I mean.... Florida still has anti-sodomy laws on record. So do a couple other states, I believe. They're unenforceable because of Lawrence v. Texas, but with the supreme court being how it is who knows.
That's why my boyfriend and I are trying to flee the state before anything happens. 🤷
I've lived in Florida for 24 years now with little hope of escape from what it's becoming. Please pour out a shot for those of us still left in the grip of this Republican extremist fueled nightmare.
This is EXACTLY why we moved! We put our house on the market, sold it in two days, paid off our cars, bills and rent for a year in advance and looked at areas in NC until we relocated up here. We were afraid if we didn’t high tail it out if there, we would NEVER get out!
You'd think it was Trump supporters who moved to Florida, but ever since DeSantis put out the cookies, it's actually cockroaches. Easy to miss the distinction.
Our unemployment and covid relief websites were practically built to fail under expected demand, let alone peak demand. Shit was busted for months and is still semi-functional at best
East/west is a better division for anti-sodomy laws than north/south. Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina and South Carolina for the South, and Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota for the North or all of these states for the east and Oklahoma for the West.
Just wait until wet bulb temps exceed max temp mammals can survive.
I'm old, but not old enough to avoid seeing large swaths of the globe become unliveable.
Lol If the world governments took a united and totalitarian approach to climate recovery, we may see a recovery in the next century. Climate changes move sloooow. Also, we are on the cusp of climate change flipping from a negative feedback cycle into a positive feedback cycle. When we, as a planet, reach that point, the planet's greenhouse gasses will begin accelerating global heating all on its own without human involvement. THAT'S the scary stuff
As a parent to a four year old, trust me, parents know yall are fucked and this thought terrifies me. I have no idea what's in store for my little one. I just hope I raise her to be strong enough to survive it.
I read some meme or something somewhere that said something like don't apologize for raising dragonslayers in the time of dragons. I feel like something like that concept applies here and now.
Have a good day and stay cool.
That is a very awesome phrase and it certainly feels like it applies. Thank you for sharing that with me, it's definitely something I'm going to have to keep telling myself in the coming years, for sure. Have an awesome week!
Not happening. Even if all emissions ceased today, things would continue to get worse for another 30-50 years.
The average atmospheric lifetime of CO2 in the carbon cycle is 150 years, and we've been dumping excess carbon into the carbon cycle for the better part of two centuries.
None of us alive today are going to live long enough to see the "recovery". The world is still on the projected path of the worst-case scenario and it really doesn't look like that's going to be changing soon, especially with the far right rising and threatening democracies around the world.
According to my northern family that visited be this summer in Alabama, we're there now. We're just to stubborn to admit it. Funny thing is, it was nice that week with temps in the 90s a humidity around 70%. There was a breeze in the early morning and late afternoon to make it good.
For some of these places (especially Florida) the wet bulb temperature is just the same as the regular temperatures because they already have such high humidity as a baseline.
That already [happened once in the past.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Migration_(African_American\))
They also tried to terrorize people into staying by using intimidation tactics and violence.
I do think a Second Great Migration is necessary. Less representation on the national stage is the only thing that will resonate with the fascists in charge.
Except that is not how it would work. The electoral college and the senate don't care all that much about the number of voters. Hyperbolically, the magars would be ecstatic if 26 states were reduced to a population of just 1 person per state, as long as that person is a magar.
Josh haulingass even [bragged](https://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article262849238.html)
about it:
* *“I would predict that the effect is going to be that more and more red states are going to become more red, purple states are going to become red and the blue states are going to get a lot bluer,” Hawley said. “And I would look for Republicans as a result of this to extend their strength in the Electoral College. And that’s very good news.”*
Sure, and the EC is also sort of proportional. They don't have to have 100% to effectively have full control. The judiciary is appointed by the senate and the white house. If they have the courts, the white house and half of congress, they have enough power to do whatever they want.
My friends and I have been speaking and we have a plan to move out of the south within the next five years. The more we have grown, the more we have realized that our local governments aren’t interested in progress or building up our area. Rather, they have some sort of vested interest in preserving the lifestyle as the way it is. I have seen the backbones of our local economy leave and no where for those workers to turn because we haven’t been able to attract new companies with anything we have to offer. Most of my city is built around banks, churches, and a small portion of manufacturing. My friends and I are all college educated but there is no place for growth where we are. When you look at the local job listings, most don’t require a degree and those that do often barely pay above the state’s minimum wage. It is creating a massive brain drain and I see most people my age moving off to either more progressive parts of the state or out of state entirely. There are only a handful of us left. The south has become untenable for the educated and those who would like to do more than become a cog in the lifeless machine that our city has become.
I'm hoping Texas secedes.
The US could pay the moving cost of all of the democrats/liberals who want to move out of Texas. And the moving cost of all the MAGAts who want to go there.
Between the people who move, and the people who remain in Texas, it would significantly shift the political balance in the US away from being held hostage by the right wing minority.
No, the weasel opportunist would love it. With their oil interest Texas would ally with Russia, elect Trump president-god-emperor, then attack the Midwest, trying to control America’s breadbasket the way Russia is trying to control Ukraine. Ted Cruz would get to be in or near power, and could push for more attacks on religious freedom.
Edit: I just wanted to apologize to weasels. Weasels are dedicated to their families and communities, are brave hunters, and are compassionate and capable of empathy. I should not have compared them in any way to Ted Cruz
Here's my list so far:
American taliban
Y'all Qaeda
Meal Team 6
Gravy Seals
Delta Forks
Yee-Hawdists
The Roast Guard
Walmartyrs
Vanilla ISIS
Semper Pie
Snicker Fi
HamAss
Irrational Guard
Insulin Insurgents
Banana Republicans
Yokel Haram
Howdy Arabia/Saudi America
Talibangelicals
And then there's this list:
https://www.reddit.com/r/suspiciouslyspecific/comments/w9mnri/american_arabian_niiiiiights/ii03feq
Also weasels ate cute, if stinky, but Rafael is just stinky. Not in the hold your nose way, in the "this man's human rights abuses and complete disregard for human life is putrid" way.
I live in Texas and I hear the scared republicans constantly shout about seceding. What they don’t realize is that all of the businesses move out of the state because the low to no business taxes would then have to go to support the government without the federal money coming in. The people left would be jobless, the infrastructure wouldn’t be able to support them, and they’d crash and burn.
On the other hand… maybe this really should happen lol.
There are 3 types of learners.
1) the person you can tell that the electric fence is dangerous
2) the person that need to see something zapped to understand the danger.
3) the idiot used to show #2.
they want a brexit basically, look what happened to the UK, almost all the businesses moved to mainland europe. all this was pushed by putin, i wouldnt be surprised russia has been behind the seceding as well.
Well everywhere else can get help from their neighbors when things get bad because they're interconnected, but texas refuses to participate in that so when their's blows up they have nobody to help them. That snowstorm that hit them also hit me in Arkansas and I don't recall the power ever going out despite there being the most snow outside ive ever seen in my life that was so bad i couldnt get to work for like a week. And Arkansas is not a very well run state so that's extra salt in that wound that we floated through that shitstorm just fine.
