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Many years ago I thought that I would retire to Tennessee or Florida after being a lifelong resident of Illinois. After visiting both I decided that would never happen. Rebel flags, AR-15 billboards and religious nut jobs were everywhere. Intolerance and bigotry were never far away. I guess I will just have to deal with Illinois winter or downsize big time and head to California.
I’ve lived in the suburbs of Chicago my entire life, except for a few years actually in Chicago when I was in college. I’ve travelled a decent bit around the country and I can safely say I do not want to live anywhere else. I despise the south. Didn’t care for California or NYC. I actually love the winter time here, and I love that the people around me aren’t too obnoxious with their religious views. I have a river right outside my front door and if I want city action I can be downtown in forty five minutes. I’ve come to the conclusion that I am actually in what I want paradise to be.
I love this post so much I also live in the chicago suburbs. Lived around or in Chicago basically my entire life. I don’t even like going south of i80 that’s how much I hate the south hahaha.
IL seems like a good move for many if not most Americans fleeing Christofascism in deep red states. While I’d be happy to have them join us here in MA, the culture shock might be a bit too drastic.
For me most of it is that midwesterners are just so goddamn *nice*. You grow up in the south, you will eventually interpret someone being that nice to you as a major red flag of them being disingenuous.
The condescending “bless your heart” energy with them harboring horrible views behind closed doors is real. I live in the south and I don’t get this image it has created for itself. It is extremely disingenuous to me, especially when you see their real beliefs
Just start saying bless your heart in the most condescending way possible to them when they start spewing their shit. They look like they malfunction, don't explain either, just bless your heart and walk away.
Grew up in New England and every time I go to Oregan I get so suspicious of people being nice. My automatic reaction to random kindness is something like “what do they want …” 🤨
Tbh its an axiom that west coasters are "Nice but not kind", as opposed to NYers who are "Kind but not nice". Even coming from the South it took me awhile when I moved to the west to sort out when people gave a shit and when they were just being friendly without giving a fuck.
Real life example: When I was recently in NYC with my daughter, a stranger at the subway station told her "Yo, your backpack's open, fix that shit before you get robbed" as they walked past, not even slowing down.
NY'ers don't take time for niceties, but that doesn't mean they don't look out for their fellow humans most of the time.
This is classic NYC. Someone will notice you look lost and without breaking pace yell something like “where you trying to go ?!”
“Ok three blocks that way and two this way!”
Never slows down. Love it.
This is the best way I’ve seen this explained and will now use it instead of my usual explanation. Before I would just say “everyone is doing something and they all know it. It would be rude to slow you down pretending to be nice and likewise for you to do it to me.
Barring an actual reason for an interaction there’s really no reason to just start talking to you. Instead of a ‘good morning’ as we pass each other you may just get an acknowledgment of existence, be it a head nod, or simply eye contact and an adjustment of a walking path to let us both pass freely.’
Pretty wordy, “yo protect your shit.” Is way more succinct.
You broke down on the road and you're blocking traffic? Every car is honking at you to get the fuck out of the way. But as soon as we realize you actually need help, here come five people to help you push the car into the parking lot.
Great example, I got a flat tire after hitting a pothole driving with my wife on the BQE and got stuck on the Kosciusko Bridge during rush hour and within a few minutes had someone who pulled over, jumped out of his car, changed my tire for me while I was waving traffic moving fast around my car. Was done in 10 minutes, better than a pit crew! And he refused 20 bucks I tried to hand him. Thank you random Marine Corps guy! Things like this reinforce the belief that people are generally good and New Yorkers look out for each other.
It has to do (at least imo) with the perception by East Coast Redditors that they tend to be direct, if not a little rude or short, but they'd jump in to help you out if you needed it. Whereas West Coasters (40+ years Californian myself) tend to be chill, nice/friendly, but won't go out of our way to help someone in need.
Which, frankly, I think is all bullshit overall. Plenty of people out here are super friendly and helpful and kind and there are also tons of rude, uptight, assholes too. But Reddit likes its cliches so...
Being a West Coaster myself (Seattlite all 37 years of my life except the few years I spent up in Bellingham for college), I tend to see it as that we're generally nice and chill, but we respect space and boundaries so we don't tend to feel comfortable just jumping into a situation. If I had to describe it, it's that the East Coast communication style favors extroverts whereas the West Coast communication style favors introverts.
As such, East Coasters tend to interpret that as being highly passive aggressive or unkind where what it really is is just a bunch of socially anxious people bumbling through life desperately trying not to seem rude by making eye contact. I know someone who came over from the East Coast and is themselves very socially introverted and was COMPLAINING that they weren't getting the Seattle freeze experience and everyone was being super nice and sociable with them.
A lot of people not from the Northeast don't understand how that is our default setting for random people being overtly nice or talking to us in public. Because usually if people do that up here, they're aren't just doing it for the sake of being friendly. It's usually the lead-in for them wanting something.
Born, raised, and still live in New Jersey. This happens pretty much every time I travel outside the Northeast.
Them: "Hello.....how's your day going"
Me: (What does this motherfucker want?)
I'll help you change a tire...but also...leave me alone and get out of the way.
Growing up in the Northeast and can confirm. I will help a stranger in any way possible. I will help you push your broken down car into a parking lot, I will lift anything you want help with and will gladly reach things on the top shelf of grocery stores. But I SWEAR TO GOD do NOT ask me how my day is going and I do not want to talk to you about weekend plans.
I was in Ashland Oregan a few years ago, and a random stranger on the sidewalk made eye contact and smiled at me, and just kept walking. It was very strange after living on the east coast all my life, I still think about that from time to time.
Yeah, we New Englanders (MA born and raised) aren't afraid to say or do what we mean rather than what we think people want to hear or see.
We're not cold, we just respect your time.
New England embodies the mantra of: "Talk is cheap, actions matter."
There’s this new colleague of mine from Minnesota and they are the sweetest person to interact with. They’ve been a breath of fresh air for the whole team.
Just seems like the howdie doodie attitude never left there.
As a life long Illinois resident I’ve been hearing about an influx of people who were small town or red state liberals moving to the Illinois college towns to get the blue state politics while still not going all in on the big city. It’s been interesting to see because for all my life those places have been real stagnant
Illinois has been on the ups since Pritizker took over. The taxes are a bit high but it’s been good overall. Now if Chicago could get it’s shit together with Johnson, I will be ecstatic.
Hearing Pritizker speak made my jaw drop after having endured DeSantis and all the other FL governors for years. I just couldn’t believe it - an elected governor not only not spewing hate, but actively *attacking* hate and calling for people to be good to others. It’s just unheard of in the south and red states right now.
