> Let’s see how the rural poor feel when their hospital closes, they can’t get medicaid [...]

There's been research on that [1]. They become even more likely to vote Republican. Here's the abstract:

> Who do citizens hold responsible for outcomes and experiences? Hundreds of rural hospitals have closed or significantly reduced their capacity since just 2010, leaving much of the rural U.S. without access to emergency health care. I use data on rural hospital closures from 2008 to 2020 to explore where and why hospital closures occurred as well as who–if anyone–rural voters held responsible for local closures. Despite closures being over twice as likely to occur in the Republican-controlled states that did not expand Medicaid, closures were associated with reduced support for federal Democrats and the Affordable Care Act following local closures. I show that rural voters who lost hospitals were roughly 5–10 percentage points more likely to vote Republican in subsequent presidential elections. If anything state Republicans seemed to benefit in rural areas from rejecting Medicaid and resulting rural health woes following the passage of the ACA. These results have important implications for population health and political accountability in the U.S.

[1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11109-024-10000-8

The trend you described has been going on since Reagan, and the "rural poor" haven't budged. I have no expectation that attitudes will change in Rural America, not matter how bad things get.

See step one. The hospitals closed and Medicaid had to be gutted because of illegal immigrants. Nothing to be done about it now.

These are the reasons many voted for Trump. His ability to tear down American institutions is a direct result of the apathy born out of decades of successful corporate corruption, or lobbying, if you prefer, that we failed to stop democratically.

But it is wrong to think all American generations before ours didn't have to fight. The lie is that democracy was ever easy. There are millions of Americans mobilizing, sharing their stories, marching, talking to their representatives, protesting, and following their conscience. It is easier than ever to find and join the peaceful opposition.

That's the process.

Most annoying part will be the time delay so people will forget exactly who caused all this damage in the first place too.

Well, that leads to another narrative trick called “see these are examples of how big government doesn’t work and the other side asking for increased government and hospitals are socialist and going to waste your tax dollars or give to freeloaders like immigrants etc”. Destroy government based support, blame it as failure of government, rinse and repeat.