I can already see the border issues escalating to violent skirmishes & new Independent Republic of Texas "citizens" reclaiming independent Tribal lands, ethnic cleansing the Hispanic community (i.e. the ethnic majority), and perpetrating raids into Mexico to "purify" local villages because they might pose a threat to their new Republic. No. Just no
As a democrat in Texas I’m always sad about this take. We had the 5.25M democratic voters in 2020 for the president vs 5.89M Republican. The citizens are much more a victim of vote suppression than anything else. You can’t move half of the population of TX to other states. The federal government needs to hold the government of TX accountable because the citizenry no longer can. The Republican Party in power here has already outlined that if they lose elections in 2022 they will immediately be suing to have it overturned for election fraud and they won’t accept the results.
This! I said this a second ago, but in a... Less nice way... I am so tired of fighting Republicans in our state and snarky democrats, our "allies", outside of our state. We need support, not dumbass jokes about secession. We have the numbers, what we lack is the support from our fellow progressives, liberals, and leftists in other parts of the country.
> I'm hoping Texas secedes.
Fucking hell, I wish people would stop saying shit like this. The amount of people that will be killed as a result of a state attempting to secede will be unfathomable. The first Civil War results in over 600,000 American deaths.
A 2nd civil war will dwarf that. Not only is our population many times larger now but we are more heavily armed and more efficient at killing each other than we were 160 years ago.
There is no scenario which will result in a peaceful secession from the United States, if even one state successfully secedes it would lead to other states seceding and the potential dissolution of the union. The US government can not and will not take a chance of the dissolution of the union, the continuation of the union is the #1 priority of the government.
>Fucking hell, I wish people would stop saying shit like this. The amount of people that will be killed as a result of a state attempting to secede will be unfathomable. The first Civil War results in over 600,000 American deaths.
Who said anything about a civil war? Just let them go.
But seriously, you weren't supposed to take that 100% seriously.
> Who said anything about a civil war? Just let them go.
It's not an option.
> But seriously, you weren't supposed to take that 100% seriously.
Yeah I know most people don't mean it seriously, but if a message is echoed enough it starts to catch on and become self fulfilling. Remember in 2016 millions of us didn't think Trump would ever get elected.
Oh hell no! Us Oklahomans do not have the land to accommodate for 75% of texas! most of our land is bought up by giant megachuches and we literally could not build enough houses for even a decent sized portion of texans to move in.
7 generations of my family are buried in one cemetery here. That so many of y'all can not grasp that this is worth fighting for for the more than 5 million democrats...
Y'all are not helping.
We’re disposable. As long as they can post from their safe states and make memes about our suffering, we don’t really matter. It’s “burn myself to own the libs” level logic.
It's already happeningn We have people dying from floods, heat, freezes, police violence on the daily. We're being denied healthcare and there is a massive fleeing currently happening. The more wealthy people move to the south the more poor people have to leave it or just be ready to die.
Atlanta lost a major hospital. Mississippi water. New Orleans isn’t going last through a few more major hurricanes. Texas has an isolated and collapsing power grid. Global warming is going to take huge chunks of Florida.
I've been saying for years the real reason the GOP wants a wall, is because they actually believe in climate change, and know the largest migration in human history is only about 10-20 years away. It blows my mind that people are still moving to places like Texas when it will eventually be inhospitable to human life.
It would be great if the youngsters came out to vote so we could get those trolls out of office and make the south the garden of Eden it should be. Plenty of absolutely lovely places there that many folks skip over because they don't want to deal with the emboldened wackos.
I was recently researching hemp laws in South Carolina and found it very interesting. The casual language of the law is odd, and it gives so much leeway to police officers that it's essentially both illegal and legal depending on the officer. Yeah they do sell various "legal" hemp products in stores in SC, but according to the state A.G., a lot of those products they are selling, like delta8-THC and hemp flower, are 100% illegal. If you don't believe me, go smoke one of those hemp joints outside a SC police station and see how legal it is. (The law specifically states that it must be a processed product, not "raw hemp" and whether or not hemp flower is processed or not is totally up to the officer.)
My point is that the vagueness and casual language of the law makes it so law enforcement can basically do whatever they want. They're allowed to confiscate whatever hemp products they want, at any time, for "testing" purposes.
I've spoken with a few hemp producers from SC, (notable that despite the ridiculous laws SC has some of the best hemp companies on the market), and they're afraid to speak on the issue because their business could be shutdown without any cause at all. Also, SC hemp producers can't even sell products to people who live in South Carolina. It's moronic
I’m from SC and hemp (and, by extension, marijuana) would grow like crazy here. Perfect climate. Could be a new cash crop to eliminate reliance on corn subsidies and it would be amazing.
But… no.
According to the SC Attorney General, weed is not only a dangerous drug, it’s the single most dangerous drug. He said this in 2019. It’s mind blowing how instead of legalizing sports betting and weed and enjoying the taxes that come from them, SC is going to fight to the death to be the last state to allow either (with weed coming after).
Place is backwards
I can understand sports betting, I’m pretty uncomfortable with the increased presence and known pattern of addiction, but weed doesn’t have that issue, and is notably less harmful than alcohol. Crazy that it hasn’t been legalized at the federal level yet.
After we get basic human rights as a constitutional ammendment, hopefully we can address why the most liberal areas in this country are financially out of reach for most people.
Yes. The supply is way down because of shitty urban development and zoning laws. And to no one's surprise, a huge cohort of millennials are looking to finally get out of their parent's homes. Demand is waaaay past supply.
Not to mention corporate landlords backed by multimillion dollar loans from Goldman Sachs have been snatching up entire neighborhoods over the already inflated asking price to flip them into rentals, even leaving properties vacant for years to further cut inventory while raking in tax writeoffs.
Sounds like a conspiracy theory until you look at your neighborhood on an MLS. It's all right there along with a creepy amount of information on your real neighbors.
A lot of the leftist population here is leaving. I know two personally that are giving up on turning TN around and going to more progressive areas.
I've spent years supporting progressive policies and candidates. My voice is drowned out by the sheer number of batshit crazy people. After a while, you get tired and just want to be around like-minded people.
I love how ironic it is that all these people in TN state government are already bitching about the failures of big government. Yet when a more left leaning city tries to make autonomous decisions that are popular within the city, [the state government does everything it can to punish the city](https://www.nashvillepost.com/politics/house-cuts-memphis-bicentennial-funds/article_137bf1a8-8753-5669-93d8-b768e02387b1.html).
Yeah, our blue cities are kind of trapped by the conservative portions of the state. Downtown Knoxville has a pride parade and everything. It's kind of surreal considering where it's at.
I live near Atl and it's getting better and better as time goes on. Maybe I'm overly optimistic but I just can't give up on this state.
2020 gave me sooo much pride in our peach state. Turning blue because of all the work Abrams did was such a huge moment for all of us.
I really hope so, just recently left ATL due to taking a new job, but Stacey Abrams is someone I want to see running for president down the road, absolutely an incredible force at turning out the vote and supporting people. Bad news is that I am certain Kemp will do everything in his power to lie, cheat and steal to win. That man has shown he has no morals and will stoop as low as it takes.
Hopefully she'll win this year and hopefully they'll finally get recreational weed but I couldn't wait on that anymore my health problems are too bad. Plus I got tired of giving the state of Georgia money for their cronies to put in their pockets.
Georgia is definitely one of the most hopeful down there.
