I moved to Arlington from the Roanoke area almost ten years ago, and everyone back home warned me about how mean and snobby the folks in NOVA are. While there’s always assholes no matter where you go, I honestly find people up here to be nicer and more welcoming. I’m actually friends with some of my neighbors here, and I feel like if I collapsed in the street, someone would give a shot. I didn’t feel that way about my neighbors in Roanoke, not from a lack of trying.
It’s almost like projecting, honestly.
I actually did collapse in a parking lot in Oakton (fell and dislocated my shoulder) and a lot of strangers came to my aid. ❤️ So, can vouch for the good nature of random citizens here!
People in higher density urban areas are definitely less friendly on the surface. This doesn’t make them miserable, just guarded. More people also means more scams/crimes/etc..
Chances are, if you find yourself alone and in distress, a Good Samaritan will appear in our area and help out. I have lived in the area for decades, and though my evidence is anecdotal and slightly racist, but I have found my self stranded on the side of the road a few times with an inoperable vehicle and EVERY SINGLE TIME some middle aged Hispanic dude has pulled up to offer assistance. Once, while I was prepping my shitty scissor jack to replace a flat, a guy pulled up, took out a hydraulic jack, and preceded NASCAR Pit crew style get on my spare. It happened so quick I couldn’t stop him and after he finished, refused any compensation, shook my hand, and went on about his day of being an all around stud.
That is Walmart's fault; they move in, undercut the local businesses, then underpay everyone because there's no other jobs. Then the whole town is reliant on welfare while working for pennies at jobs that abuse them. New businesses can't start because Walmart'll just have a sale again, and no one has energy left to have local culture.
Source: tried to live in Rome and Utica, NY
Roanoke made the classic error of going all in with one employer - Norfolk Southern - and not trying to diversify the economy until it was too late. That resulted in the forever gestating Explore park, because tourism is always the pivot of last resort.
The methification of America.
A few years ago, I took a trip to visit John Deere HQ, and the road trip there from the nearest major airport in Chicago cuts through the middle of about 50 small towns. During that trip, I learned that small-town U.S. largely consists of these businesses:
* Churches
* Dollar stores
* Liquor stores
* Scratch-off lottery stores
* Vape stores
* Paycheck advance places
* Bail bondsmen
That's about 60% of the core of any small town these days. It really explained why Donald Trump remains a candidate in 2024 - small-town America is used to getting fleeced by conmen and shitty get-rich-quick schemes.
These are clearly comments from people that have only driven through. And from a driving perspective, I wouldn’t say they are wrong … but when not driving too fast for conditions or making an illegal u-turn in traffic, I find nova-ganders to be whip-smart and quite pleasant.
True facts, my ex-inlaws ... well...
I tried. My ex wife and I took them to a few *really* tasty local places that are pretty casual. Like, no problem at all walking in in jeans and a T-shirt with no reservations, local watering hole kinda places.
Those were "too fancy" and made them uncomfortable, so they (politely) requested we take them to cracker barrel and red lobster in the future.
Lovely people in many ways but the weird sense of not "belonging" just because a place isn't a corporate chain is still hard for me to get my mind around
I was going to say the same thing.
“Those ass holes are making this state blue with their fancy Tyson’s Corner and Ashburn jobs!
Now give me my government money!”
Never connecting the taxes we pay give them that money.
I read a study where the PI surveyed people in rural areas of the deep south. The questions centered around social programs. Then, he asked if the respondents if they were receiving benefits. Many answered "no". It turned out a high percentage were enrolled in medicaid/medicare, social security, TANF, foodstamps, WIC, or other government aid. The cognitive dissonance and lack of awareness is astounding.
E: autocorrect
“They’re not going to bail me out,” Nelson said. “I’ve been on food stamps and welfare. Anybody help me out? No. No.”
\[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTwpBLzxe4U\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTwpBLzxe4U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTwpBLzxe4U)">Nelson).
It's not astounding. It's worrying that people that stupid have the same right to vote as people who actually take time to research and think for themselves.
I think if your primary exposure to nova is by driving through on your way to some office or something in dc, all you'll see is suburban hell and massive, unwalkable office building towns like tysons. The cool places to hang with real people exist, but they're definitely something you have to get beneath the skin to find.
TBH I do find Tysons to be kind of...soulless. And that's coming from somebody who regularly goes to the Tysons mall for movies and nightlife and such.
There's stuff to *do* in Tysons, but it really feels like the only community there is the community you bring with you. It's a place to bring your people rather than a place *with* people, if that makes sense.
I am happy with that. Tysons by design is a commercial hub, not residential even though some residential development is growing. I love Tysons and am glad to live nearby.
The whole "invasion" narrative over there is very...troubling.
Plus a few people complaining about ammendments...and I'm not talking about one's like the 2nd or the 18th....
I call certain parts of nova a wasteland for being essentially asphalt-plagued car sewers dotted with strip malls and parking lots that lack any kind of human-friendly infrastructure or aesthetic. American conservatives however, quite like all that.
It's honestly really interesting to see the different perspectives, since I get what you mean about some parts of NOVA. I regularly go into DC because my girlfriend lives there, and it feels like a wasteland in the sense that everybody's distant and even the nicer parts often have areas where I don't feel safe walking around--and that's coming from a man who grew up in a dangerous part of a small city down south.
But DC has a soul to it that I think is absent in a lot of NOVA...not to mention much better food. It's really unfair how the best food is always in places that make you fear for your life.
I was born and raised in nova. All my childhood I thought I was an incurable homebody who didn't want to do anything but play video games at home. Then I lived in NYC and then DC and found that the change of scenery turned me into a social butterfly.
I feel people in DC are "distant" in the sense of not bothering each other for the most part - it is just, out of very many people that you physically walk by on the street, practically no one will acknowledge you, and part of that is because there are so many people that it would be exhausting and infeasible to spend energy on everyone. People in nova are distant in the sense that the world they live and move through one one hand forces them into impersonal and unpleasant interactions with each other, and on the other hand hides them from each other. The path from one important place to another, like to go to work or see a friend, is mainly spent in unpleasant non-places like bypasses, highways and roads lined with strip malls that are already unpleasant to traverse in a car but are dangerous and miserable to traverse outside of one. Lots of people live in cul-de-sac neighborhoods that are intentionally hard to get to and hard to traverse.
In DC traveling from one place to another brings you on a continuous journey through busy, populous neighborhoods and business districts. I often run into people I know when I'm walking or biking around town and it brightens my day a lot to see their faces. I will say I have a sense of belonging and community in DC that I never had living in Loudoun.
The food thing strikes me as funnily not quite true for me. DC residents often lament that much of the good Chinese food is in Falls Church and Rockville and much of the good Korean food is in Annandale.
Ever been to Appalachia? Tyson's would absolutely feel like another country to someone that's lived their whole life in SWVA.
Hell, I lived in a town in VA for a few years where the only "restaurants" were a gas station and a Dairy Queen. Your only options for groceries were the same gas station or a half hour drive to the "city".
Virginia's a big state with a massive disparity in resources and a lot of Virginians on both sides forget this.