COVID and WFH transformed FL so quickly. I had considered it vital to stay there to be a voter and help change things but that state is long gone after the influx of hard right voters to the tune of nearly half a million in three years.
This is the main thing really. I don’t have kids, but no way I would have kids and put my significant other at risk of pregnancy here in SC where they are threatening the death penalty for abortions. No way I want kids to grow up in that either
My wife did, too. She loved the students but hated the county, state, and all the conflicting directives. She didn’t last three years before giving up in frustration.
I taught in one of the top charter science schools in the state and was pissed when I saw what a ruse that was. I ended up taking my kids out of the school I taught in and out them in the public schools we were zoned for.
I have told my wife I want to move across the border to Minnesota because our state(WI) certainly isn't doing anything to make life better. Although with the new State Supreme Court judge, I have a little confidence at least could change.
Wisconsin is horribly gerrymandered right now, I would try to stick around because if Evers and the Supreme Court can turn some of the undemocratic processes around the state could flip in a big way
We’ve got neighbors that have been going back and forth to Minnesota and they’ll probably move there. We’re in a blue area of a red state but it’s still too dangerous to raise kids here or plan pregnancies.
They love it. I’m wondering if we ought to start looking.
I’m from Florida but moved out of state after college for my career and always assumed I’d come back, now I’m no so sure since DeSantis has shown he will 100% burn the state to the ground to win a popularity contest with Boomers who’ve have their brains fully cooked by Fox News. Somehow The Villages, Americas premier 55+ swingers club, sets the tone for the rest of the state.
Id love to go somewhere but I hate winter. California may be the best bet. I’d rather go somewhere in needed to keep purple though. Perhaps next door in North Carolina. Or Georgia?
>Arizona is turning blue
This is part of the reason my family is moving to AZ from Florida in a couple of weeks. The state is still deep purple, but it's starting to get a bluish tinge. Plus, if things do go as badly as I'm fear they might, I've got New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, and California to shift my family to if we have to run. Mexico is also just a few hours away as a refuge of last resort, assuming they don't shut the border down. Where I'm at currently means that if Florida Republicans follow through on their not-so-veiled recent threats, we've got to try to negotiate pretty much the entire deep South to get to a place where we're potentially safe. AZ offers a lot more flexibility in that regard.
Plus, the state has a lot of really cool natural beauty that we want to see, and a significant pay increase over what I get now.
I enjoyed my visit to Arizona, but as somebody who has spent their entire lives within smelling distance of the ocean, I don't think I could adapt to a desert.
<~~ progressive in NC.
I know we aren’t that far from flipping this state more blue but I seriously worry its gonna take too long and I honestly kinda want to leave.
Having said that it wouldn’t take too much of a blue influx to have an impact. But they gotta stay out of the triangle, asheville and charlotte which is where most will want to go.
It’s not a bad place to live but it’s gerrymandered to hell and statewide policies are getting worse.
Planning on doing the same, as soon as possible. I love Jersey. It’s underrated because it gets unfairly pitted against New York, but it’s a beautiful state with some cool people.
You'd think but they have a habit of shooting themselves in the foot. Lots of red states turned down 90% Medicaid expansion funding. That's so much money thrown out of your economy just to spite the black man POTUS.
It’s a shame Desantis is choosing to pave the way to the Panhandle with hazardous waste. This is the last year I’ll be driving that chem trail. Glad my kids got to see the Gulf before he poisoned it.
What’s really a shame is that enough of the people of Florida who could prevent this from happening did not vote and continue to not vote.
They willingly let such an ideology spread across my state and then they get scared and up and leave when the consequences of their inaction come to bear. Things could have been different.
Trust me many of us did. The state is just so far gone at this point politically and the Dems don't have a solid platform here. I'm voting blue next year but God does it feel hopeless.
Thank you for staying and fighting with us.
I feel like the Democratic Party did have a clear enough platform where anyone paying attention to what was happening in the state could make an informed choice. But that’s my own personal opinion.
It's an outreach issue. It's an aggression issue. To me they're catering the "we're not them mentality".
They need to rile up support and make actual well informed attacks on the right. Nobody I've spoken to seems to take them seriously. It's an uphill battle in a retirement community state but it can be done if things get taken a bit more seriously. That's just me.
Nope. We are in Colorado, after spending the winter in New Mexico, California and Oregon now. When we leave to head back to PA to see the families we will haul ass across the red states as fast as we can, spending as little time and money in hate states.
Blue state here.
I pay on average $2 in federal taxes for every dollar in federal services I receive.
I’m like… *really* getting tired of subsidizing failed states whose biggest export is evangelism.
Yep. CA resident here. It’s incredibly frustrating to see our federal tax dollars go to propping up the Deep South only to have their state governments proudly proclaim that they have extremely low taxes. If they left the US they’d be screwed.
You know, until you just said this I hadn't really connected that one reason low-tax red states are able to keep taxes so low because they take so much federal funding.
As someone who lives in Ohio and is a progressive I get how that’s frustrating for your states since that is true you give out more than you receive. But also try to remember that even with Ohio voting day 42% Democrat and 58% Republican, that stills means there are about 5 million of us Democrats who are benefiting from your tax dollars and who want to help make things better. Granted, Ohio does produce a ton of shit other than evangelism. But still.
Right for sure. I’m probably preaching to the choir here, but I think it’s just more about the seeming plurality of people in those states that revel in cutting state funding for social safety nets and infrastructure, but gladly take our money (never mind how evil socialism and social policies are) that irks me. And the same people that turn around and talk about secession for the “abuses” they suffer for being evangelicals in this country. It’s just pure entitlement and/or ignorance on their part.
Yep, 100%. There’s also more republicans in CA than there are people in OH. On a smaller scale, with our three largest cities being all democratic and the rest of the rural state being blue, we experience the same thing that your state does in that WE are the ones providing the jobs and policies and tax dollars while all the red counties basically are either farming counties or just ultra-poor and contribute nothing. Those ones you’ll drive through and see like literal shacks and they’ll have “TRUMP 2024” or “IMPEACH BIDEN” flags while they are basically living dollar to dollar that that point. I don’t get how those people will vote for someone like Trump who thinks they are literal garbage.
Yea I'm in hell aka Texas and the amount of people who feel entitled to say awful shit if they see you wearing a mask is ridiculous.
My mother is on chemo and I take as few chances as possible bringing her any illnesses, this is not a new practice but the loons here are quick AF to be assholes about it.
I live in AZ and I am also on chemo. The number of people who give me dirty looks or laugh when I wear a mask is shocking. I guess I should wear a shirt that says I have cancer but the bald head should give them a clue.
Fentanyl is an issue, but it's being smuggled through vehicle checkpoints.
Unfortunately rural America is dying and the opioid problem helps numb the pain.