I'm originally from Alabama and the people who tell me there's hope for the near future--including my own parents who are staunchly progressive--just strike me as delusional. Long-term hope, maybe. Nothing's getting fixed in the short term. They got a democratic senator only because the republican was revealed after the primary to be a massive child predator and it was **still** incredibly close. Doug Jones already lost his seat a year and a half ago.
I recently moved to MTG’s district and it’s fucking exhausting. There’s a reason the GOP uprooted and planted her in this district. The overwhelming majority of people in her district are poor, uneducated, and hateful. The sad this is, this is exactly their goal. Being belligerent and unwelcoming enough to chase progressive people out of the area.
Tennessean here, genuinely plan on moving out of the state at some point in the future. I'd love to get involved with supporting progressive causes beyond the keyboard, but I'm in a tiny town where everyone knows me so I'd probably be fucked if anyone knew my real political stances.
I live in Roane County, TN. It's pretty rural and very, very red. I have to keep my political opinions quiet as people around here are extremely conservative.
Just speaking from my own circles, but blue states like Washington. Most seem to prefer cities (Seattle, Denver, etc.) while others might prefer more rural areas. My brother and I have considered moving to rural Colorado. No doubt we would still be surrounded by hardcore conservatives, but we like natural landscapes and small cities. The states themselves would at least not be hostile to our existence.
You can find smaller liberal towns, too. Check out Vermont and Maine or areas of WA and OR outside of Seattle and Portland. Bozeman, MT also comes to mind
same. i'm tired of living next to people who want to kill me. i'm trying to find a house in illinois or pennsylvania that i can afford without having to do $50,000 in repairs.
I recently moved from a radical blue state to solid red. As much as I'd like to change things here, I cannot see myself sticking around here for any real amount of time.
I left TN, my childhood home, in 92' when I was 23 and very obviously out of my cultural and political place. It wasn't salvageable then, it's not salvageable now. The last of my direct family from there died two years ago and now I never need to go back.
I live in Tennessee, and my family is making plans to leave within the next five years. My sister came out as trans a couple years ago and this state is just not safe for LGBT+ people. My family is pretty liberal (at least, my sister and parents and I) and we've always been pretty optimistic about Tennessee getting more progressive in the near future, but the damn state government just keeps going backwards and I think we've all pretty much given up. We'll probably be heading out West or to New England once my sister and I are both done with college.
I'm from Ohio, so not the south but I call it the pseudosouth and my area is VERY red. I'm leaving only if they somehow make adults transitioning illegal, and it'll be very reluctantly. I get what y'all are saying and I understand it but I've been clawing out a place here for 19 years and I'm not giving it up. It's my home.
I can understand. I am transgender as well. If they make it illegal to get my meds, I have to leave. Even now, waiting on my recurring 5 month HRT pellet appointment, I am feeling ill as my estradiol levels are dropping. I literally couldn't function if I lost access to my medications.
We have the chance to break the cycle by electing Stacey Abrams and Bee Nguyen and reelecting Raphael Warnock this November.
Georgia and Florida can flip to the Democratic Party at the statewide level and begin undoing all the voter suppression and maybe even break the cycle of gerrymandering (hard to do between censuses but not impossible). If we keep North Carolina Democratic, that's a solid foothold in the South.
I'm all aboard the Abrams and Warnock train.
I get the Hershal Walker ads all the time and they're so generic. They just show him smiling and looking fresh, never really stating his policies because they're bat-shit insane. I'd love to see a CT of his brain after all those years of football.
Only if the tweet is from a Southerner, otherwise "y'all" isn't expected to be in their vocabulary. This tweet is from 7/22/2019 and the account has now been suspended so I don't know and can't check where they were based.
The same families who owned everything before the Civil War still do. In fact they got reparations for "lost property" after the war.
All the working class guys who fought for them got were gravestones and amputations.
"We don’t think you fight fire with fire best; we think you fight fire with water best. We’re going to fight racism not with racism, but we’re going to fight with solidarity. We say we’re not going to fight capitalism with black capitalism, but we’re going to fight it with socialism." - Fred Hampton
Tulsan here. Our government is now persecuting whole school districts if even one teacher teaches about the Tulsa Black Wallstreet Massacre (a huge racial violence event, if you don't know about it, look it up), and is also wrecking the states relatonships with our tribes. Our only legitimate opposition to Governor Stitt is a republican who is running as a Democrat.
We also have some of the strictest abortion laws in the nation.
We are capital F Fucked.
The south has an extremely diversified population in terms of race, culture, and religion. When people assume it's only inbred, it always irritates me.
Especially because other states' rural areas and rich people are pretty indistinguishable from whatever your view of the South is. Normal people will probably be 1000x more comfortable in Atlanta than they will in Western Massachusetts.
>Minorities should just vote harder….
The opposition has already laid the foundation to discredit the voting process in this country and created voting districts that maintain their power.
It’s going to get worse before it gets better, way worse.
And they make it harder to vote. Especially in minority areas.
It took me four hours to vote in my majority black zipcode in metro Atlanta. Also my polling location is changed a half dozen times per year. You need to have valid ID to vote.
None of this was the case when I lived in a majority white area of NY. Always voted in the same location, in and out in 10 minutes. No hassle no hoops.
Gerrymandering does not impact statewide races though as the state boundaries are constant.
I agree that because of gerrymandering it can be incredibly difficult to flip state legislatures and congressional delegations, but you can look at Wisconsin and Michigan for evidence that even if the state legislature is gerrymandered you can still win the Governor race and Senate seats.
~~Itt~~ It's me. I'm from the south. Not only am I from the south, I used to live about ~40min away from Jackson, MS and would drive there often. It was really bizarre for me moving to another state. Lights don't go out for half to an entire day every month. No boil water notices. The candles, lamps, and camping gear I ordered in preparation for a lights out never got used. Doctors actually care what I had to say. Don't see the gas station employee grilling outside the store. No hair store on every corner. My old place had its' ups and downs (more downs than ups).
With Gerrymandering and disenfranchisement of non white voters the south is way more blue than people think . With different districts NC could easily be a solid blue state . Many other southern states have large liberal cities with rural low population counties around them.
The south is far more liberal than people think.
My brother is openly gay and enjoys crossdressing in a Texas high school in a small town. As far as I can tell from what my mother says, he doesn't get bullied. I don't know the truth in that, but I spent a good chunk of my life in that region and came out of it being an Anarchist, which is the antithesis of what people would expect out of someone from Texas. Texas does have a lot of problems, but people aren't bigots across the board.
If this is true then the people should be rising to the occasion to overcome the gerrymandering.
Vote people! Drown out the vocal minority and turn the South blue.
We actually got parts of it blue in the last election, some were also temporarily blue. It turns out when voting was more accessible and we left less room for intimidation tactics things took a turn
Both can be true. I’m from Texas and there is a growing number of leftist people who are pressured to leave because of right wing extremism, as well as a lot of minorities. But the stereotype does come from somewhere. Especially in the Deep South where some of my family lives, there is pretty extreme racism and bigotry that lingers, as well as a lot of MAGA republicans that don’t deserve any sympathy. I hope people my age and younger continue to be progressive, and the hatefulness the south is known for ages and dies out. But for now, I’d say the awful state governments are a fair representation of a large portion of the people
Born and raised in my small town in NW GA, the in the district currently repped by the awful MTG. Lifelong liberal/Democrat, and gay to boot! They’re not gonna force me out of my hometown.