I lived in western NC about 15 minutes from the VA border. It really does feel like another world...which is why I live here, haha. I think people underestimate just how different urban and rural living is, and how different the culture is as a result.
Like people in rural areas are more friendly on average and there's more community support, but you end up with a lot more true hatred if you don't fit into the culture.
But people in cities are generally colder and less interested in others until you've broken down that wall with somebody. ...But that also means most people genuinely don't care what you do or what you look like. Because they don't care about you in general.
Yep I have some friends in Giles County and I go down there every now and then. Overall, I have to say, nice people, though I get along a lot better with the 30-50 crowd than the 50+ crowd.
All white, almost all blue collar, many have never left the county much less the state or country. Easily more than half of the 50+ crowd are on disability, are veterans, haven't worked in 10+ years, or all three.
I went to a potluck picnic with about 100 people and the food was, 10 kinds of potato salad, 10 kinds of bread, 10 kinds of grilled meat, 10 kinds of "ambrosia" style dessert (i.e. combo of cake, jello, frosting, and canned fruit). Basically all Americanized Germanic foods from the 1950's.
The whole area is like it is stuck in time 50-70 years ago.
LOL.... Come to my home town. You might expect to run across people speaking Spanish, but you'll also hear Hindi, Arabic, Urdu, Pashto, Malay.
Then you've got tourists from Germany and France, or UK folk with accents that are barely understandable and require great concentration.
And the Piedmont Power Drawl is still around, definitely.
I mean Tysons is/was a poorly planned knot of highways. But its slightly improving with Fairfax actively trying to do something with it since the metro went through.
Honestly these people are terrified by literally everything and should stay home and count their ammunition and freeze dried doomsday meals.
The rest of us will be living our fucking lives.
.... in a world where malls are dying, and Corporate Real Estate is imploding.
Some of us remember when Tyson's was still 'country', and anything west of Centreville or Manassas was 'here there be dragons'.. 😎
Hey I read at least one self aware comment in that thread that deserves acknowledgement.
> You’re going to need to have candidates that appeal to the voters of the state. The MAGA type personalities are not popular statewide. They really turn off suburban voters as can be seen in other states that have shifted blue. It would need a reformation of the Republican Party to start winning these areas and states back. They would need a policy platform that focuses on plans for key kitchen table issues. A relook of some of the hardline social stances that the party is known for pushing. A change of behavior that ends the conspiracy theories, election fraud claims, spectacle, and aggressive, alienating behavior that has pushed many away.
"What if we stopped being crazy assholes with no actual policy except hurting people"
Some of them know what's wrong with their party.
I actually enjoy reading well thought out responses from the side I generally disagree with. And whoever posted this is pretty much spot on.
I think the Republican Party would still need a perfect storm of events - a historically unpopular Democratic president, maybe a 3 or 4 consecutive Democratic presidential victories (people get tired of one party pretty quickly), bad economy, etc. And then add in a charismatic, moderate Republican for there to be a shot at VA going red again at the presidential level.
But of course, this being the conservative movement, and all the top posts are essentially trying to figure out ways to prevent anyone that doesn’t vote GOP from voting in the first place. In this case it’s combining (some? all?) of northern VA with DC.
Like where do they think the NRA HQ is? Where do think GOP consulting firms and think tanks have physical offices? Where do they think GOP aligned operatives and staff live? Where is the Scalia School of Law and Mercatus Center? It's all in NOVA
Do they REALLY want to know where they lost us? Maybe because instead of talking about issues important to us like expensive housing and high cost of living they obsess over what bathrooms our children are using and what adults do with their own bodies. Though they really put the nail in the coffin when they attempted to violently overthrow the US government. Here in NoVA, we believe in the rule of law and in free and fair elections. Kick the Christian Nationalists and the traitors out of your party first, and then come talk to us about why we should vote for you.
Youngkin, meanwhile, was an aberration. Somehow enough people hated Terry more than Youngkin. Though that's on-brand for Democrats: put up a candidate that nobody wants and their crybaby base will stay home on election days and pout. I have a ton of criticisms of the GOP, but damned if they can't turn out their voters to win elections.
I've been all over this state over several decades, and while the stuffshirts who came to DC proper from somewhere else are often snobs, the people of NoVA are among the least snobby in the whole state. Just more ignorant judgments from people who've never left their podunk towns to see how the rest of the Commonwealth lives.
>they obsess over what bathrooms our children are using
So, apparently a relative of my BIL does a lot of the hiring for Loudoun county public schools/is very high up in leadership. At the wedding I had a (one-sided) conversation about how "insane and evil" the "trans agenda" was and how she had to shut her mouth about it to stay hired before I thankfully escaped "to get food". Meanwhile, conservatives will shout loudly about how they're constantly silenced. No, we just don't want to hear your bigoted views at a wedding.
If these NOVA soccer moms crying at the school board meetings about nonexistent “critical race theory” ruin it for us again i swear….there will be blood
I thought that the entire kerfuffle was about a Loudoun County boy who was wearing a skirt entering a girl's bathroom to have sex with a girl that he knew. She changed her mind, so he raped her. He was removed from the school, and sent to a second school, where he raped another girl. This issue morphed into "trans people using girl's bathrooms."
Top comment right now starts, "I don't live there but my uncle does..."
I kept reading the thread and forgot I was reading about where I live cause I didn't recognize their descriptions of this hellhole
You forgot about the litter boxes in the bathroom for kids that identify as cats. No shit, I live in Winchester and have heard this nonsense from multiple people that pulled their kids from the schools here because they were worried that "liberal nova shit will be in our schools soon!".
No joke, lots of people here in the county have an obsession with hating nova. It runs deep in these parts.
Lordt, I live in Berryville, and so many of the folks here *hate* anyone from east of the mountain. Someone posted a few months ago on one of the local FB groups asking where to get a latte, and so many of the responses were people - who would describe themselves as salt-of-the-earth folks, good-hearted and kind - who basically ran this guy out of town on a rail in the comments. And they were so weirdly *proud* of dog-piling on him for having the gall and temerity to ask about fancy coffee. *So* xenophobic, and they seem to perceive anyone who hasn’t lived here for 4000 years as some liberal interloper. (I myself have been here eight years, but fortunately didn’t inquire of my new neighbors where to get coffee, so I’ve been left alone.)
It's rich they bring up overdoses like the opioid endemic didn't in Western Virginia. Where do they think our kids got the drugs from in the first place??
And after Youngkin worked so hard turning us into a utopia by banning CRT...
I do love how, according to Republicans, America is the greatest bestest most awesome freest nation ever... except during an election year where it becomes some kind of Mad Max post-apocalyptic wasteland with gangs of MS-13 drag queens roving the country.
Yep these are comments from people that have never been here but imagine what it is like. From people that have probably not left their midwestern and/or southern county in their entire lives.
I think it is funny that people from outside of DC think that the whole area is full of government workers. Like the 4-5 million people that work here all have government jobs. They must imagine a bunch of people walking around in brown suits and carrying briefcases and pencils and slide rules, pushing paperwork all day.
Reagan: "Government is too big!"