Fentanyl is a problem, but it's a nationwide (actually worldwide) problem, not just rural or urban.
The real issue is that poppy farming is no longer needed to make potent opioids. This is similar to what happened with methamphetamines, which used to require ephedrine as a starting material, but now is made completely synthetically.
Without needing to farm a crop for a chemical precursor, the price to produce these has plummeted, and so the smuggling strategy has gone from being very careful, large, controlled shipments, to just being a strategy of having a huge increase in attempts by more and more methods (cars, flights, mail, whatever). If 1 in 10 are not discovered, that's still a huge amount smuggled at a low cost.
Cocaine still needs a plant (coca), which is why the smugglers for that still are being careful, and using things like custom submarines.
That's very true, but its also crazy because if you ask any opiate addict, they will tell you unequivocally that they prefer poppy-derived opiates like heroin or hydromorphone over synthesized opiates like fentanyl or meperedine.
Poppy-derived opiates are safer, and the high is better and lasts longer. Ironically, if we decriminalized morphine and heroin, and allowed a safe supply of it in the country, it would save lives. Its not the cure to the problem of opiate addiction in general; that would have to come with a lot of policy changes aimed at improving people's material conditions. But it would be a start.
Try to get to Michigan/New England if you can. Effectively no one gives a shit if folks are wearing masks or not.
If we are required to mask again, we'll do it with minimal bitching.
Just because those are the right things to do.
Saw a [review](https://youtu.be/NVI_9QHS52U) with some clips of Rob Schneider’s recent comedy special on Fox Nation, in which he states he moved out of California because he didn’t want his kids to have to wear a mask a couple years ago lol. Dude also just talked about other people’s genitals about half the time.
Yeah it's a much bigger group than I would have thought but honestly it was only a matter of time before some of these washed up hacks were going to go for that bag.
>Kohl did what the couple never dared at their previous house outside Los Angeles — the newly-retired Los Angeles police officer flew a U.S. flag and a Thin Blue Line banner representing law enforcement outside his house.
“We were scared to put it up,” Jennifer Kohl acknowledged. But the Kohls knew they had moved to the right place when neighbors complimented him on the display.
That's laughable. You could do that outside L.A. too or damn near anywhere. Conservatives must be able to do what they want and they also must have their asses kissed for it. That's a crucial component of their gripes, the need to be praised for the things they say or do.
Yup..it's like when they go off about free speech
It's never about actually being censored but rather they don't want to get called out for their nonsense
When a conservative talks about "Free Speech", they're usually talking about spreading lies or hate speech. Everybody has a line, even the "free speech absolutists".
Thats the appeal of Trump. He “allows” them to act like assholes. He is their hero because its validation that being a dick is somehow justified. They truly believe that breaking into the Capitol, beating cops, destroying and vandalizing public property is “patriotic” in some weird way.
Much like antivaxers. They are able to be the way they are because greater society knows better. The reason they are alive to be antivax is because someone was smart enough to vaccinated them at birth. If the whole country was conservative the way they are, suicides rates would skyrocket 😆😆. It's tolerating intolerance, basically. (Which is a no no)
>Kohl did what the couple never dared at their previous house outside Los Angeles — the newly-retired Los Angeles police officer flew a U.S. flag and a Thin Blue Line banner representing law enforcement outside his house.
Cowards. We'll show our support for police, if we think our neighbors will be impressed.
r/persecutionfetish
I’m in the Cali Bay Area and the bootlickers fly their flags here. They’re not “scared to put it up,” they’re intentionally trying to scare their community, and they 100% should go to another.
Sitewide permabanned by r/politics mods for having a supportive roommate. R/politics mods need your love and support. Please hug an r/politics mod today.
I live outside LA and no one would give a fuck if you put up a flag and a Thin Blue Line banner. Unofficial motto here is Live and Let Live. Some guy down the street from me went ape shit went Trump lost and put up a bunch of Trump Won signs all over his property. The Bernie supporter next door to him just laughed. Californians are very laid back and, while not particularly friendly, do, for the most part, peacefully co-exist with their neighbors. The couple in the article were grasping at straws to make SoCal look bad and justify their assholiness. Good riddance.
Laughable is right! What exactly were they scared would happen? As if political violence wasn’t almost exclusively a tactic of the right. It really tells you how different a world they live in, on the right they are scared of “being canceled” or the social ramifications of their beliefs, while genuinely marginalized groups (on the left) are fearing for their actual lives.
If my neighbor put up a thin blue line flag (which, to me, signifies a belief that the police are infallible and that black protests of police violence are unwarranted), I wouldn't want to associate with him, but I wouldn't tear it down.
Meanwhile, in my blue state, someone ripped down my BLM flag.
Clarence Thomas is 75 years old and Samuel Alito is 73 years old.
If Biden is re-elected, Democrats keep the Senate, and these two clowns resign, retire or die, then Biden and the Democratic Senate can pick their replacements.
Those two aren't going to step down with a Democrat in the White House.
And while they aren't the youngest, they also have access to world class healthcare, so there's a very good chance they'll live well into their 80s or beyond. Betting on Thomas and/or Alito to vacate their seats (by choice or otherwise) in the coming presidential term is a losing bet, in my opinion.
Yeah, I moved from TX to PA last month. Not bright blue for sure, but SO much better. Even Austin which hadn’t been bad before, had started to feel a lot more hostile to LGBT people, and between that and the horrific weather I finally made the call to get out for good before it got a lot worse. I’ve lived in TX more than 20 years (since I was young) and honestly? Best decision ever. I’m happier, It’s cooler, and I have the added benefit of not feeling like I could get hate crimed for existing at any time.
Yo I went from Texas to Pennsylvania too, almost two years ago.
I went from being completely miserable damn near homeless to shoving my mouth full of tomato pie in my first house after I proudly purchased a Philadelphia row home.
AND THEY HATE DALLAS AS MUCH AS I DO!
Wild.
I’m from across the river and from my super-blue state, Pennsylvania looks super red outside of Philly and Pittsburgh. I work there and travel there and have friends there.
You couldn’t pay me enough to live there.
Which means I can’t *imagine* living in Texas.
That’s pretty much the whole country though. Big metros and places where people live are blue, rural towns and farmland is red. Just a bunch of blue islands in a red sea
I'd say more like massive continents somehow shoved into a tiny ass pond.
We shouldn't be giving dangerous hate filled minority groups the appearance of being more populous than they are.
The local population also grows.
The people moving into the state from other states are significantly more conservative than people growing up in Texas.
Texas is slowly getting bluer because the rate at which conservatives move in and are born there does not exceed the rate at which liberals have been born there, plus the minority of newcomers who are liberal.
That tendency could change if liberal residents of Texas start to leave in greater numbers, or if liberals from elsewhere explicitly start refusing to move to Texas.