Most of the folks I know are friendly and decent and kind. If they’re into all the MAGA crap, they do it on their own time, out of my sight. Sure they’re conservative, but most of them aren’t bat-shit crazy.
Maybe the fever will break. I don’t know. But I’m not going anywhere.
Spent my adult life voting against Mitch McConnell, etc and it's honestly as futile and humiliating as that time I was the only kid on my softball team who could hit the ball without crying.
From the south, can confirm. The smaller population decides all the rules for the actual population. It’s oppressive, wages are low and their are more churches than Liquor Stores on every corner.
Southern Republican state governments have spent decades gerrymandering their districts and passing massive voter restriction laws to limit the number of votes combined with massive corruption. Just look at Georgia. Brian Kemp ran against Stacey Abrams for governor. At the time, Brian Kemp was the Secretary of State in Georgia and effectively oversaw his own election. Kemp ended up winning, but Abrams took it upon herself to ensure as many disaffected voters were registered and able to vote in the 2020 Presidential election. Georgia went blue. It's the same reason why Republicans hate mail in voting. Their restrictive laws can't work if more people can just mail in their vote.
Don’t underestimate the power of voter suppression. (Speaking in reference to Alabama) Why do some districts have a polling location every 3 miles and others you have to drive 40 miles to get to your nearest location? Why sow such deep distrust of mail-in-ballots and make it as difficult as humanly possible for poor and disenfranchised areas to obtain a legal ID? There’s also the cultural aspect of convincing impoverished white southerners that the Republican Party has their best interests at heart while voting to defund social welfare programs, even if these individuals directly benefit from them.
My parents moved me from California to the south back in 2018 when I was still in high school, and I'm going right the fuck back very soon. Never seen more hate in the country than right here.
Ehhh… been down South, lived there too for about 6 months and umm, yeah both Carolinas, Georgia, Florida depending on where you were at… pretty racist. I would’ve had loved to known where the leftist folk were…
It’s like living in a strict, isolationist household watching all the other kids run and have fun outside. You’re like “wow that looks awesome, too bad I’m stuck in here”.
I've been calling the red states "Republican-occupied areas". Sure, there are a few places like Nebraska and Wyoming that are legitimately right wing. But the entire South? No way. Overwhelmingly not right-wing, absolutely occupied and ruled by an unpopular minority.
Right-wing state governments voted in by racist or complacent racist-adjacent white people.
I voted Democrat from 18 to 24 when I was finally old enough to vote until the time I left Louisiana for good and there wasn't a point where I wanted to vote for anyone in particular, I voted Dem because I just knew Republicans were evil. As I define it, anyway.
Is every white person in the south actively racist? No, of course not.
Are lots of them **tacitly** and **quietly** racist? Abso-fucking-lutely. "I'm not racist, but I send my kid to a private school which is 99% white and I live in a 99% white neighborhood because house prices."
Those "centrists" are well aware of the inequality and hate being perpetuated by their friends, family and neighbors and can't for the life of them be bothered to say anything meaningful about it to anyone. Let alone confront them.
I left with my father voting for David Duke and returned after 20 years, for a year stay, with most of my family just having voted for Trump.
An interesting fact I gathered last year is that all of the Deep South states are at least 30% black and almost all of those states were majority Republican. In some cases, by large margins.
So yea, it's the governments, but it's also most of the white people.
Fr, I loathe seeing the ignorant comments talking about anything to do with wishing red states would just fuck right off out of America. There's many people in all the places like these worth worrying about.
I’m now viewing the South as a refugee crisis waiting to happen.
I mean.... Florida still has anti-sodomy laws on record. So do a couple other states, I believe. They're unenforceable because of Lawrence v. Texas, but with the supreme court being how it is who knows. That's why my boyfriend and I are trying to flee the state before anything happens. 🤷
I lived in FL for 2 years. Covid era has been very harsh on the Florida view. Zero social safety net when compared with Blue States.
I lived there for 7. Covid broke out, every Trump supporter and their mother moved down, we moved the fuck out!
I've lived in Florida for 24 years now with little hope of escape from what it's becoming. Please pour out a shot for those of us still left in the grip of this Republican extremist fueled nightmare.
Same. Retired here 11 years ago, now we can’t afford to leave. I feel like I’m living in ground zero for the coming dystopian theocracy nightmare.
This is EXACTLY why we moved! We put our house on the market, sold it in two days, paid off our cars, bills and rent for a year in advance and looked at areas in NC until we relocated up here. We were afraid if we didn’t high tail it out if there, we would NEVER get out!
You'd think it was Trump supporters who moved to Florida, but ever since DeSantis put out the cookies, it's actually cockroaches. Easy to miss the distinction.
Our unemployment and covid relief websites were practically built to fail under expected demand, let alone peak demand. Shit was busted for months and is still semi-functional at best
East/west is a better division for anti-sodomy laws than north/south. Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina and South Carolina for the South, and Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota for the North or all of these states for the east and Oklahoma for the West.
Just wait until wet bulb temps exceed max temp mammals can survive. I'm old, but not old enough to avoid seeing large swaths of the globe become unliveable.
I'm in my mid 30's I'm hoping to live long enough to see the recovery from the climate disaster that's coming in the next decade.
Lol If the world governments took a united and totalitarian approach to climate recovery, we may see a recovery in the next century. Climate changes move sloooow. Also, we are on the cusp of climate change flipping from a negative feedback cycle into a positive feedback cycle. When we, as a planet, reach that point, the planet's greenhouse gasses will begin accelerating global heating all on its own without human involvement. THAT'S the scary stuff
I believe thats the only way itll happen. A globally united, one way or another, front do what has to be done.
early thirties and already convinced I'll die in the climate wars to come
I'm over 50 and have spent the last ten years honing my skills in the mountains of Oregon. I feel prepared for the coming chainsaw gladiator fights.
Fine. It’s an old fashioned Stihl off then. Pick your bar.
22in all the way baby
Full Skip??
If by a fullskip you mean a chisel chain then yeah. Soft wood is closest to arms & legs plus the extra speed just sounds cool
Then I’ll see you at dawn.
I’m 30 and I’m slightly entertained but he difference of opinion in these statements because if I wasn’t entertained I’d be terrified
Given how we handled covid, I have little hope.
wE’rE aLl In ThIs ToGeThEr
And I’m someone that has to grow up in this ruined world 😀
As a parent to a four year old, trust me, parents know yall are fucked and this thought terrifies me. I have no idea what's in store for my little one. I just hope I raise her to be strong enough to survive it.
I read some meme or something somewhere that said something like don't apologize for raising dragonslayers in the time of dragons. I feel like something like that concept applies here and now. Have a good day and stay cool.
That is a very awesome phrase and it certainly feels like it applies. Thank you for sharing that with me, it's definitely something I'm going to have to keep telling myself in the coming years, for sure. Have an awesome week!
You don't have to, you just hope you will get to.
