I saw so much gut-wrenching poverty in IA this weekend. Homebound sick family members in squalor, broken windows taped up to keep out the bitter cold. Condemned houses on every block. It’s urgent & imperative to elect Bernie. Every person deserves a life of dignity. #NotMeUs pic.twitter.com/W30U0TebAm

— Natalie Holme Elsberg (@NatalieElsberg) January 21, 2020

My partner and I go hiking a lot. Often, this entails traveling to rural areas far away from big cities. I truly don’t think most city and suburban dwellers do this often, and almost no one from the largest US cities does this very frequently if at all.

But once you travel 30 miles or so outside the suburban and exurban belt, there is often stark poverty everywhere. This is why Chris Arnade gets so much vitriol — he bothered to document all this dearth and destitution that the pundit class just “knew” was not true.

But it is true. There are millions and millions of people who live in far worse poverty than many people in the “star” cities care to know about, and all they’d have to do to see it is to drive about 30 miles away from where they currently are.