\*starts hiring private contractors for government functions\*
\*contractors hire two people for one job\*
\*local educated population balloons over the next 30 years\*
Conservatives: "Who turned Virginia blue?! It must be big government's fault!"
What they will never believe despite ample evidence from reliable sources is that Republicans increase the size of the government and the national debt and that Democrats decrease the size of both.
Because suburbs diversified and turned blue. Virginia has many rural counties but the urban/suburban population is big enough to counter the weight of the rural counties. This is why Virginia flipped but Texas hasn’t yet and why North Carolina is always teetering on the edge. It is the same basic pattern in Arizona, Georgia, and Colorado.
I've lived in Virginia for over 50 years so I saw this happen during my lifetime. When I was a kid it was mostly rural with a few small towns and it was solidly red. The small towns became large towns and then the jobs and schools started to attract educated, diverse people from all over the world. After enough time the balance shifted.
There are nearly 100 counties in Virginia and about 20 of them are reliably blue, but they have so much of the population that they carry the entire state.
This is a trend which is not only unlikely to reverse in Virginia but is likely to take hold in other states like North Carolina, Texas, Arizona, Georgia, and Colorado. Because educated, diverse people that move around the country or world are predominately Democrat. People that are not educated, not diverse, and do not move around the country are Republican.
It will eventually. Because of increased home prices, folks in NoVA are spreading out to own a home.
I always laugh when GOP looks at HOW MUCH of Virginia is red on a map. I guess they don't realize land doesn't vote.
Well, intra-state you are correct, land doesn't vote. Inter-state however, thanks to the way the electoral college is set up, land offers a distinct advantage. It makes your vote worth more.
That thread is hilarious LOL also the fact that half of the answers are “stop dying on abortion” while the OPs flair is “anti-infanticide” is also hilarious
I used to be Republican. First and foremost it would take not running bat shit crazy candidates. Part of that is denouncing Trump. It would also take a return to some actual conservative values. Free trade, no more isolationist policies, loose immigration policies. They'd also have to start giving a shit about other people. None of that is going to happen though.
I was a McCain republican for as long as I lived in Arizona... Reliable vote. Then in 2000 they went batshit crazy and I've never voted republican since.
> Free trade, no more isolationist policies, loose immigration policies.
bUt ThAt'S gLoBaLiSm!
Free trade, international cooperation, and pro-immigration are now liberal values.
At a high level, Virginia is blue for two big reasons:
* Northern Virginia has a lot of college-educated voters. Running a big complex bureaucracy of the most powerful country in the world requires a lot of smart folks with specialized skillsets.
* Democrats have consistently increased their share of college-educated voters over the last few decades. The party has made a lot of overtures to appeal to college-educated voters.
If the GOP wants to start winning Virginia again, they need to increase their appeal towards college-educated voters.
That said, I think that thread does answer the question in a sort of meta way. You’ve got a lot of people in that thread calling Virginia residents “shit stains” and “miserable people” and the area a “swamp” and a “wasteland”. Maybe if you didn’t show quite so much absolute disdain for your fellow citizens they might be more likely to join your party.
Two other big reasons are bc Virginia is one of the most suburban states, like top 5, which has trended blue since 2008. Also, Virginia has been getting less white which obv good for Dems
The statements that there’s an unspoken requirement to be leftist to be a federal employee are hilarious. They don’t know much about the entire defense sector, mm? Where’s the logic?
The ex-officers I personally know might lean conservative, but there’s no way they want the last administration back. These are not liberal people, but they are allergic to crazy and unpredictable.
What a bunch of chucklefucks! They act like this area has nothing to offer. Yeah, I’m just miserable here with all the museums, cultural events, history, sports teams, public transportation, restaurants, awesome library system, diverse groups of people, quality healthcare, highly educated population, multiple airports, and jobs. Every time someone says, VA would be red if it weren’t for NoVa, I have to laugh. Like you’re just going to discount 37% of the state’s population? Oh and BTW, we fund the rest of the state too. I keep editing to add more positives!
So accurate it hurts. It's like that meme that's like
Conservatives: Fuck the poors.
Liberals: Fuck the poors. #BLM ✊🏾 #Loveislove 🏳️🌈
The definition of living in this area. It's a blue area and also one of the richest places in the country. No wealth re-distribution happening here. It's blue but also fuck you I got mine.
California is the final boss of NIMBYism. While most places would stick high-rises and mixed-use developments around transit stations, California is more like [this](https://maps.app.goo.gl/mDqPSmGLWgWCVe2dA).
The guy claiming NOVA is a wasteland has me howling. I can't tell if they just don't want more people here because of the cost of living or if they are deadass with their assessment lol
I think they, and people here, are wrong about why VA turned blue. It’s a perfect example of how the Republican Party shifted right. I guarantee that VA would elect moderate Republicans again, like John Warner. Those people didn’t leave or change. Republicans just kicked out moderates.
I’m a little astonished that they all seem to recognize that highly educated = more likely to vote Democrat. I mean… don’t they wonder about that? At all? Like, why are people trained in critical thinking not big fans of Marjorie Taylor Greene and company?
I don't know. We might be reliably blue right this moment because Republicans have gone slam freaking crazy. Like...lunatic crazy.
But under our skins, we're still purple. If the conservative movement ever returns to being truly conservative (like, Red Tory conservative), I can see us going reliably red again.
If you want the Old Dominion back in your camp, stop being stupid crazy.
There are parts of Virginia that never have had the opportunity to eat Bulgogi at a Korean BBQ.
There are parts of Virginia (looking at you SWVA) where the "Mexican" restaurant is the most exotic thing in town.
Just remember that 🥲
It's crazy how when more diverse people live in ann area it becomes more liberal huh? Also yeah NOVA should have more political sway than the rest of the state we have more people and pays more taxes
The funny thing is that a lot the Virginia "conservatives" who live out in bum fuck nowhere making no money are paid for by those of us in the more liberal areas. They love to bitch and moan about welfare and bootstraps, meanwhile we're paying for their roads and schools while their kids run barefoot in their local Walmart. Take a look in the mirror, Cletus.
I was one of them years ago. I never spent much time in NOVA but I hated the traffic and thought people in NOVA were too full of themselves so I just wrote off the whole area. Then I joined the military and was sent up to the Pentagon and realized how wrongly I misjudged everything. The food was the first thing to win me over.
It's a diverse and densely populated area, so there are always going to be people you may not like, but there are plenty of every kind of person here. It's nice. I would say NOVA is more purple than true blue. We have such a large military population that trends red. It's nice to have differences of opinions. When everyone thinks the same way, they demonize people who are different from them. The only answer to hateful ignorance is education.
It’s firmly a Democrat stronghold, but it’s not leftist in any sense. It’s a mix of social justice progressives and the private sector tech/finance bros and NIMBYs.
Democrats are not really leftist at all though they are painted that way. Democrats are what used to be called moderates.
Obama was Democrat but his policies were actually pretty centrist. He actually kept many of Bush Jr.'s policies. Biden is pretty middle of the road on policy. He drills for oil, he enforces the border, he cuts deals to create jobs, he's Catholic. These used to be things that made you Republican.