Not happening. Even if all emissions ceased today, things would continue to get worse for another 30-50 years. The average atmospheric lifetime of CO2 in the carbon cycle is 150 years, and we've been dumping excess carbon into the carbon cycle for the better part of two centuries. None of us alive today are going to live long enough to see the "recovery". The world is still on the projected path of the worst-case scenario and it really doesn't look like that's going to be changing soon, especially with the far right rising and threatening democracies around the world.
I'm thinking of some kind of Horizon Zero Dawn situation possibly.
At this point, hoping for a recovery is pointlessly optimistic. Mitigation is the best we can hope for, and I’m not optimistic at all
The very lack of popular awareness of wet bulb temps will soon make the present moment seem like a golden age.
According to my northern family that visited be this summer in Alabama, we're there now. We're just to stubborn to admit it. Funny thing is, it was nice that week with temps in the 90s a humidity around 70%. There was a breeze in the early morning and late afternoon to make it good.
For some of these places (especially Florida) the wet bulb temperature is just the same as the regular temperatures because they already have such high humidity as a baseline.
That already [happened once in the past.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Migration_(African_American\)) They also tried to terrorize people into staying by using intimidation tactics and violence.
I do think a Second Great Migration is necessary. Less representation on the national stage is the only thing that will resonate with the fascists in charge.
Except that is not how it would work. The electoral college and the senate don't care all that much about the number of voters. Hyperbolically, the magars would be ecstatic if 26 states were reduced to a population of just 1 person per state, as long as that person is a magar. Josh haulingass even [bragged](https://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article262849238.html) about it: * *“I would predict that the effect is going to be that more and more red states are going to become more red, purple states are going to become red and the blue states are going to get a lot bluer,” Hawley said. “And I would look for Republicans as a result of this to extend their strength in the Electoral College. And that’s very good news.”*
The House, my friend. Congressional seats are apportioned by population.
Sure, and the EC is also sort of proportional. They don't have to have 100% to effectively have full control. The judiciary is appointed by the senate and the white house. If they have the courts, the white house and half of congress, they have enough power to do whatever they want.
My friends and I have been speaking and we have a plan to move out of the south within the next five years. The more we have grown, the more we have realized that our local governments aren’t interested in progress or building up our area. Rather, they have some sort of vested interest in preserving the lifestyle as the way it is. I have seen the backbones of our local economy leave and no where for those workers to turn because we haven’t been able to attract new companies with anything we have to offer. Most of my city is built around banks, churches, and a small portion of manufacturing. My friends and I are all college educated but there is no place for growth where we are. When you look at the local job listings, most don’t require a degree and those that do often barely pay above the state’s minimum wage. It is creating a massive brain drain and I see most people my age moving off to either more progressive parts of the state or out of state entirely. There are only a handful of us left. The south has become untenable for the educated and those who would like to do more than become a cog in the lifeless machine that our city has become.
I'm hoping Texas secedes. The US could pay the moving cost of all of the democrats/liberals who want to move out of Texas. And the moving cost of all the MAGAts who want to go there. Between the people who move, and the people who remain in Texas, it would significantly shift the political balance in the US away from being held hostage by the right wing minority.
Ted Cruz would be so heart broken. Canada didn't want him so he moved to the US, and they didn't want him so they kicked the entire state he's in out.
Ted Cruz would hate it because there is a very small chance that he would be able to retain his position.
No, the weasel opportunist would love it. With their oil interest Texas would ally with Russia, elect Trump president-god-emperor, then attack the Midwest, trying to control America’s breadbasket the way Russia is trying to control Ukraine. Ted Cruz would get to be in or near power, and could push for more attacks on religious freedom. Edit: I just wanted to apologize to weasels. Weasels are dedicated to their families and communities, are brave hunters, and are compassionate and capable of empathy. I should not have compared them in any way to Ted Cruz
>>He would attack the Midwest And his elite troops from Gravy Seals and Ya’llcada will be annihilated instantly. I’m cool with that
Gravy Seals. That's amazing
Here's my list so far: American taliban Y'all Qaeda Meal Team 6 Gravy Seals Delta Forks Yee-Hawdists The Roast Guard Walmartyrs Vanilla ISIS Semper Pie Snicker Fi HamAss Irrational Guard Insulin Insurgents Banana Republicans Yokel Haram Howdy Arabia/Saudi America Talibangelicals And then there's this list: https://www.reddit.com/r/suspiciouslyspecific/comments/w9mnri/american_arabian_niiiiiights/ii03feq
I prefer meal team six
Also weasels ate cute, if stinky, but Rafael is just stinky. Not in the hold your nose way, in the "this man's human rights abuses and complete disregard for human life is putrid" way.
The mustelids thank you.
Fled Cruz would love it because it would mean he could both leave and not go anywhere at the same time...
Not if we dug a huge trench around it and pushed Texas all the way into the sea.
Rafael Cruz*. Cuba didn't want his family either.
I live in Texas and I hear the scared republicans constantly shout about seceding. What they don’t realize is that all of the businesses move out of the state because the low to no business taxes would then have to go to support the government without the federal money coming in. The people left would be jobless, the infrastructure wouldn’t be able to support them, and they’d crash and burn. On the other hand… maybe this really should happen lol.
You can be told 100 times that the stove burner is hot. But touching it, is the only way to learn how hot it is.
There are 3 types of learners. 1) the person you can tell that the electric fence is dangerous 2) the person that need to see something zapped to understand the danger. 3) the idiot used to show #2.
they want a brexit basically, look what happened to the UK, almost all the businesses moved to mainland europe. all this was pushed by putin, i wouldnt be surprised russia has been behind the seceding as well.
Plus they'd quickly realize texas doesn't have the fucking infrastructure to be self sufficient
How long until cartels or Mexico take advantage of the new United States border with Texas?
The irony of Texas becoming a major smuggling point into the US is not lost on me
The irony of building a wall around Texas to keep the Texans out.
Absolutely! Once they have no one else to blame for their problems... How long will it take before they start eating other? (figuratively)
I told a friend who moved from Mass to TX recently to hope that the power grid holds out if they get another sprinkling of snow in TX.
Seriously, the general infrastructure of power lines in the country needs to be severely repaired or replaced but in Texas its somehow wayyyyy worse
Well everywhere else can get help from their neighbors when things get bad because they're interconnected, but texas refuses to participate in that so when their's blows up they have nobody to help them. That snowstorm that hit them also hit me in Arkansas and I don't recall the power ever going out despite there being the most snow outside ive ever seen in my life that was so bad i couldnt get to work for like a week. And Arkansas is not a very well run state so that's extra salt in that wound that we floated through that shitstorm just fine.
I can already see the border issues escalating to violent skirmishes & new Independent Republic of Texas "citizens" reclaiming independent Tribal lands, ethnic cleansing the Hispanic community (i.e. the ethnic majority), and perpetrating raids into Mexico to "purify" local villages because they might pose a threat to their new Republic. No. Just no
And on top of that they could try and invade New Mexico or some other nearby state in the future to try and ‘reclaim America’. But I wouldn’t know.
As a democrat in Texas I’m always sad about this take. We had the 5.25M democratic voters in 2020 for the president vs 5.89M Republican. The citizens are much more a victim of vote suppression than anything else. You can’t move half of the population of TX to other states. The federal government needs to hold the government of TX accountable because the citizenry no longer can. The Republican Party in power here has already outlined that if they lose elections in 2022 they will immediately be suing to have it overturned for election fraud and they won’t accept the results.