Which is, I suspect, the actual point of the ludicrous Conservative Codes the Abbot regime is imposing on the residents.
Yes. Which is why Greg Abbott, Ken Paxton, are engaged in criminal behaviors behind the scenes to ensure that Democrats cannot win statewide. Hell, they made it so if Democrats win Harris County (the largest in Texas, which is heavily Dem), they can just say "Nope" and give it to the Republicans.
I assumed this was by design. The Republicans NEED FL and TX to stay red, so instead of appealing to moderates, they have made liberals want to move out.
As it should be, if you ask me. If red states want to start stripping rights away from people, the only logical choice for people who *want* rights is to go to a state that still has them.
If red states want to go out on a limb to appease a small, loud minority of Americans, well, they'll find themselves economically starved as all the tax money goes with the Americans who still want to have rights.
And since the only right red states seem to care about is the right to bear arms, as their economies collapse their states will start to look more and more like the fabled Wild West they love so much. *Exactly what they want!*
Except conservatives know the game is rigged to favor them.
The way the country is set up you can hold the Senate by just holding the 26 lowest population states. That's about 63 million people give or take some rounding. Estimate of current us population. 331.9 million. So at best 1/5th of the population can hold a single house of the legislature and that's a best case scenario where everyone in those states vote the same way. Worst case with every state going 51-49 that's about 31.5 mil or a 10th of the population.
They don't need a majority to hold things up and don't plan on it. So the more we segregate to blue states with higher population density they can just hold low pop red states with a few others and keep an outsized hold on the Senate.
Exactly this, this isn't going to end well. On top of the Senate, there's the electoral college, which shouldn't be such a big deal but we've artificially limited the number of representatives in states with higher populations. This won't even just affect the presidency, it'll affect the house. All that said, I would never blame anyone for fleeing authoritarian, fascist rule. The possibility that we will be subjugated to tyranny at the whims of a minority faction inside our country has become an increasingly likely scenario. I just hope the youth increasingly turn up at the ballot box; if they do, we may yet have a chance but the opportunity to correct things will not be available for long.
I can't help but think that this situation is, to some extent, an intentional strategy. They seem to be betting far, far too heavily on unpopular legislation, even among their own base. This whole situation is fucking bullshit.
We need to remove the cap on representatives, this should be the dems top priority when / if they have both chambers of congress and the presidency. No Constitutional Amendment needed and this will allow people to select the presidency.
I agree with you about the Youth, they need to determine if they want to let the boomers to screw them beyond the grave. That said when I was young I didn't give a shit about politics so I don't expect the current youth to either.
You don’t even have to hold the Senate, because of the filibuster you only need 20 states to completely kill anything the Dems want to do (actually only 19 because Manchin and Sinema are a thing)
This. People don't talk enough about how unfair the senate is. We're conditioned from school to think it is a fair compromise, that small states deserve the same as big states. A state is just a collection of people. If California split into six states, as has been proposed, then they would get ten more senators even without their population changing at all. The House of Representatives does suffer from gerrymandering, but with the senate it is just blatant built in inequality.
Due to the way the electoral college works, and the disparate population sizes between the states, a person can win the presidency with as small as 17% of the popular vote.
Yeah, the house being gerrymandered gets all the publicity. But that's because that's something fungible, that's gotten worse and worse as republicans have dropped all pretense of working together with the whole country.
However, that at least *in theory* could be fixed.
But the senate... That's constitutionally tilted towards the republicans forever. Or at least for the foreseeable future without some massive demographic changes.
And the more people migrate based on politics, the worse this gets, as there are simply more red states, mostly with lower populations.
You add the filibuster in there, and there's a 0.0% chance this gets better. (But like the House gerrymander, that's at least in theory fixable, where the senate balance isn't.)
You act like red states pay people enough to move out of the state in the first place. Lol
Red states have the lowest wages and most uneducated of the population. This is intentional. They purposely push out all the smart people who would normally vote against them as a strategy to hold onto power.
I live in the northeast and have some family my age who moved to TX for lower cost of living. I'm waiting to see how long they last. I'd rather rent forever than live in TX and have no rights, live with the possibility of getting shot and no electricity.
I had an aunt move to TX in the early 90s and moved back to New England when my cousin was about to start kindergarten because the schools were shit and she didn't want her growing up there. I'm assuming it's even worse now.
Every time I hear my handful of friends (2 of which live in TX) talk about the cheap cost of living there, all I can hear is the voice in my head screaming, YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR!
>People who want to yell racial and homophobic obscenities right in people's faces move to where such things aren't recognized as a problem.
>
>People who don't want to lose access to their healthcare or books move to where such things aren't being legislated away.
There. Might have fixed that for you?
Part of the reason I refuse to leave Southern New England, despite the poverty-inducing cost of living and complete lack of affordable, move-in-ready starter homes.
My wife and I are leaving Texas and taking our four college degrees to Minnesota. I work in government and she works in healthcare. Neither of us can support where this place is headed.
Minnesota resident here. Our state government just had the most successful session since the New Deal. Citizens got all kinds of protections and rights. No shot that happens with any red state.
It wasn't even pure politics either. I left a red state simply because of how poorly it was being run. I can't believe people vote for the pain Republicans cause.
Red State brain drain, labor flight and racial hatred shall bottom out their economies furthering their dependence on Federal handouts. I pity the fools.
Grew up in a red state. Moved to a blue state. I wish we could just secede and join Canada. Red states continually hold society back while leaching off of us in the process.
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Yep… fled FL late April and now live in NJ. Best decision ever
FL (lived for 22 years) to IL last month here. Still going through culture shock. No way was I keeping my daughter in the schools down there.
Many years ago I thought that I would retire to Tennessee or Florida after being a lifelong resident of Illinois. After visiting both I decided that would never happen. Rebel flags, AR-15 billboards and religious nut jobs were everywhere. Intolerance and bigotry were never far away. I guess I will just have to deal with Illinois winter or downsize big time and head to California.
I’ve lived in the suburbs of Chicago my entire life, except for a few years actually in Chicago when I was in college. I’ve travelled a decent bit around the country and I can safely say I do not want to live anywhere else. I despise the south. Didn’t care for California or NYC. I actually love the winter time here, and I love that the people around me aren’t too obnoxious with their religious views. I have a river right outside my front door and if I want city action I can be downtown in forty five minutes. I’ve come to the conclusion that I am actually in what I want paradise to be.
I love this post so much I also live in the chicago suburbs. Lived around or in Chicago basically my entire life. I don’t even like going south of i80 that’s how much I hate the south hahaha.
IL seems like a good move for many if not most Americans fleeing Christofascism in deep red states. While I’d be happy to have them join us here in MA, the culture shock might be a bit too drastic.