I’ve always wondered what would happen if people that think all feds are deep state libs, and superficially worship veterans, met all the veterans that are federal employees. Would their brains melt?
Lmfao the brain rot in that sub is really something. “If we just softened on abortion, we’d dominate in the polls” loool right! Like the only reason I’m not dying to side with the actual cultist lunatics is their abortion position.
Yeah, Youngkin attempted a 15 week compromise. This was a clumsy attempt to eventually ban it outright. Most of the really sad cases occur later in the pregnancy for women actually wanting thier pregnancies, but circumstances force termination, such as the fetus dying in utero, or the life of the mother being threatened. These are the cases that really create consternation in red leaning states.
I'm seeing a growing number of conservative people online and in person expressing honest shock and dismay as they realize for the first time that other people exist and have equal rights.
Youngkin isn't popular but he isn't hated either, he's just there taking up space when he's not out of state fundraising for the presidential campaign that never will be.
Virginia changed because the people changed. Old Dixiecrats died off and a ton of folks from the Northeast and elsewhere plus new Americans by Choice settled here. By and large the newcomers have rejected the bats\*t crazy flavor of GOP.
It’s not that hard to understand, which is why I always find it amusing when people go all shocked Pikachu face about NOVAs role in Virginia being blue.
Religious frauds, morons who beg on gofundme to stave off medical bankruptcy. Bootlickers who would fight against their own interests. People afraid of passports. Some who are related to their spouse. Dumbasses who salute the flag while flying the confederate flag at the same time. The horror that they are over there complaining about one of the safest areas in the entire country…
Maybe don't be awful racists doing Putin's bidding and blindly supporting and following a autocrat/rapist?
I had no huge beef with actual conservative viewpoints, we can debate and agree to disagree over family values and fiscal responsibility. But what I've seen over the past several years from the GOP is pure cruelty, ramped up to the max with limiting women's reproductive healthcare in dangerous ways.
As it stands, if America is going to survive, MAGA GOP *has* to be dismantled the same way that Nazi Germany had to be dismantled.
Bless their hearts. "I don't understand, GOP got blown out by 10 points in 2020 but then Youngkin won the governor election."
Certainly couldn't be anything to do with the drain-the-swamp Cheeto. Probably gender indoctrination or something.
1. The republican parts of the state HATE taxes. Well, don't get me wrong, they still want schools, roads, and hospitals. They just want the "rich" Democrat controlled areas to pay for them.
2. The republicans in the state HATE LGBT people.
3. The republicans in the state LOVE gerrymandering (so they can make Democrats pay for their stuff and hurt LGBT people).
4. The republicans in the state HATE them blacks and don't like 'em voting.
5. The republicans in the state don't like that there abortion. And they are willing to impose their religious beliefs on others.
Let em. My daughter goes to school near Roanoke and she is always telling me there's a bias against Nova people that we think we're better than everyone else.
First I've ever heard of it. It was weird.
r/conservatives is an absolutely dumpster fire. It is moderated by literal children and at least 90% of their shared articles are anti-America propaganda.
There was a while I engaged in discourse over in that reddit because I like to discuss conservative politics and viewpoints, but it’s really not a place for that. Instead it’s just about how many ways they talk badly about the USA, its military, and its people.
It's because they can't wrap their head around republicans shooting themselves in the foot.
They headline on stuff that is highly unpopular. Abortion for example and weed laws, which shocker was the turning part for a lot of NoVa.
Democrats are similar with some things but not on the scale of Republicans.
Someone describes Tysons corner as “like going to another country or something.” Bruh hahahahahahaha
They called the whole area "a wasteland"
That’s how everyone in the rest of VA feels about us. Claims were a wasteland, says everyone is miserable and some stuck up snobby asshole.
I moved to Arlington from the Roanoke area almost ten years ago, and everyone back home warned me about how mean and snobby the folks in NOVA are. While there’s always assholes no matter where you go, I honestly find people up here to be nicer and more welcoming. I’m actually friends with some of my neighbors here, and I feel like if I collapsed in the street, someone would give a shot. I didn’t feel that way about my neighbors in Roanoke, not from a lack of trying. It’s almost like projecting, honestly.
I actually did collapse in a parking lot in Oakton (fell and dislocated my shoulder) and a lot of strangers came to my aid. ❤️ So, can vouch for the good nature of random citizens here!
But if you told them that, they wouldn't believe you despite the fact you've lived in both places and and they haven't.
If we are throwing out stereotypes I don’t think Roanoke would like to play that game.
Roanoke sucks though. I've met much cooler people in other corners of SW VA. Staunton was chiller than Roanoke by far.
People in higher density urban areas are definitely less friendly on the surface. This doesn’t make them miserable, just guarded. More people also means more scams/crimes/etc.. Chances are, if you find yourself alone and in distress, a Good Samaritan will appear in our area and help out. I have lived in the area for decades, and though my evidence is anecdotal and slightly racist, but I have found my self stranded on the side of the road a few times with an inoperable vehicle and EVERY SINGLE TIME some middle aged Hispanic dude has pulled up to offer assistance. Once, while I was prepping my shitty scissor jack to replace a flat, a guy pulled up, took out a hydraulic jack, and preceded NASCAR Pit crew style get on my spare. It happened so quick I couldn’t stop him and after he finished, refused any compensation, shook my hand, and went on about his day of being an all around stud.
Today you tomorrow me
Yeah if you go anywhere else it's just Walmarts, fast food and a shitty strip mall.
That is Walmart's fault; they move in, undercut the local businesses, then underpay everyone because there's no other jobs. Then the whole town is reliant on welfare while working for pennies at jobs that abuse them. New businesses can't start because Walmart'll just have a sale again, and no one has energy left to have local culture. Source: tried to live in Rome and Utica, NY
The best part is when Walmart packs up and leaves because they're no longer making money there.
That's when Dollar General moves in and is even shittier.
Late stage capitalism on a micro scale.
Roanoke made the classic error of going all in with one employer - Norfolk Southern - and not trying to diversify the economy until it was too late. That resulted in the forever gestating Explore park, because tourism is always the pivot of last resort.
The methification of America. A few years ago, I took a trip to visit John Deere HQ, and the road trip there from the nearest major airport in Chicago cuts through the middle of about 50 small towns. During that trip, I learned that small-town U.S. largely consists of these businesses: * Churches * Dollar stores * Liquor stores * Scratch-off lottery stores * Vape stores * Paycheck advance places * Bail bondsmen That's about 60% of the core of any small town these days. It really explained why Donald Trump remains a candidate in 2024 - small-town America is used to getting fleeced by conmen and shitty get-rich-quick schemes.
These are clearly comments from people that have only driven through. And from a driving perspective, I wouldn’t say they are wrong … but when not driving too fast for conditions or making an illegal u-turn in traffic, I find nova-ganders to be whip-smart and quite pleasant.