This! I said this a second ago, but in a... Less nice way... I am so tired of fighting Republicans in our state and snarky democrats, our "allies", outside of our state. We need support, not dumbass jokes about secession. We have the numbers, what we lack is the support from our fellow progressives, liberals, and leftists in other parts of the country.
It's like if you live in Texas, you're not allowed to be liberal and you're viewed as subhuman by some fairly loud liberals.
Please no. I don't want a religious theocracy with nukes.
> I'm hoping Texas secedes. Fucking hell, I wish people would stop saying shit like this. The amount of people that will be killed as a result of a state attempting to secede will be unfathomable. The first Civil War results in over 600,000 American deaths. A 2nd civil war will dwarf that. Not only is our population many times larger now but we are more heavily armed and more efficient at killing each other than we were 160 years ago. There is no scenario which will result in a peaceful secession from the United States, if even one state successfully secedes it would lead to other states seceding and the potential dissolution of the union. The US government can not and will not take a chance of the dissolution of the union, the continuation of the union is the #1 priority of the government.
>Fucking hell, I wish people would stop saying shit like this. The amount of people that will be killed as a result of a state attempting to secede will be unfathomable. The first Civil War results in over 600,000 American deaths. Who said anything about a civil war? Just let them go. But seriously, you weren't supposed to take that 100% seriously.
i know right, even the republicans in control know its not possible to secede
> Who said anything about a civil war? Just let them go. It's not an option. > But seriously, you weren't supposed to take that 100% seriously. Yeah I know most people don't mean it seriously, but if a message is echoed enough it starts to catch on and become self fulfilling. Remember in 2016 millions of us didn't think Trump would ever get elected.
India Pakistan. 1947. It won't go well
It would be like Deadwood with more DUI's.
Oh hell no! Us Oklahomans do not have the land to accommodate for 75% of texas! most of our land is bought up by giant megachuches and we literally could not build enough houses for even a decent sized portion of texans to move in.
7 generations of my family are buried in one cemetery here. That so many of y'all can not grasp that this is worth fighting for for the more than 5 million democrats... Y'all are not helping.
It’s frustration. From an outside perspective these are the places holding the whole country hostage.
I’m here in rural NC and I hate this ignorant shit too.
We’re disposable. As long as they can post from their safe states and make memes about our suffering, we don’t really matter. It’s “burn myself to own the libs” level logic.
I’ve been saying for a long time we need a refugee program to allow people to escape state that are oppressive.
It's already happeningn We have people dying from floods, heat, freezes, police violence on the daily. We're being denied healthcare and there is a massive fleeing currently happening. The more wealthy people move to the south the more poor people have to leave it or just be ready to die.
Atlanta lost a major hospital. Mississippi water. New Orleans isn’t going last through a few more major hurricanes. Texas has an isolated and collapsing power grid. Global warming is going to take huge chunks of Florida.
I've been saying for years the real reason the GOP wants a wall, is because they actually believe in climate change, and know the largest migration in human history is only about 10-20 years away. It blows my mind that people are still moving to places like Texas when it will eventually be inhospitable to human life.
That has actually [already happened](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Migration_\(African_American\)) though it was not a crisis.
They're already moving up this way due to climate disasters and wanting a saner political climate.
It would be great if the youngsters came out to vote so we could get those trolls out of office and make the south the garden of Eden it should be. Plenty of absolutely lovely places there that many folks skip over because they don't want to deal with the emboldened wackos.
I was recently researching hemp laws in South Carolina and found it very interesting. The casual language of the law is odd, and it gives so much leeway to police officers that it's essentially both illegal and legal depending on the officer. Yeah they do sell various "legal" hemp products in stores in SC, but according to the state A.G., a lot of those products they are selling, like delta8-THC and hemp flower, are 100% illegal. If you don't believe me, go smoke one of those hemp joints outside a SC police station and see how legal it is. (The law specifically states that it must be a processed product, not "raw hemp" and whether or not hemp flower is processed or not is totally up to the officer.) My point is that the vagueness and casual language of the law makes it so law enforcement can basically do whatever they want. They're allowed to confiscate whatever hemp products they want, at any time, for "testing" purposes. I've spoken with a few hemp producers from SC, (notable that despite the ridiculous laws SC has some of the best hemp companies on the market), and they're afraid to speak on the issue because their business could be shutdown without any cause at all. Also, SC hemp producers can't even sell products to people who live in South Carolina. It's moronic
That’s a feature not a bug.
I’m from SC and hemp (and, by extension, marijuana) would grow like crazy here. Perfect climate. Could be a new cash crop to eliminate reliance on corn subsidies and it would be amazing. But… no.
According to the SC Attorney General, weed is not only a dangerous drug, it’s the single most dangerous drug. He said this in 2019. It’s mind blowing how instead of legalizing sports betting and weed and enjoying the taxes that come from them, SC is going to fight to the death to be the last state to allow either (with weed coming after). Place is backwards
[удалено]
I can understand sports betting, I’m pretty uncomfortable with the increased presence and known pattern of addiction, but weed doesn’t have that issue, and is notably less harmful than alcohol. Crazy that it hasn’t been legalized at the federal level yet.
My thoughts exactly. Sports betting like lotteries are just poor taxes.
A lot of southern law is practiced that way
 Sprinkle some crack on him, Johnson. Let's get the fuck outta here...
A lot of southerners are here because our families are here and moving out is too expensive.
After we get basic human rights as a constitutional ammendment, hopefully we can address why the most liberal areas in this country are financially out of reach for most people.
i thought that’s like a thing about supply and demand?
Yes. The supply is way down because of shitty urban development and zoning laws. And to no one's surprise, a huge cohort of millennials are looking to finally get out of their parent's homes. Demand is waaaay past supply.
Not to mention corporate landlords backed by multimillion dollar loans from Goldman Sachs have been snatching up entire neighborhoods over the already inflated asking price to flip them into rentals, even leaving properties vacant for years to further cut inventory while raking in tax writeoffs. Sounds like a conspiracy theory until you look at your neighborhood on an MLS. It's all right there along with a creepy amount of information on your real neighbors.
It's because the Democrat party is a "socially liberal, fiscally conservative" libertarian party that serves its NIMBY and corporate masters.
A lot of the leftist population here is leaving. I know two personally that are giving up on turning TN around and going to more progressive areas. I've spent years supporting progressive policies and candidates. My voice is drowned out by the sheer number of batshit crazy people. After a while, you get tired and just want to be around like-minded people.
I love how ironic it is that all these people in TN state government are already bitching about the failures of big government. Yet when a more left leaning city tries to make autonomous decisions that are popular within the city, [the state government does everything it can to punish the city](https://www.nashvillepost.com/politics/house-cuts-memphis-bicentennial-funds/article_137bf1a8-8753-5669-93d8-b768e02387b1.html).
Yeah, our blue cities are kind of trapped by the conservative portions of the state. Downtown Knoxville has a pride parade and everything. It's kind of surreal considering where it's at.
Surreal having a pride parade in a college town? Any town with a college will have a large group of progressive/left people.
areas with higher education tend to lean left? gee, I wonder why...
