Chicago

[Ken]

I am responding to Temp's comment of "a debris field".

Unfortunately, what I see when I dare to trespass in the cities such as Chicago is a "debris field", not a "land of milk and honey" - quite literally. Trash is strewn everywhere. Ugliness prevails. The people look sickly and mis-fed - it would appear they are in need of milk and honey (and, indeed, in need of spiritual food as well). I am becoming more and more open to the idea that in order to reach the spirit in need of the gospel, we must first take steps to nourish and heal the body.

"people look sickly and mis-fed? It would be interesting to compare the health metrics for Cook County Ill to those of the rural county where you are from Shall we do that? What county do you live in? Or as a proxy we can compare Cook County (Chicago) to Holmes County, OH which I assume is not far away and a place people here are aware of. The CDC lets you do that on every health metric they measure. And guess what? Cook County comes out ahead on every single measure. Out of over 30 different metrics I don't see a single one in which Holmes County does better than Cook County. Odd that

https://places.cdc.gov/?view=county&loc ... 7031,39075

Here are just a couple of pages, there are more at the link...

[temporal1]

Josh is describing his first-person observations, fair+welcome to the discussion.

[Ken]

Josh is describing his first-person observations, fair+welcome to the discussion.

And I'm just providing actual data to show how far first-hand observations can stray from reality.

[temporal1]

Josh is describing his first-person observations, fair+welcome to the discussion.

And I'm just providing actual data to show how far first-hand observations can stray from reality.

Your copy+pastes do not prove him wrong.
Neither do they make you an authority on Chicago, Illinois, crime, disease, regional problems, etc.
i’m not sure you ever visited Chicago, less so, Southern Illinois. (i’m not interested in proof.)

Copy+paste away.

[ohio jones]

Can we all bow our heads and thank our gracious Creator for living in a "land of milk and honey"?

Are we living in the land of milk and honey?

My parents were, back when they had goats and bees.

[Ken]

Josh is describing his first-person observations, fair+welcome to the discussion.

And I'm just providing actual data to show how far first-hand observations can stray from reality.

Your copy+pastes do not prove him wrong.
Neither do they make you an authority on Chicago, Illinois, crime, disease, regional problems, etc.
i’m not sure you ever visited Chicago, less so, Southern Illinois. (i’m not interested in proof.)

Copy+paste away.

The data I posted show that people living in the Chicago area are on average healthier than people living in rural Ohio on every single metric that the CDC measures. And they also do better than the national average on most of those measures as well. Which does tend to undermine the notion that people in Chicago are "sickly and ill-fed" as Josh put it.

I've been to Chicago many many times and have family in the northern suburbs. My last visit was last summer for one of my young cousin's wedding which was at a park on the north side. Very pretty place.

The last time I drove through southern Illinois was a few years ago when we drove from Texas to Pennsylvania for a family reunion. That would have been maybe 2015 but I doubt things have changed much since then. At least not for the better. That whole belt of rural southern Missouri and southern Illinois was pretty ragged looking.

[Josh]

Josh is describing his first-person observations, fair+welcome to the discussion.

And I'm just providing actual data to show how far first-hand observations can stray from reality.

When I spend time on the city, I don’t always spend my time with upper-class people in tony neighbourhoods.

[Josh]

Incidentally. The last time I was in IL I stopped at a restaurant in the middle of nowhere and had a great time. Visited with the restaurant staff and then struck up a conversation with an elderly couple there. Turns out their son had bought farmland there and he’d brought out his parents to see it.

It was also home of the world’s largest pitchfork.

[Josh]

The last time I visited rural southern Illinois it looked like this.



You are free to live wherever you want. But there are many reasons why people choose to live in cities. They are, in fact, the economic engines of our nation and provide far more opportunity for most people than rural areas ever can.

For the record, your picture is urban, not rural.

[Ken]

Josh is describing his first-person observations, fair+welcome to the discussion.

And I'm just providing actual data to show how far first-hand observations can stray from reality.

When I spend time on the city, I don’t always spend my time with upper-class people in tony neighbourhoods.

Nor do you need to hang around with the rich to realize that city people are not more sickly and ill-nourished than rural folk. The statistics I cited were from all of Cook County not just tony upper class neighborhoods.

In fact it turns out that on average, city dwellers seem to live more morally upright lives as well. When we compare Chicago to Holmes County, which I think is the most heavily Anabaptist county in the country we find that the rates of binge drinking, alcoholism, smoking, sloth, and obesity are lower in Chicago than Holmes County. In fact the smoking rate in Chicago is half what it is in Holmes County. What is it about rural Holmes county that makes people smoke at nearly double the national average and double the rate for Chicago?

What county do you live in? Should we compare it as well?

Look, I'm not one to claim that Chicago or any other city is a perfect place. Clearly they are not. But the problems faced by cities are frankly universal human social problems faced by every corner of the country. There is just as much crime and addiction and social dysfunction in much of rural America as there is in cities. And a lot more closed businesses and decay as well.

So why the endless hatred of cities? And apparent glee every time a Starbucks or something closes in some city? I don't come here and start posts with "Oh look, another hospital closed in rural Ohio" What is going terribly wrong with society in rural Ohio? but I easily could. https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/hea ... 176238007/ or https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/26/us/h ... -ohio.html And a hospital in rural Ohio is far more meaningful than some Starbucks somewhere in Portland.