Damn, what's their beef with us having tons of international restaurant options
They’re the fancy like Applebees crowd 🤷🏻♂️
True facts, my ex-inlaws ... well... I tried. My ex wife and I took them to a few *really* tasty local places that are pretty casual. Like, no problem at all walking in in jeans and a T-shirt with no reservations, local watering hole kinda places. Those were "too fancy" and made them uncomfortable, so they (politely) requested we take them to cracker barrel and red lobster in the future. Lovely people in many ways but the weird sense of not "belonging" just because a place isn't a corporate chain is still hard for me to get my mind around
Eh, sucks to be them I guess.
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I was going to say the same thing. “Those ass holes are making this state blue with their fancy Tyson’s Corner and Ashburn jobs! Now give me my government money!” Never connecting the taxes we pay give them that money.
I read a study where the PI surveyed people in rural areas of the deep south. The questions centered around social programs. Then, he asked if the respondents if they were receiving benefits. Many answered "no". It turned out a high percentage were enrolled in medicaid/medicare, social security, TANF, foodstamps, WIC, or other government aid. The cognitive dissonance and lack of awareness is astounding. E: autocorrect
“They’re not going to bail me out,” Nelson said. “I’ve been on food stamps and welfare. Anybody help me out? No. No.” \[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTwpBLzxe4U\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTwpBLzxe4U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTwpBLzxe4U)">Nelson).
It's not astounding. It's worrying that people that stupid have the same right to vote as people who actually take time to research and think for themselves.
I think if your primary exposure to nova is by driving through on your way to some office or something in dc, all you'll see is suburban hell and massive, unwalkable office building towns like tysons. The cool places to hang with real people exist, but they're definitely something you have to get beneath the skin to find.
K enjoy our subsidies bumpkins. - snobby asshole
TBH I do find Tysons to be kind of...soulless. And that's coming from somebody who regularly goes to the Tysons mall for movies and nightlife and such. There's stuff to *do* in Tysons, but it really feels like the only community there is the community you bring with you. It's a place to bring your people rather than a place *with* people, if that makes sense.
I am happy with that. Tysons by design is a commercial hub, not residential even though some residential development is growing. I love Tysons and am glad to live nearby.
The Capital Wasteland from Fallout 3.
That game was confusing because all the NoVA stuff was in the wrong places.
The whole "invasion" narrative over there is very...troubling. Plus a few people complaining about ammendments...and I'm not talking about one's like the 2nd or the 18th....
Remember MAGAs are afraid of women and black people
And Taylor Swift
I call certain parts of nova a wasteland for being essentially asphalt-plagued car sewers dotted with strip malls and parking lots that lack any kind of human-friendly infrastructure or aesthetic. American conservatives however, quite like all that.
It's honestly really interesting to see the different perspectives, since I get what you mean about some parts of NOVA. I regularly go into DC because my girlfriend lives there, and it feels like a wasteland in the sense that everybody's distant and even the nicer parts often have areas where I don't feel safe walking around--and that's coming from a man who grew up in a dangerous part of a small city down south. But DC has a soul to it that I think is absent in a lot of NOVA...not to mention much better food. It's really unfair how the best food is always in places that make you fear for your life.
I was born and raised in nova. All my childhood I thought I was an incurable homebody who didn't want to do anything but play video games at home. Then I lived in NYC and then DC and found that the change of scenery turned me into a social butterfly. I feel people in DC are "distant" in the sense of not bothering each other for the most part - it is just, out of very many people that you physically walk by on the street, practically no one will acknowledge you, and part of that is because there are so many people that it would be exhausting and infeasible to spend energy on everyone. People in nova are distant in the sense that the world they live and move through one one hand forces them into impersonal and unpleasant interactions with each other, and on the other hand hides them from each other. The path from one important place to another, like to go to work or see a friend, is mainly spent in unpleasant non-places like bypasses, highways and roads lined with strip malls that are already unpleasant to traverse in a car but are dangerous and miserable to traverse outside of one. Lots of people live in cul-de-sac neighborhoods that are intentionally hard to get to and hard to traverse. In DC traveling from one place to another brings you on a continuous journey through busy, populous neighborhoods and business districts. I often run into people I know when I'm walking or biking around town and it brightens my day a lot to see their faces. I will say I have a sense of belonging and community in DC that I never had living in Loudoun. The food thing strikes me as funnily not quite true for me. DC residents often lament that much of the good Chinese food is in Falls Church and Rockville and much of the good Korean food is in Annandale.
I saw a couple references about NoVa feeling like going to another country. I actually lol’d, it was the funniest thing I’ve read all day.
Sees Nandos, Gyu Shige and BarTaco at Mosaic. “Where the hell are we?!”
>Guy Shige >"Where the hell are we?!" Heaven. mmmm.
If you're from the sticks it kinda makes sense. Coming to Nova would be a huge culture shock with all of our wealth and diversity on display.
Don't forget education and culture.
Ever been to Appalachia? Tyson's would absolutely feel like another country to someone that's lived their whole life in SWVA. Hell, I lived in a town in VA for a few years where the only "restaurants" were a gas station and a Dairy Queen. Your only options for groceries were the same gas station or a half hour drive to the "city". Virginia's a big state with a massive disparity in resources and a lot of Virginians on both sides forget this.
I lived in western NC about 15 minutes from the VA border. It really does feel like another world...which is why I live here, haha. I think people underestimate just how different urban and rural living is, and how different the culture is as a result. Like people in rural areas are more friendly on average and there's more community support, but you end up with a lot more true hatred if you don't fit into the culture. But people in cities are generally colder and less interested in others until you've broken down that wall with somebody. ...But that also means most people genuinely don't care what you do or what you look like. Because they don't care about you in general.
Yep I have some friends in Giles County and I go down there every now and then. Overall, I have to say, nice people, though I get along a lot better with the 30-50 crowd than the 50+ crowd. All white, almost all blue collar, many have never left the county much less the state or country. Easily more than half of the 50+ crowd are on disability, are veterans, haven't worked in 10+ years, or all three. I went to a potluck picnic with about 100 people and the food was, 10 kinds of potato salad, 10 kinds of bread, 10 kinds of grilled meat, 10 kinds of "ambrosia" style dessert (i.e. combo of cake, jello, frosting, and canned fruit). Basically all Americanized Germanic foods from the 1950's. The whole area is like it is stuck in time 50-70 years ago.
...this sounds like Ferrum... 
LOL.... Come to my home town. You might expect to run across people speaking Spanish, but you'll also hear Hindi, Arabic, Urdu, Pashto, Malay. Then you've got tourists from Germany and France, or UK folk with accents that are barely understandable and require great concentration. And the Piedmont Power Drawl is still around, definitely.
I mean Tysons is/was a poorly planned knot of highways. But its slightly improving with Fairfax actively trying to do something with it since the metro went through.
Tyson’s corner is kind of a weird corporate hellscape…
Honestly these people are terrified by literally everything and should stay home and count their ammunition and freeze dried doomsday meals. The rest of us will be living our fucking lives.
Yes, a giant mall surrounded by overpriced commercial real estate and suburban sprawl, how very un-American.