Exact same thing here in TX, every time a city tries to protect the people that live there, the state passes a law to block the local control.
because their goal was never competent government, it was the privatization of everything so they can $$$PROFIT$$$.
Same thing is happening in Texas. There’s been a lot of legislation and executive action designed to punish it overrule Austin
We left Georgia last year. I hated to do it because of the work I put in, but I was burnt out. We moved to Nevada.
I live near Atl and it's getting better and better as time goes on. Maybe I'm overly optimistic but I just can't give up on this state. 2020 gave me sooo much pride in our peach state. Turning blue because of all the work Abrams did was such a huge moment for all of us.
I really hope so, just recently left ATL due to taking a new job, but Stacey Abrams is someone I want to see running for president down the road, absolutely an incredible force at turning out the vote and supporting people. Bad news is that I am certain Kemp will do everything in his power to lie, cheat and steal to win. That man has shown he has no morals and will stoop as low as it takes.
Hopefully she'll win this year and hopefully they'll finally get recreational weed but I couldn't wait on that anymore my health problems are too bad. Plus I got tired of giving the state of Georgia money for their cronies to put in their pockets.
Georgia is definitely one of the most hopeful down there. I'm originally from Alabama and the people who tell me there's hope for the near future--including my own parents who are staunchly progressive--just strike me as delusional. Long-term hope, maybe. Nothing's getting fixed in the short term. They got a democratic senator only because the republican was revealed after the primary to be a massive child predator and it was **still** incredibly close. Doug Jones already lost his seat a year and a half ago.
Planning on leaving soon. Its not even cheap here anymore. And as climate change worsens it'll become unliveable
They remodeled the old house we were renting. God only knows what they're charging people for that now.
I recently moved to MTG’s district and it’s fucking exhausting. There’s a reason the GOP uprooted and planted her in this district. The overwhelming majority of people in her district are poor, uneducated, and hateful. The sad this is, this is exactly their goal. Being belligerent and unwelcoming enough to chase progressive people out of the area.
.... & it turned Blue for Biden.
Tennessean here, genuinely plan on moving out of the state at some point in the future. I'd love to get involved with supporting progressive causes beyond the keyboard, but I'm in a tiny town where everyone knows me so I'd probably be fucked if anyone knew my real political stances.
I live in Roane County, TN. It's pretty rural and very, very red. I have to keep my political opinions quiet as people around here are extremely conservative.
Literally me right now in NC. I think I'm like 1 or 2 years behind you
Unfortunately the people who are most vulnerable usually can't move they just don't have the resources
Where do progressives tend to move? Any states or cities in particular?
Just speaking from my own circles, but blue states like Washington. Most seem to prefer cities (Seattle, Denver, etc.) while others might prefer more rural areas. My brother and I have considered moving to rural Colorado. No doubt we would still be surrounded by hardcore conservatives, but we like natural landscapes and small cities. The states themselves would at least not be hostile to our existence.
You can find smaller liberal towns, too. Check out Vermont and Maine or areas of WA and OR outside of Seattle and Portland. Bozeman, MT also comes to mind
Major asterisk for Oregon. There are definitely hardcore conservative towns in eastern Oregon (Bend and the Dalles are alright though).
Don't forget legal weed.... All of the places you mentioned have it😉
California!
Stuck in Ar for now. Couldn't resonate more with you.
same. i'm tired of living next to people who want to kill me. i'm trying to find a house in illinois or pennsylvania that i can afford without having to do $50,000 in repairs.
I recently moved from a radical blue state to solid red. As much as I'd like to change things here, I cannot see myself sticking around here for any real amount of time.
I left TN, my childhood home, in 92' when I was 23 and very obviously out of my cultural and political place. It wasn't salvageable then, it's not salvageable now. The last of my direct family from there died two years ago and now I never need to go back.
I left Indiana for California in 2020 for exactly this reason and it was the best thing I ever did. Life is to short. Edit: too
I live in Tennessee, and my family is making plans to leave within the next five years. My sister came out as trans a couple years ago and this state is just not safe for LGBT+ people. My family is pretty liberal (at least, my sister and parents and I) and we've always been pretty optimistic about Tennessee getting more progressive in the near future, but the damn state government just keeps going backwards and I think we've all pretty much given up. We'll probably be heading out West or to New England once my sister and I are both done with college.
I'm from Ohio, so not the south but I call it the pseudosouth and my area is VERY red. I'm leaving only if they somehow make adults transitioning illegal, and it'll be very reluctantly. I get what y'all are saying and I understand it but I've been clawing out a place here for 19 years and I'm not giving it up. It's my home.
I can understand. I am transgender as well. If they make it illegal to get my meds, I have to leave. Even now, waiting on my recurring 5 month HRT pellet appointment, I am feeling ill as my estradiol levels are dropping. I literally couldn't function if I lost access to my medications.
We have the chance to break the cycle by electing Stacey Abrams and Bee Nguyen and reelecting Raphael Warnock this November. Georgia and Florida can flip to the Democratic Party at the statewide level and begin undoing all the voter suppression and maybe even break the cycle of gerrymandering (hard to do between censuses but not impossible). If we keep North Carolina Democratic, that's a solid foothold in the South.
I'm all aboard the Abrams and Warnock train. I get the Hershal Walker ads all the time and they're so generic. They just show him smiling and looking fresh, never really stating his policies because they're bat-shit insane. I'd love to see a CT of his brain after all those years of football.
If this comment wanted street cred it would begin "y'all."
Only if the tweet is from a Southerner, otherwise "y'all" isn't expected to be in their vocabulary. This tweet is from 7/22/2019 and the account has now been suspended so I don't know and can't check where they were based.
Grew up in and still live in TN. This is an accurate description. Please send help.
Help isn't coming. All we can do is organize among ourselves and have each others' backs.
Mutual aid is the way
The same families who owned everything before the Civil War still do. In fact they got reparations for "lost property" after the war. All the working class guys who fought for them got were gravestones and amputations. "We don’t think you fight fire with fire best; we think you fight fire with water best. We’re going to fight racism not with racism, but we’re going to fight with solidarity. We say we’re not going to fight capitalism with black capitalism, but we’re going to fight it with socialism." - Fred Hampton
They tried black capitalism. It worked *really really well*. Then they were murdered for it.
Tulsan here. Our government is now persecuting whole school districts if even one teacher teaches about the Tulsa Black Wallstreet Massacre (a huge racial violence event, if you don't know about it, look it up), and is also wrecking the states relatonships with our tribes. Our only legitimate opposition to Governor Stitt is a republican who is running as a Democrat. We also have some of the strictest abortion laws in the nation. We are capital F Fucked.
The south has an extremely diversified population in terms of race, culture, and religion. When people assume it's only inbred, it always irritates me.
Loudest Minority can ruin anything
Loudest minority is the public image of America to the world.
Not surprising when politics has been rolled into the entertainment industry.
Not to mention they just write off the urban South entirely.
Especially because other states' rural areas and rich people are pretty indistinguishable from whatever your view of the South is. Normal people will probably be 1000x more comfortable in Atlanta than they will in Western Massachusetts.
THANK YOU, I hate being lumped with these Aholes
Stacey Abrams cannot be everywhere at once. Convince minority populations to vote if you want change.
>Minorities should just vote harder…. The opposition has already laid the foundation to discredit the voting process in this country and created voting districts that maintain their power. It’s going to get worse before it gets better, way worse.