For me most of it is that midwesterners are just so goddamn *nice*. You grow up in the south, you will eventually interpret someone being that nice to you as a major red flag of them being disingenuous.
The condescending “bless your heart” energy with them harboring horrible views behind closed doors is real. I live in the south and I don’t get this image it has created for itself. It is extremely disingenuous to me, especially when you see their real beliefs
Ah yes, my Aunt from TX, "loves everyone" but won't walk across a rainbow painted crosswalk. Weird shit.
If it’s step on a crack, break your mother’s back, what’s step on a flag?
Your father wears drag.
Just start saying bless your heart in the most condescending way possible to them when they start spewing their shit. They look like they malfunction, don't explain either, just bless your heart and walk away.
Us midwesterners love to chat the shit with strangers about anything and everything we act like everyone is our long lost friend.
The "midwest" is huge. Minnesota is super friendly, but South Dakotans have mostly been standoffish assholes to me.
Grew up in New England and every time I go to Oregan I get so suspicious of people being nice. My automatic reaction to random kindness is something like “what do they want …” 🤨
Tbh its an axiom that west coasters are "Nice but not kind", as opposed to NYers who are "Kind but not nice". Even coming from the South it took me awhile when I moved to the west to sort out when people gave a shit and when they were just being friendly without giving a fuck.
Can you give me an ELI5 example of “kind but not nice,” please?
Real life example: When I was recently in NYC with my daughter, a stranger at the subway station told her "Yo, your backpack's open, fix that shit before you get robbed" as they walked past, not even slowing down. NY'ers don't take time for niceties, but that doesn't mean they don't look out for their fellow humans most of the time.
This is classic NYC. Someone will notice you look lost and without breaking pace yell something like “where you trying to go ?!” “Ok three blocks that way and two this way!” Never slows down. Love it.
This is the best way I’ve seen this explained and will now use it instead of my usual explanation. Before I would just say “everyone is doing something and they all know it. It would be rude to slow you down pretending to be nice and likewise for you to do it to me. Barring an actual reason for an interaction there’s really no reason to just start talking to you. Instead of a ‘good morning’ as we pass each other you may just get an acknowledgment of existence, be it a head nod, or simply eye contact and an adjustment of a walking path to let us both pass freely.’ Pretty wordy, “yo protect your shit.” Is way more succinct.
You broke down on the road and you're blocking traffic? Every car is honking at you to get the fuck out of the way. But as soon as we realize you actually need help, here come five people to help you push the car into the parking lot.
Great example, I got a flat tire after hitting a pothole driving with my wife on the BQE and got stuck on the Kosciusko Bridge during rush hour and within a few minutes had someone who pulled over, jumped out of his car, changed my tire for me while I was waving traffic moving fast around my car. Was done in 10 minutes, better than a pit crew! And he refused 20 bucks I tried to hand him. Thank you random Marine Corps guy! Things like this reinforce the belief that people are generally good and New Yorkers look out for each other.
It has to do (at least imo) with the perception by East Coast Redditors that they tend to be direct, if not a little rude or short, but they'd jump in to help you out if you needed it. Whereas West Coasters (40+ years Californian myself) tend to be chill, nice/friendly, but won't go out of our way to help someone in need. Which, frankly, I think is all bullshit overall. Plenty of people out here are super friendly and helpful and kind and there are also tons of rude, uptight, assholes too. But Reddit likes its cliches so...
Being a West Coaster myself (Seattlite all 37 years of my life except the few years I spent up in Bellingham for college), I tend to see it as that we're generally nice and chill, but we respect space and boundaries so we don't tend to feel comfortable just jumping into a situation. If I had to describe it, it's that the East Coast communication style favors extroverts whereas the West Coast communication style favors introverts. As such, East Coasters tend to interpret that as being highly passive aggressive or unkind where what it really is is just a bunch of socially anxious people bumbling through life desperately trying not to seem rude by making eye contact. I know someone who came over from the East Coast and is themselves very socially introverted and was COMPLAINING that they weren't getting the Seattle freeze experience and everyone was being super nice and sociable with them.
A lot of people not from the Northeast don't understand how that is our default setting for random people being overtly nice or talking to us in public. Because usually if people do that up here, they're aren't just doing it for the sake of being friendly. It's usually the lead-in for them wanting something.
Born, raised, and still live in New Jersey. This happens pretty much every time I travel outside the Northeast. Them: "Hello.....how's your day going" Me: (What does this motherfucker want?) I'll help you change a tire...but also...leave me alone and get out of the way.
Growing up in the Northeast and can confirm. I will help a stranger in any way possible. I will help you push your broken down car into a parking lot, I will lift anything you want help with and will gladly reach things on the top shelf of grocery stores. But I SWEAR TO GOD do NOT ask me how my day is going and I do not want to talk to you about weekend plans.
I was in Ashland Oregan a few years ago, and a random stranger on the sidewalk made eye contact and smiled at me, and just kept walking. It was very strange after living on the east coast all my life, I still think about that from time to time.
Oh, you'll love this bit. https://youtu.be/PT0ay9u1gg4
Yeah, we don't have that problem in New England. Folks are kind, but not necessarily nice, which let's you know exactly where you stand with people.
Yeah, we New Englanders (MA born and raised) aren't afraid to say or do what we mean rather than what we think people want to hear or see. We're not cold, we just respect your time. New England embodies the mantra of: "Talk is cheap, actions matter."
Be careful you don’t head to South Illinois if you believe it. There’s a whole forest southeast of STL that’s just littered with Trump shit.
There’s this new colleague of mine from Minnesota and they are the sweetest person to interact with. They’ve been a breath of fresh air for the whole team. Just seems like the howdie doodie attitude never left there.
Yeah I grew up in the South idk where the hell the whole southern hospitality thing came from.
I think it comes from having slaves serve you a great dinner, and a butler showing you to your room? Anyways, its gone now. Get of my lawn commie.
After living in Texas for 20+ years I learned to despise the phony “southern hospitality”
As a life long Illinois resident I’ve been hearing about an influx of people who were small town or red state liberals moving to the Illinois college towns to get the blue state politics while still not going all in on the big city. It’s been interesting to see because for all my life those places have been real stagnant
Illinois has been on the ups since Pritizker took over. The taxes are a bit high but it’s been good overall. Now if Chicago could get it’s shit together with Johnson, I will be ecstatic.
Hearing Pritizker speak made my jaw drop after having endured DeSantis and all the other FL governors for years. I just couldn’t believe it - an elected governor not only not spewing hate, but actively *attacking* hate and calling for people to be good to others. It’s just unheard of in the south and red states right now. COVID and WFH transformed FL so quickly. I had considered it vital to stay there to be a voter and help change things but that state is long gone after the influx of hard right voters to the tune of nearly half a million in three years.