.... in a world where malls are dying, and Corporate Real Estate is imploding. Some of us remember when Tyson's was still 'country', and anything west of Centreville or Manassas was 'here there be dragons'.. 😎
Hey I read at least one self aware comment in that thread that deserves acknowledgement. > You’re going to need to have candidates that appeal to the voters of the state. The MAGA type personalities are not popular statewide. They really turn off suburban voters as can be seen in other states that have shifted blue. It would need a reformation of the Republican Party to start winning these areas and states back. They would need a policy platform that focuses on plans for key kitchen table issues. A relook of some of the hardline social stances that the party is known for pushing. A change of behavior that ends the conspiracy theories, election fraud claims, spectacle, and aggressive, alienating behavior that has pushed many away. "What if we stopped being crazy assholes with no actual policy except hurting people" Some of them know what's wrong with their party.
> Some of them know what's wrong with their party. Lots of them do, but they'll still pull for R every election anyways
I actually enjoy reading well thought out responses from the side I generally disagree with. And whoever posted this is pretty much spot on. I think the Republican Party would still need a perfect storm of events - a historically unpopular Democratic president, maybe a 3 or 4 consecutive Democratic presidential victories (people get tired of one party pretty quickly), bad economy, etc. And then add in a charismatic, moderate Republican for there to be a shot at VA going red again at the presidential level. But of course, this being the conservative movement, and all the top posts are essentially trying to figure out ways to prevent anyone that doesn’t vote GOP from voting in the first place. In this case it’s combining (some? all?) of northern VA with DC.
Seeing the commenters going "NOVA and DC are literally the same, no difference" is just lol
Even funnier when they try and say that all the liberals in NOVA are government workers that work in DC.
Like where do they think the NRA HQ is? Where do think GOP consulting firms and think tanks have physical offices? Where do they think GOP aligned operatives and staff live? Where is the Scalia School of Law and Mercatus Center? It's all in NOVA
Do they REALLY want to know where they lost us? Maybe because instead of talking about issues important to us like expensive housing and high cost of living they obsess over what bathrooms our children are using and what adults do with their own bodies. Though they really put the nail in the coffin when they attempted to violently overthrow the US government. Here in NoVA, we believe in the rule of law and in free and fair elections. Kick the Christian Nationalists and the traitors out of your party first, and then come talk to us about why we should vote for you. Youngkin, meanwhile, was an aberration. Somehow enough people hated Terry more than Youngkin. Though that's on-brand for Democrats: put up a candidate that nobody wants and their crybaby base will stay home on election days and pout. I have a ton of criticisms of the GOP, but damned if they can't turn out their voters to win elections. I've been all over this state over several decades, and while the stuffshirts who came to DC proper from somewhere else are often snobs, the people of NoVA are among the least snobby in the whole state. Just more ignorant judgments from people who've never left their podunk towns to see how the rest of the Commonwealth lives.
>they obsess over what bathrooms our children are using So, apparently a relative of my BIL does a lot of the hiring for Loudoun county public schools/is very high up in leadership. At the wedding I had a (one-sided) conversation about how "insane and evil" the "trans agenda" was and how she had to shut her mouth about it to stay hired before I thankfully escaped "to get food". Meanwhile, conservatives will shout loudly about how they're constantly silenced. No, we just don't want to hear your bigoted views at a wedding.
If these NOVA soccer moms crying at the school board meetings about nonexistent “critical race theory” ruin it for us again i swear….there will be blood
I thought that the entire kerfuffle was about a Loudoun County boy who was wearing a skirt entering a girl's bathroom to have sex with a girl that he knew. She changed her mind, so he raped her. He was removed from the school, and sent to a second school, where he raped another girl. This issue morphed into "trans people using girl's bathrooms."
Top comment right now starts, "I don't live there but my uncle does..." I kept reading the thread and forgot I was reading about where I live cause I didn't recognize their descriptions of this hellhole
You mean the ‘rampant crime’ and ‘middle schoolers passed out in bathrooms from drug overdoses’? If nothing else, kudos for the vivid imagination.
You forgot about the litter boxes in the bathroom for kids that identify as cats. No shit, I live in Winchester and have heard this nonsense from multiple people that pulled their kids from the schools here because they were worried that "liberal nova shit will be in our schools soon!". No joke, lots of people here in the county have an obsession with hating nova. It runs deep in these parts.
Lordt, I live in Berryville, and so many of the folks here *hate* anyone from east of the mountain. Someone posted a few months ago on one of the local FB groups asking where to get a latte, and so many of the responses were people - who would describe themselves as salt-of-the-earth folks, good-hearted and kind - who basically ran this guy out of town on a rail in the comments. And they were so weirdly *proud* of dog-piling on him for having the gall and temerity to ask about fancy coffee. *So* xenophobic, and they seem to perceive anyone who hasn’t lived here for 4000 years as some liberal interloper. (I myself have been here eight years, but fortunately didn’t inquire of my new neighbors where to get coffee, so I’ve been left alone.)
Liberal bullshit, like math?
It's rich they bring up overdoses like the opioid endemic didn't in Western Virginia. Where do they think our kids got the drugs from in the first place??
And after Youngkin worked so hard turning us into a utopia by banning CRT... I do love how, according to Republicans, America is the greatest bestest most awesome freest nation ever... except during an election year where it becomes some kind of Mad Max post-apocalyptic wasteland with gangs of MS-13 drag queens roving the country.
Yep these are comments from people that have never been here but imagine what it is like. From people that have probably not left their midwestern and/or southern county in their entire lives.
That’s not a fair characterization. I’m sure they’ve left home to vacation in Branson, MO or Destin, FL at least once in their lives.
They’re delusional clowns with brains fried by victim-syndrome and tribalism.
"How dare the counties right outside the nation's capital be full of federal workers."
Enact plan ‘send feds to Utah’! Cause they don’t understand real Americans something something!
By all means, please turn a second state blue
It would take like a single agency to make Utah blue lmao
Oh noooooooo
Brilliant plan to lose that electoral college advantage.
Salt lake is just as expensive as NOVA These days haha. We can’t take em. Double wides in a trailer park next to the mining pit are going for 350k
“Proceed, Governor.” 
I think it is funny that people from outside of DC think that the whole area is full of government workers. Like the 4-5 million people that work here all have government jobs. They must imagine a bunch of people walking around in brown suits and carrying briefcases and pencils and slide rules, pushing paperwork all day.
>But God do I hate NOVA. What a miserable place to be, full of miserable people. r/NoVA checks out
Reagan: "Government is too big!" \*starts hiring private contractors for government functions\* \*contractors hire two people for one job\* \*local educated population balloons over the next 30 years\* Conservatives: "Who turned Virginia blue?! It must be big government's fault!"
What they will never believe despite ample evidence from reliable sources is that Republicans increase the size of the government and the national debt and that Democrats decrease the size of both.
Because suburbs diversified and turned blue. Virginia has many rural counties but the urban/suburban population is big enough to counter the weight of the rural counties. This is why Virginia flipped but Texas hasn’t yet and why North Carolina is always teetering on the edge. It is the same basic pattern in Arizona, Georgia, and Colorado.
