of the elites who sip it while trading
insults about the man who made it and others like him while they
themselves could never turn grapes into fine wine, let alone sell it for profit.
This is actual
everyday life on the farms across America, filling the plates of the
city-dwellers who can't imagine traversing a road that hasn't been
plowed and salted and don't know the first thing about how to get the
milk they rely on for their half-caff cappuccinos if it doesn't get
delivered to them via app.
I
don't look forward to the day when, say, the power is shut off for
millions of Californians and they have no idea what to do without Candy
Crush. If that day ever comes, we here in the rural lands of America
will not be here criticizing the poor choices that soft men like Kernion
made by relying too heavily on smartphones and take-out instead of
honing his basic human skills of survival and self-reliance. We will be
here, willing to show people like Kernion what's great about us and our
chosen way of life while we pull them out of darkness and chaos.