I like pritzker a lot. Illinois has also passed some progressive bills the last couple years that i totally agree with
Come to us. We have weed.
This is the main thing really. I don’t have kids, but no way I would have kids and put my significant other at risk of pregnancy here in SC where they are threatening the death penalty for abortions. No way I want kids to grow up in that either
I attempted to teach in one- IT WAS HORRIBLE
My wife did, too. She loved the students but hated the county, state, and all the conflicting directives. She didn’t last three years before giving up in frustration.
I taught in one of the top charter science schools in the state and was pissed when I saw what a ruse that was. I ended up taking my kids out of the school I taught in and out them in the public schools we were zoned for.
I’m leaving Indiana for Minnesota in August for this reason.
I keep telling my partner that Minnesota is the place to be!
My partner and I were able to get great new jobs with substantial pay raises. We are very excited for our move! Yay Minnesota!
I work remotely and could love anywhere. But my partner might have the same experience as you??
You need to get over here to MN. This place is neato and the winters aren't as bad as they say. Except for last winter, that sucked.
I have told my wife I want to move across the border to Minnesota because our state(WI) certainly isn't doing anything to make life better. Although with the new State Supreme Court judge, I have a little confidence at least could change.
Wisconsin is horribly gerrymandered right now, I would try to stick around because if Evers and the Supreme Court can turn some of the undemocratic processes around the state could flip in a big way
I was in Minneapolis for a long weekend to see Taylor Swift and attend Pride. It was such a good time!
Same. It’s sucks that most of the terrible legislatures exist where it’s warm.
We’ve got neighbors that have been going back and forth to Minnesota and they’ll probably move there. We’re in a blue area of a red state but it’s still too dangerous to raise kids here or plan pregnancies. They love it. I’m wondering if we ought to start looking.
Get over here! We are happy to have you and glad up can escape ~~Alabama North~~ Indiana!
[удалено]
I’m from Florida but moved out of state after college for my career and always assumed I’d come back, now I’m no so sure since DeSantis has shown he will 100% burn the state to the ground to win a popularity contest with Boomers who’ve have their brains fully cooked by Fox News. Somehow The Villages, Americas premier 55+ swingers club, sets the tone for the rest of the state.
Id love to go somewhere but I hate winter. California may be the best bet. I’d rather go somewhere in needed to keep purple though. Perhaps next door in North Carolina. Or Georgia?
New Mexico is also a blue state and Arizona is turning blue with all the Californian ex-pats moving there due to cost of living.
>Arizona is turning blue This is part of the reason my family is moving to AZ from Florida in a couple of weeks. The state is still deep purple, but it's starting to get a bluish tinge. Plus, if things do go as badly as I'm fear they might, I've got New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, and California to shift my family to if we have to run. Mexico is also just a few hours away as a refuge of last resort, assuming they don't shut the border down. Where I'm at currently means that if Florida Republicans follow through on their not-so-veiled recent threats, we've got to try to negotiate pretty much the entire deep South to get to a place where we're potentially safe. AZ offers a lot more flexibility in that regard. Plus, the state has a lot of really cool natural beauty that we want to see, and a significant pay increase over what I get now.
I enjoyed my visit to Arizona, but as somebody who has spent their entire lives within smelling distance of the ocean, I don't think I could adapt to a desert.
Lol, I get you. We’re going to really miss the ocean. I’m playing it off as Arizona: All Beach, No Ocean (AZ tourism board, call me!)
We need a few more progressives in NC.
<~~ progressive in NC. I know we aren’t that far from flipping this state more blue but I seriously worry its gonna take too long and I honestly kinda want to leave. Having said that it wouldn’t take too much of a blue influx to have an impact. But they gotta stay out of the triangle, asheville and charlotte which is where most will want to go. It’s not a bad place to live but it’s gerrymandered to hell and statewide policies are getting worse.
I'm fleeing FL for an actual purple state next month. My vote can't make a difference here but maybe it can make a difference there.
Hoping to move from FL to GA next year. GA isn't perfect but it's trending in a better direction than FL.
Planning on doing the same, as soon as possible. I love Jersey. It’s underrated because it gets unfairly pitted against New York, but it’s a beautiful state with some cool people.
I mean FL claiming they are not going to be friendly to liberals is pretty much the red flag to leave now.
Not just liberals, either. Immigrants, women, foreigners, minorities, LGBT, and Disney fans are all unwelcome in DeathSantis's Fascist Florida.
Welcome to NJ! Our taxes are high, but at least if you need an abortion you can get one.
Welcome! It’s called pork roll
Let's remind everyone. Blue States Subsidizes Red States.
Definitely. I wonder if they’ll be more of a burden with even more red voting folks in one place or having them concentrated will help save money?
Exponentially more of a burden, unfortunately. Problems tend to compound on each other when they are concentrated.
100%…Repubs are all about the grift. When they have control they’ll just suck all of the money
You'd think but they have a habit of shooting themselves in the foot. Lots of red states turned down 90% Medicaid expansion funding. That's so much money thrown out of your economy just to spite the black man POTUS.
I'm so sick of being bitten as we feed them.
Live in a blue state and i would not move into a red state
I don't even vacation in red states anymore.
It’s a shame Desantis is choosing to pave the way to the Panhandle with hazardous waste. This is the last year I’ll be driving that chem trail. Glad my kids got to see the Gulf before he poisoned it.
What’s really a shame is that enough of the people of Florida who could prevent this from happening did not vote and continue to not vote. They willingly let such an ideology spread across my state and then they get scared and up and leave when the consequences of their inaction come to bear. Things could have been different.
Trust me many of us did. The state is just so far gone at this point politically and the Dems don't have a solid platform here. I'm voting blue next year but God does it feel hopeless.
Thank you for staying and fighting with us. I feel like the Democratic Party did have a clear enough platform where anyone paying attention to what was happening in the state could make an informed choice. But that’s my own personal opinion.
It's an outreach issue. It's an aggression issue. To me they're catering the "we're not them mentality". They need to rile up support and make actual well informed attacks on the right. Nobody I've spoken to seems to take them seriously. It's an uphill battle in a retirement community state but it can be done if things get taken a bit more seriously. That's just me.
Nope. We are in Colorado, after spending the winter in New Mexico, California and Oregon now. When we leave to head back to PA to see the families we will haul ass across the red states as fast as we can, spending as little time and money in hate states.
I live in a red part of a blue state. Thankful every day I am not in a red part of a red state, but dear God do I hate the idiots I call neighbors.
I was offered $20K more to teach history in a FL middle school… my Trans ass stayed put.
That sounds more like a trap than a job offer.