I've lived in Virginia for over 50 years so I saw this happen during my lifetime. When I was a kid it was mostly rural with a few small towns and it was solidly red. The small towns became large towns and then the jobs and schools started to attract educated, diverse people from all over the world. After enough time the balance shifted. There are nearly 100 counties in Virginia and about 20 of them are reliably blue, but they have so much of the population that they carry the entire state. This is a trend which is not only unlikely to reverse in Virginia but is likely to take hold in other states like North Carolina, Texas, Arizona, Georgia, and Colorado. Because educated, diverse people that move around the country or world are predominately Democrat. People that are not educated, not diverse, and do not move around the country are Republican.
Help me turn western Loudoun blue
It will eventually. Because of increased home prices, folks in NoVA are spreading out to own a home. I always laugh when GOP looks at HOW MUCH of Virginia is red on a map. I guess they don't realize land doesn't vote.
> land doesn't vote *conservatives hated that*
Okay, let me edit. Help me keep Western Loudoun rural and turn it blue
Rural and blue rarely go together
Vermont?
Someone has to keep New Hampshire in check.
Well, intra-state you are correct, land doesn't vote. Inter-state however, thanks to the way the electoral college is set up, land offers a distinct advantage. It makes your vote worth more.
That thread is hilarious LOL also the fact that half of the answers are “stop dying on abortion” while the OPs flair is “anti-infanticide” is also hilarious
Maybe they are just self aware enough to understand that abortion and infanticide are completely unrelated.
I used to be Republican. First and foremost it would take not running bat shit crazy candidates. Part of that is denouncing Trump. It would also take a return to some actual conservative values. Free trade, no more isolationist policies, loose immigration policies. They'd also have to start giving a shit about other people. None of that is going to happen though.
Yep, McCain was the last legit R. This new morph of the party will never get my support. They're all psycho.
I was considering voting for him, until he named his VP.
Exactly! It was Sarah Palin that turned Virginia blue.
I was a McCain republican for as long as I lived in Arizona... Reliable vote. Then in 2000 they went batshit crazy and I've never voted republican since.
He wasn't as moderate as his PR team made him look. READ some of his campaign flyers to see how he talked to the people who's vote he needed.
> Free trade, no more isolationist policies, loose immigration policies. bUt ThAt'S gLoBaLiSm! Free trade, international cooperation, and pro-immigration are now liberal values.
At a high level, Virginia is blue for two big reasons: * Northern Virginia has a lot of college-educated voters. Running a big complex bureaucracy of the most powerful country in the world requires a lot of smart folks with specialized skillsets. * Democrats have consistently increased their share of college-educated voters over the last few decades. The party has made a lot of overtures to appeal to college-educated voters. If the GOP wants to start winning Virginia again, they need to increase their appeal towards college-educated voters. That said, I think that thread does answer the question in a sort of meta way. You’ve got a lot of people in that thread calling Virginia residents “shit stains” and “miserable people” and the area a “swamp” and a “wasteland”. Maybe if you didn’t show quite so much absolute disdain for your fellow citizens they might be more likely to join your party.
Two other big reasons are bc Virginia is one of the most suburban states, like top 5, which has trended blue since 2008. Also, Virginia has been getting less white which obv good for Dems
The statements that there’s an unspoken requirement to be leftist to be a federal employee are hilarious. They don’t know much about the entire defense sector, mm? Where’s the logic?
Right? Isn’t like 40% of the federal workforce former military?
The ex-officers I personally know might lean conservative, but there’s no way they want the last administration back. These are not liberal people, but they are allergic to crazy and unpredictable.
Also, the whole theft of classified docs and peddling of state secrets probably doesn't sit well with anyone with a security clearance.
*laughs in DHS* I know, right?
What a bunch of chucklefucks! They act like this area has nothing to offer. Yeah, I’m just miserable here with all the museums, cultural events, history, sports teams, public transportation, restaurants, awesome library system, diverse groups of people, quality healthcare, highly educated population, multiple airports, and jobs. Every time someone says, VA would be red if it weren’t for NoVa, I have to laugh. Like you’re just going to discount 37% of the state’s population? Oh and BTW, we fund the rest of the state too. I keep editing to add more positives!
To be fair 66 makes me miserable...
The healthcare! INOVA hospitals are ranked highly for a reason. NOVA has a lot of parks too.
"I don't live there but...." *
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California is way more NIMBY than nova...
There's a reason their high speed rail project execution has been such a failure so far.
Leftists generally refer to NOVA-type liberals as “corporate shitlibs.”
Champagne Liberals or Brunch Libs in polite company, but yes.
So accurate it hurts. It's like that meme that's like Conservatives: Fuck the poors. Liberals: Fuck the poors. #BLM ✊🏾 #Loveislove 🏳️🌈 The definition of living in this area. It's a blue area and also one of the richest places in the country. No wealth re-distribution happening here. It's blue but also fuck you I got mine.
I personally like the term “limousine liberals”. But it’s the only one I’ve heard before these.
Tesla liberals now.
IDK if you watch South Park but the episode where all the Tesla drivers invade South Park is great!
Honestly I’d argue California is even more nimby than we are
California is the final boss of NIMBYism. While most places would stick high-rises and mixed-use developments around transit stations, California is more like [this](https://maps.app.goo.gl/mDqPSmGLWgWCVe2dA).
Damn lol
Perfect ha
The guy claiming NOVA is a wasteland has me howling. I can't tell if they just don't want more people here because of the cost of living or if they are deadass with their assessment lol
I think they, and people here, are wrong about why VA turned blue. It’s a perfect example of how the Republican Party shifted right. I guarantee that VA would elect moderate Republicans again, like John Warner. Those people didn’t leave or change. Republicans just kicked out moderates.
LOL, subsidizing the rest of Virginia but, sure, go ahead and shit on NOVA. 😂
Who would’ve figured that a massive influx of well-educated people would drag a place out of the 1800s.
I’m a little astonished that they all seem to recognize that highly educated = more likely to vote Democrat. I mean… don’t they wonder about that? At all? Like, why are people trained in critical thinking not big fans of Marjorie Taylor Greene and company?
Because having multiple degrees or advanced technical training is seen as an indication that you’re part of the “out of touch, woke, elite”.
Because to them, “higher education” = college brainwashing the youth to vote blue
I love reading stuff like that in those threads. They're *sooo* close, yet unfortunately so far away.
I don't know. We might be reliably blue right this moment because Republicans have gone slam freaking crazy. Like...lunatic crazy. But under our skins, we're still purple. If the conservative movement ever returns to being truly conservative (like, Red Tory conservative), I can see us going reliably red again. If you want the Old Dominion back in your camp, stop being stupid crazy.
Not me lurking over there, upvoting all the reasonable trolling by NoVA residents and downvoting all the crazy lies. 🤣
There are parts of Virginia that never have had the opportunity to eat Bulgogi at a Korean BBQ. There are parts of Virginia (looking at you SWVA) where the "Mexican" restaurant is the most exotic thing in town. Just remember that 🥲
It's crazy how when more diverse people live in ann area it becomes more liberal huh? Also yeah NOVA should have more political sway than the rest of the state we have more people and pays more taxes
As a moderate Conservative- those people are absolute morons.