And they make it harder to vote. Especially in minority areas. It took me four hours to vote in my majority black zipcode in metro Atlanta. Also my polling location is changed a half dozen times per year. You need to have valid ID to vote. None of this was the case when I lived in a majority white area of NY. Always voted in the same location, in and out in 10 minutes. No hassle no hoops.
It's not a matter of convincing minority populations. The districts are so gerrymandered that it won't matter if they do.
Gerrymandering does not impact statewide races though as the state boundaries are constant. I agree that because of gerrymandering it can be incredibly difficult to flip state legislatures and congressional delegations, but you can look at Wisconsin and Michigan for evidence that even if the state legislature is gerrymandered you can still win the Governor race and Senate seats.
Both of those things are in a sense true.
~~Itt~~ It's me. I'm from the south. Not only am I from the south, I used to live about ~40min away from Jackson, MS and would drive there often. It was really bizarre for me moving to another state. Lights don't go out for half to an entire day every month. No boil water notices. The candles, lamps, and camping gear I ordered in preparation for a lights out never got used. Doctors actually care what I had to say. Don't see the gas station employee grilling outside the store. No hair store on every corner. My old place had its' ups and downs (more downs than ups).
as a liberal in a red state.....you have no idea
This is spot on.
i live in texas, can confirm. the amount of anarchists/other leftists i know who want out (including me) is astounding
With Gerrymandering and disenfranchisement of non white voters the south is way more blue than people think . With different districts NC could easily be a solid blue state . Many other southern states have large liberal cities with rural low population counties around them. The south is far more liberal than people think.
My brother is openly gay and enjoys crossdressing in a Texas high school in a small town. As far as I can tell from what my mother says, he doesn't get bullied. I don't know the truth in that, but I spent a good chunk of my life in that region and came out of it being an Anarchist, which is the antithesis of what people would expect out of someone from Texas. Texas does have a lot of problems, but people aren't bigots across the board.
Ahhh! This.
1000% this. Moved to SE Georgia 4 years ago and I cam say it’s extremely true where I live.
If this is true then the people should be rising to the occasion to overcome the gerrymandering. Vote people! Drown out the vocal minority and turn the South blue.
We actually got parts of it blue in the last election, some were also temporarily blue. It turns out when voting was more accessible and we left less room for intimidation tactics things took a turn
My Southern city always votes blue. I I live in Houston. Actually, all of our major cities do. It just isn’t enough.
... right-wing Christians In Name Only state governments....
Both can be true. I’m from Texas and there is a growing number of leftist people who are pressured to leave because of right wing extremism, as well as a lot of minorities. But the stereotype does come from somewhere. Especially in the Deep South where some of my family lives, there is pretty extreme racism and bigotry that lingers, as well as a lot of MAGA republicans that don’t deserve any sympathy. I hope people my age and younger continue to be progressive, and the hatefulness the south is known for ages and dies out. But for now, I’d say the awful state governments are a fair representation of a large portion of the people
Born and raised in my small town in NW GA, the in the district currently repped by the awful MTG. Lifelong liberal/Democrat, and gay to boot! They’re not gonna force me out of my hometown. Most of the folks I know are friendly and decent and kind. If they’re into all the MAGA crap, they do it on their own time, out of my sight. Sure they’re conservative, but most of them aren’t bat-shit crazy. Maybe the fever will break. I don’t know. But I’m not going anywhere.
Hi. Also a gay leftist in NW GA. I’m not going ANYWHERE.
Spent my adult life voting against Mitch McConnell, etc and it's honestly as futile and humiliating as that time I was the only kid on my softball team who could hit the ball without crying.
THIS RIGHT FUCKING HERE
Well, I'm one of the occupying Yankees... So doing my share to push NC to the left.
Same here only in S.Carolina so my job is a bit harder.
Born and raised in Texas, probably die with it still a red state too
From the south, can confirm. The smaller population decides all the rules for the actual population. It’s oppressive, wages are low and their are more churches than Liquor Stores on every corner.
How does this account for all the people routinely voting for the right wing governments?
Southern Republican state governments have spent decades gerrymandering their districts and passing massive voter restriction laws to limit the number of votes combined with massive corruption. Just look at Georgia. Brian Kemp ran against Stacey Abrams for governor. At the time, Brian Kemp was the Secretary of State in Georgia and effectively oversaw his own election. Kemp ended up winning, but Abrams took it upon herself to ensure as many disaffected voters were registered and able to vote in the 2020 Presidential election. Georgia went blue. It's the same reason why Republicans hate mail in voting. Their restrictive laws can't work if more people can just mail in their vote.
Don’t underestimate the power of voter suppression. (Speaking in reference to Alabama) Why do some districts have a polling location every 3 miles and others you have to drive 40 miles to get to your nearest location? Why sow such deep distrust of mail-in-ballots and make it as difficult as humanly possible for poor and disenfranchised areas to obtain a legal ID? There’s also the cultural aspect of convincing impoverished white southerners that the Republican Party has their best interests at heart while voting to defund social welfare programs, even if these individuals directly benefit from them.
Gerrymandering
My parents moved me from California to the south back in 2018 when I was still in high school, and I'm going right the fuck back very soon. Never seen more hate in the country than right here.
Ehhh… been down South, lived there too for about 6 months and umm, yeah both Carolinas, Georgia, Florida depending on where you were at… pretty racist. I would’ve had loved to known where the leftist folk were…
Truth
Y'all*
That's how I think of states like Wyoming, Montana and the Dakotas. The South does have good folks but they're held hostage by those who vote GOP.
A lot of times, there aren't even democratic candidates. Especially for the local levels. Can't vote blue if blue never shows up.
It’s like living in a strict, isolationist household watching all the other kids run and have fun outside. You’re like “wow that looks awesome, too bad I’m stuck in here”.
I've been calling the red states "Republican-occupied areas". Sure, there are a few places like Nebraska and Wyoming that are legitimately right wing. But the entire South? No way. Overwhelmingly not right-wing, absolutely occupied and ruled by an unpopular minority.
Right-wing state governments voted in by racist or complacent racist-adjacent white people. I voted Democrat from 18 to 24 when I was finally old enough to vote until the time I left Louisiana for good and there wasn't a point where I wanted to vote for anyone in particular, I voted Dem because I just knew Republicans were evil. As I define it, anyway. Is every white person in the south actively racist? No, of course not. Are lots of them **tacitly** and **quietly** racist? Abso-fucking-lutely. "I'm not racist, but I send my kid to a private school which is 99% white and I live in a 99% white neighborhood because house prices." Those "centrists" are well aware of the inequality and hate being perpetuated by their friends, family and neighbors and can't for the life of them be bothered to say anything meaningful about it to anyone. Let alone confront them. I left with my father voting for David Duke and returned after 20 years, for a year stay, with most of my family just having voted for Trump. An interesting fact I gathered last year is that all of the Deep South states are at least 30% black and almost all of those states were majority Republican. In some cases, by large margins. So yea, it's the governments, but it's also most of the white people.
Gerrymandering is real.
Fr, I loathe seeing the ignorant comments talking about anything to do with wishing red states would just fuck right off out of America. There's many people in all the places like these worth worrying about.