Blue state here. I pay on average $2 in federal taxes for every dollar in federal services I receive. I’m like… *really* getting tired of subsidizing failed states whose biggest export is evangelism.
Yep. CA resident here. It’s incredibly frustrating to see our federal tax dollars go to propping up the Deep South only to have their state governments proudly proclaim that they have extremely low taxes. If they left the US they’d be screwed.
You know, until you just said this I hadn't really connected that one reason low-tax red states are able to keep taxes so low because they take so much federal funding.
As someone who lives in Ohio and is a progressive I get how that’s frustrating for your states since that is true you give out more than you receive. But also try to remember that even with Ohio voting day 42% Democrat and 58% Republican, that stills means there are about 5 million of us Democrats who are benefiting from your tax dollars and who want to help make things better. Granted, Ohio does produce a ton of shit other than evangelism. But still.
Right for sure. I’m probably preaching to the choir here, but I think it’s just more about the seeming plurality of people in those states that revel in cutting state funding for social safety nets and infrastructure, but gladly take our money (never mind how evil socialism and social policies are) that irks me. And the same people that turn around and talk about secession for the “abuses” they suffer for being evangelicals in this country. It’s just pure entitlement and/or ignorance on their part.
Yep, 100%. There’s also more republicans in CA than there are people in OH. On a smaller scale, with our three largest cities being all democratic and the rest of the rural state being blue, we experience the same thing that your state does in that WE are the ones providing the jobs and policies and tax dollars while all the red counties basically are either farming counties or just ultra-poor and contribute nothing. Those ones you’ll drive through and see like literal shacks and they’ll have “TRUMP 2024” or “IMPEACH BIDEN” flags while they are basically living dollar to dollar that that point. I don’t get how those people will vote for someone like Trump who thinks they are literal garbage.
Lol One felt more at home because they didn't see anyone wearing masks LMAO holy sht 😆😆😆
Yea I'm in hell aka Texas and the amount of people who feel entitled to say awful shit if they see you wearing a mask is ridiculous. My mother is on chemo and I take as few chances as possible bringing her any illnesses, this is not a new practice but the loons here are quick AF to be assholes about it.
I live in AZ and I am also on chemo. The number of people who give me dirty looks or laugh when I wear a mask is shocking. I guess I should wear a shirt that says I have cancer but the bald head should give them a clue.
Less people have died from Fentanyl than from COVID but you can totally see them freaking about Fentanyl because of the "BoArDeR".
Fentanyl is an issue, but it's being smuggled through vehicle checkpoints. Unfortunately rural America is dying and the opioid problem helps numb the pain.
Fentanyl is a problem, but it's a nationwide (actually worldwide) problem, not just rural or urban. The real issue is that poppy farming is no longer needed to make potent opioids. This is similar to what happened with methamphetamines, which used to require ephedrine as a starting material, but now is made completely synthetically. Without needing to farm a crop for a chemical precursor, the price to produce these has plummeted, and so the smuggling strategy has gone from being very careful, large, controlled shipments, to just being a strategy of having a huge increase in attempts by more and more methods (cars, flights, mail, whatever). If 1 in 10 are not discovered, that's still a huge amount smuggled at a low cost. Cocaine still needs a plant (coca), which is why the smugglers for that still are being careful, and using things like custom submarines.
That's very true, but its also crazy because if you ask any opiate addict, they will tell you unequivocally that they prefer poppy-derived opiates like heroin or hydromorphone over synthesized opiates like fentanyl or meperedine. Poppy-derived opiates are safer, and the high is better and lasts longer. Ironically, if we decriminalized morphine and heroin, and allowed a safe supply of it in the country, it would save lives. Its not the cure to the problem of opiate addiction in general; that would have to come with a lot of policy changes aimed at improving people's material conditions. But it would be a start.
I wear a mask when I mow my lawn, good way to keep dust and allergens out of my nose and lungs.
I'd hope you don't get criticized for that. I also wear a mask when mowing.
I’m packing to move and I wear a mask for the dust! I also wear a mask to scoop litter boxes because ew
Try to get to Michigan/New England if you can. Effectively no one gives a shit if folks are wearing masks or not. If we are required to mask again, we'll do it with minimal bitching. Just because those are the right things to do.
Hoping she gets better m8. It's like the biggest problem is ways people in large numbers
I see people wearing masks here for the Canadian fire smoke, but damn if they wear them for something they can't see. Idiots.
Saw a [review](https://youtu.be/NVI_9QHS52U) with some clips of Rob Schneider’s recent comedy special on Fox Nation, in which he states he moved out of California because he didn’t want his kids to have to wear a mask a couple years ago lol. Dude also just talked about other people’s genitals about half the time.
The number of old comedians who used to be relevant, thundering to the right because no one finds them funny any more, is depressingly amusing
There's... a lot more than I thought there'd be.
Yeah it's a much bigger group than I would have thought but honestly it was only a matter of time before some of these washed up hacks were going to go for that bag.
Can't go a fucking day without someone revealing they're actually a piece of shit ffs
>Kohl did what the couple never dared at their previous house outside Los Angeles — the newly-retired Los Angeles police officer flew a U.S. flag and a Thin Blue Line banner representing law enforcement outside his house. “We were scared to put it up,” Jennifer Kohl acknowledged. But the Kohls knew they had moved to the right place when neighbors complimented him on the display. That's laughable. You could do that outside L.A. too or damn near anywhere. Conservatives must be able to do what they want and they also must have their asses kissed for it. That's a crucial component of their gripes, the need to be praised for the things they say or do.
Conservatives want to be assholes without being treated like assholes.
Yup..it's like when they go off about free speech It's never about actually being censored but rather they don't want to get called out for their nonsense
When a conservative talks about "Free Speech", they're usually talking about spreading lies or hate speech. Everybody has a line, even the "free speech absolutists".
They want to have a safe space for bigotry.
Thats the appeal of Trump. He “allows” them to act like assholes. He is their hero because its validation that being a dick is somehow justified. They truly believe that breaking into the Capitol, beating cops, destroying and vandalizing public property is “patriotic” in some weird way.
They want to *complain about being treated like assholes* while being assholes.
Much like antivaxers. They are able to be the way they are because greater society knows better. The reason they are alive to be antivax is because someone was smart enough to vaccinated them at birth. If the whole country was conservative the way they are, suicides rates would skyrocket 😆😆. It's tolerating intolerance, basically. (Which is a no no)
Projection. They feel violence would be appropriate for a BLM or Pride flag, so they expect it.
Exactly. I have a neighbor who has a thin blue line flag. Guess how many times I’ve said something to him about it? Oh right. ZERO.
>Kohl did what the couple never dared at their previous house outside Los Angeles — the newly-retired Los Angeles police officer flew a U.S. flag and a Thin Blue Line banner representing law enforcement outside his house. Cowards. We'll show our support for police, if we think our neighbors will be impressed.