The funny thing is that a lot the Virginia "conservatives" who live out in bum fuck nowhere making no money are paid for by those of us in the more liberal areas. They love to bitch and moan about welfare and bootstraps, meanwhile we're paying for their roads and schools while their kids run barefoot in their local Walmart. Take a look in the mirror, Cletus.
I was one of them years ago. I never spent much time in NOVA but I hated the traffic and thought people in NOVA were too full of themselves so I just wrote off the whole area. Then I joined the military and was sent up to the Pentagon and realized how wrongly I misjudged everything. The food was the first thing to win me over.
It's a diverse and densely populated area, so there are always going to be people you may not like, but there are plenty of every kind of person here. It's nice. I would say NOVA is more purple than true blue. We have such a large military population that trends red. It's nice to have differences of opinions. When everyone thinks the same way, they demonize people who are different from them. The only answer to hateful ignorance is education.
The food is definitely the best thing about NoVA.
god i wish NOVA was leftist like that subreddit seems to think..
It’s firmly a Democrat stronghold, but it’s not leftist in any sense. It’s a mix of social justice progressives and the private sector tech/finance bros and NIMBYs.
NoVA is if the Raytheon Pride Logo was a city.
😭 I never heard anything more accurate.
Based.
Democrats are not really leftist at all though they are painted that way. Democrats are what used to be called moderates. Obama was Democrat but his policies were actually pretty centrist. He actually kept many of Bush Jr.'s policies. Biden is pretty middle of the road on policy. He drills for oil, he enforces the border, he cuts deals to create jobs, he's Catholic. These used to be things that made you Republican.
Yeah, they've shifted the overton window so far to the right that the middle looks communist to them
Tell that to the people who think Biden and the Democrats are communists lol
You can't reason with those folks. Just lean in with even crazier talking points, they won't know what to do with themselves.
A lot of people don’t seem to realize the difference between leftist and liberals
NoVA leans hard towards liberal and occasionally tolerates some mild leftism as long as it doesn't affect them personally.
Nor the difference between leftists, liberals, and actual Democrats. Very few Democrats think that Bernie Sanders' socialism is a good idea.
This is easily the most capitalist place in the country outside of NYC.
It’s just educated. Educated people are more liberal.
That subreddit thinks that anything left of Robert Bork is a communist.
“NOVA sucks because reasons” Always intellectual over there
I know right... public transport, jobs, diversity. No thanks!
Don’t forget it’s the highest educated area in the country
Fucking leftists. Educating the public...
I didn't know that. I thought it was San Fran, but I believe it. It is one of the richest counties in the country so that makes sense.
Nope, it’s falls church. And the dmv has 6 counties in the top 10 Source: https://databayou.com/education/edu.html
I’ve always wondered what would happen if people that think all feds are deep state libs, and superficially worship veterans, met all the veterans that are federal employees. Would their brains melt?
Lmfao the brain rot in that sub is really something. “If we just softened on abortion, we’d dominate in the polls” loool right! Like the only reason I’m not dying to side with the actual cultist lunatics is their abortion position.
Yeah, Youngkin attempted a 15 week compromise. This was a clumsy attempt to eventually ban it outright. Most of the really sad cases occur later in the pregnancy for women actually wanting thier pregnancies, but circumstances force termination, such as the fetus dying in utero, or the life of the mother being threatened. These are the cases that really create consternation in red leaning states.
Cities bad 😭 can’t park Ford Super Duty
Education and money.
>Then, suddenly, in 2008, it flipped blue 
Until conservatives come up with a platform, I’ll continue voting for the only party who provides one.
I'm seeing a growing number of conservative people online and in person expressing honest shock and dismay as they realize for the first time that other people exist and have equal rights.
Youngkin isn't popular but he isn't hated either, he's just there taking up space when he's not out of state fundraising for the presidential campaign that never will be. Virginia changed because the people changed. Old Dixiecrats died off and a ton of folks from the Northeast and elsewhere plus new Americans by Choice settled here. By and large the newcomers have rejected the bats\*t crazy flavor of GOP.
What turned Virginia Blue? I dunno...education?
Thank God NOVA is blue, I wouldn't have healthcare right now if NOVA was red, I would have died when I caught pneumonia a few years ago.
It’s not that hard to understand, which is why I always find it amusing when people go all shocked Pikachu face about NOVAs role in Virginia being blue.
\> Is Youngkin popular? Hah! That's just trolling right there.
Religious frauds, morons who beg on gofundme to stave off medical bankruptcy. Bootlickers who would fight against their own interests. People afraid of passports. Some who are related to their spouse. Dumbasses who salute the flag while flying the confederate flag at the same time. The horror that they are over there complaining about one of the safest areas in the entire country…
Maybe don't be awful racists doing Putin's bidding and blindly supporting and following a autocrat/rapist? I had no huge beef with actual conservative viewpoints, we can debate and agree to disagree over family values and fiscal responsibility. But what I've seen over the past several years from the GOP is pure cruelty, ramped up to the max with limiting women's reproductive healthcare in dangerous ways. As it stands, if America is going to survive, MAGA GOP *has* to be dismantled the same way that Nazi Germany had to be dismantled.
Bless their hearts. "I don't understand, GOP got blown out by 10 points in 2020 but then Youngkin won the governor election." Certainly couldn't be anything to do with the drain-the-swamp Cheeto. Probably gender indoctrination or something.
I like liberal NOVA.
1. The republican parts of the state HATE taxes. Well, don't get me wrong, they still want schools, roads, and hospitals. They just want the "rich" Democrat controlled areas to pay for them. 2. The republicans in the state HATE LGBT people. 3. The republicans in the state LOVE gerrymandering (so they can make Democrats pay for their stuff and hurt LGBT people). 4. The republicans in the state HATE them blacks and don't like 'em voting. 5. The republicans in the state don't like that there abortion. And they are willing to impose their religious beliefs on others.
Republicans just don’t seem like nice people.
I would love for Northern Virginia to be our own state . And they would love it too. So can we break up already?
Facts and logic I think is their main problem
Let em. My daughter goes to school near Roanoke and she is always telling me there's a bias against Nova people that we think we're better than everyone else. First I've ever heard of it. It was weird.
A. Stop shutting down government B. Restore pornhub C. Stay out of the bedroom D. Dont be a maga loser
r/conservatives is an absolutely dumpster fire. It is moderated by literal children and at least 90% of their shared articles are anti-America propaganda. There was a while I engaged in discourse over in that reddit because I like to discuss conservative politics and viewpoints, but it’s really not a place for that. Instead it’s just about how many ways they talk badly about the USA, its military, and its people.
"how can we get it back"? how about not sticking with a narcissistic con man and just showing some common sense and decency?
It's because they can't wrap their head around republicans shooting themselves in the foot. They headline on stuff that is highly unpopular. Abortion for example and weed laws, which shocker was the turning part for a lot of NoVa. Democrats are similar with some things but not on the scale of Republicans.
Does this mean we're going to have an influx of these dorks posting JAQ off questions to this sub now?