A Curious Stack

    Out Here, You’re More Disposable Than the Chickens

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    Out here, they are quietly killing you with a smile and a Bible verse.

    You were told you were voting for “freedom,” “family values,” and “respect for hard‑working people.”

    What you actually got is a government that will let your hospital die, your job be replaced by machines and prisoners, and your kids grow up in a place where the only steady work is guarding cages or cleaning chicken guts for pennies.

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    When your kid can’t reach a hospital in time

    Since 2010, multiple rural hospitals in Georgia have already shut their doors, and new reports say around 20 more rural hospitals are at risk of closure right now. When a rural hospital goes under, it is not just “one building” closing:

    • The ER disappears. Heart attack? Stroke? Farm accident? You are suddenly 45–60 minutes from help, if you are lucky.

    • Maternity wards vanish. Pregnant women are driving hours for prenatal care or giving birth in the back of cars because the nearest delivery unit is now in another county.

    • The town’s economic heart is ripped out. Hospitals are usually one of the biggest local employers; when they go, businesses around them die too.

    Georgia has refused full Medicaid expansion for years, even as rural hospital leaders themselves have begged for it, saying expansion is the single most important step to keep these facilities alive. The people you sent to Atlanta and Washington are the same ones who blocked that lifeline.

    They told you “government handouts” were the problem. Then they turned around and quietly strangled the one thing standing between your family and a fatal drive to the city.

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    They don’t plan on needing you

    Look at what they are building instead of saving your town.

    Georgia is chicken country. Processing plants and integrators rely on rural communities for land and cheap labor. But the big brains and big money are not planning on respecting that labor—they are planning on phasing it out. Georgia Tech, backed by federal and industry money, is helping build AI‑driven robotics for poultry processing, explicitly designed to debone and process chickens with fewer human workers and 24/7 speed.

    At the same time, Georgia runs a massive system of prison farms and “correctional industries” that grow beef, vegetables, and other products using incarcerated people for coerced labor. Across the South, investigations show prison labor feeding directly into animal agriculture and meat processing as a cheap, tightly controlled workforce.

    Put that together and ask yourself who they see when they look at rural Georgia:

    • They see land for factory farms, warehouses, and data centers.

    • They see robots that will do the dangerous work without complaining.

    • And where they still need flesh and blood, they see prisoners, not you, as the perfect labor force—no unions, no sick days, no walking off the line.

    What they do not see is a future where your grandkids build stable lives working decent jobs in these industries. They see your community as a place to extract from until it is dry.

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    The fake “rural love” they sold you

    Every campaign ad swore they were “pro‑life,” “pro‑rural,” “pro‑job.” Here is the reality:

    • The same political machine that talks about “protecting life” has refused to fully expand Medicaid, knowing that decision drives rural hospitals to the brink and leaves pregnant women and sick elders stranded.

    • They throw out press releases about a few million here and there for “rural hospital stabilization” and “transforming rural health,” while ignoring the core fix every expert and hospital leader points to: reliable coverage and funding.

    • They posture about “saving small towns” while lining up with corporate interests that automate work and lean on prison labor rather than paying rural workers enough to actually live.

    It is a rigged covenant: they get your votes and your culture war loyalty; you get closed hospitals, disappearing jobs, and a future where your kids either leave or end up underpaid, overworked, or locked up.

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    This is about your front porch, not politics on TV

    Forget left/right for a minute. Ask three simple questions:

    1. How far is your nearest ER, and is it on any list of “at‑risk” rural hospitals? Because Georgia watchdogs say around 20 rural hospitals are in real danger, and almost all of them are in places like yours.
    2. Who is getting the big grants and investments where you live: local clinics and workers—or robotics labs, corporations, and prison industries that don’t need you except as guards or inmates?
    3. When the people you voted for had a chance to keep your hospital alive with Medicaid expansion and stable funding, did they fight for you—or for their party line and donors?

    You don’t have to like “the other side.” You don’t have to become some kind of activist.

    But you do have to decide how many more closed hospitals, automated plants, and prison farms it is going to take before you admit this:
    The folks you trusted are not on your side. They are on the side of anyone who can profit off your land, your labor, or your silence.

    And if you keep voting for that, it will not just hurt “those people” in the cities. It will hurt you, your kids, and your town first.

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    Stay curious.

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    Sources

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