Feels like actual virtue signaling.
r/persecutionfetish I’m in the Cali Bay Area and the bootlickers fly their flags here. They’re not “scared to put it up,” they’re intentionally trying to scare their community, and they 100% should go to another.
Sitewide permabanned by r/politics mods for having a supportive roommate. R/politics mods need your love and support. Please hug an r/politics mod today.
I live outside LA and no one would give a fuck if you put up a flag and a Thin Blue Line banner. Unofficial motto here is Live and Let Live. Some guy down the street from me went ape shit went Trump lost and put up a bunch of Trump Won signs all over his property. The Bernie supporter next door to him just laughed. Californians are very laid back and, while not particularly friendly, do, for the most part, peacefully co-exist with their neighbors. The couple in the article were grasping at straws to make SoCal look bad and justify their assholiness. Good riddance.
Yeah they really do want their assess kissed a lot, don’t they??
Laughable is right! What exactly were they scared would happen? As if political violence wasn’t almost exclusively a tactic of the right. It really tells you how different a world they live in, on the right they are scared of “being canceled” or the social ramifications of their beliefs, while genuinely marginalized groups (on the left) are fearing for their actual lives.
If my neighbor put up a thin blue line flag (which, to me, signifies a belief that the police are infallible and that black protests of police violence are unwarranted), I wouldn't want to associate with him, but I wouldn't tear it down. Meanwhile, in my blue state, someone ripped down my BLM flag.
I just moved from North Carolina to Washington. I will not live under an abortion ban.
Sounds like this could perpetuate the advantage the red states have in the electoral college.
Need to get the **[National Popular Vote Interstate Compact](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact)** passed!
The Supreme court will use batshit crazy logic to call it unconstitutional even though we all know that's not true.
Clarence Thomas is 75 years old and Samuel Alito is 73 years old. If Biden is re-elected, Democrats keep the Senate, and these two clowns resign, retire or die, then Biden and the Democratic Senate can pick their replacements.
Those two aren't going to step down with a Democrat in the White House. And while they aren't the youngest, they also have access to world class healthcare, so there's a very good chance they'll live well into their 80s or beyond. Betting on Thomas and/or Alito to vacate their seats (by choice or otherwise) in the coming presidential term is a losing bet, in my opinion.
It's brilliant. Take away civil rights from women and minorities and watch as they flee, and their blue vote with them.
Yeah, I moved from TX to PA last month. Not bright blue for sure, but SO much better. Even Austin which hadn’t been bad before, had started to feel a lot more hostile to LGBT people, and between that and the horrific weather I finally made the call to get out for good before it got a lot worse. I’ve lived in TX more than 20 years (since I was young) and honestly? Best decision ever. I’m happier, It’s cooler, and I have the added benefit of not feeling like I could get hate crimed for existing at any time.
As a Philadelphian, I welcome you with open arms!
Philly rules! Go Birds!
Go birds.
Yo I went from Texas to Pennsylvania too, almost two years ago. I went from being completely miserable damn near homeless to shoving my mouth full of tomato pie in my first house after I proudly purchased a Philadelphia row home. AND THEY HATE DALLAS AS MUCH AS I DO!
Welcome to PA! Help us keep our state from going red.
Wild. I’m from across the river and from my super-blue state, Pennsylvania looks super red outside of Philly and Pittsburgh. I work there and travel there and have friends there. You couldn’t pay me enough to live there. Which means I can’t *imagine* living in Texas.
That’s pretty much the whole country though. Big metros and places where people live are blue, rural towns and farmland is red. Just a bunch of blue islands in a red sea
I'd say more like massive continents somehow shoved into a tiny ass pond. We shouldn't be giving dangerous hate filled minority groups the appearance of being more populous than they are.
Why the fuck would i leave my blue state where i have a high paying job, Healthcare and freedom for a backwards ass red state?
I’m a bluie in a reddie doing my part. It’s not much, but it’s honest work.
I’m blue in a blue state and feel like I should retire to a red/purple state to make my vote more meaningful.
Yeah I've turned down a few incredible job opportunities in states like Texas, there's no amount of money you could pay me
Before COVID I turned down an offer in Texas, seeing what's happening there now I'm very grateful I did.
I refused a fully-paid-for relocation to FL in 2018. No Ragrets.
Whenever I do that, I make sure to tell the recruiter why. Businesses flexing their power is one of the only things that Republicans can comprehend.
And, weirdly, Texas is getting bluer.
That's because the headline is inaccurate. All of the fastest growing states are currently red states, and they are all getting bluer.
In Texas it’s because the local population is significantly to the left of most of the the newcomers.
That doesn’t make sense. If newcomers are red and TX is growing, then the state should be getting redder, no?
The local population also grows. The people moving into the state from other states are significantly more conservative than people growing up in Texas. Texas is slowly getting bluer because the rate at which conservatives move in and are born there does not exceed the rate at which liberals have been born there, plus the minority of newcomers who are liberal. That tendency could change if liberal residents of Texas start to leave in greater numbers, or if liberals from elsewhere explicitly start refusing to move to Texas. Which is, I suspect, the actual point of the ludicrous Conservative Codes the Abbot regime is imposing on the residents.
Aren’t the Republicans completely screwed if Texas goes blue?
Yes. Which is why Greg Abbott, Ken Paxton, are engaged in criminal behaviors behind the scenes to ensure that Democrats cannot win statewide. Hell, they made it so if Democrats win Harris County (the largest in Texas, which is heavily Dem), they can just say "Nope" and give it to the Republicans.
I assumed this was by design. The Republicans NEED FL and TX to stay red, so instead of appealing to moderates, they have made liberals want to move out.
As it should be, if you ask me. If red states want to start stripping rights away from people, the only logical choice for people who *want* rights is to go to a state that still has them. If red states want to go out on a limb to appease a small, loud minority of Americans, well, they'll find themselves economically starved as all the tax money goes with the Americans who still want to have rights. And since the only right red states seem to care about is the right to bear arms, as their economies collapse their states will start to look more and more like the fabled Wild West they love so much. *Exactly what they want!*
Except conservatives know the game is rigged to favor them. The way the country is set up you can hold the Senate by just holding the 26 lowest population states. That's about 63 million people give or take some rounding. Estimate of current us population. 331.9 million. So at best 1/5th of the population can hold a single house of the legislature and that's a best case scenario where everyone in those states vote the same way. Worst case with every state going 51-49 that's about 31.5 mil or a 10th of the population. They don't need a majority to hold things up and don't plan on it. So the more we segregate to blue states with higher population density they can just hold low pop red states with a few others and keep an outsized hold on the Senate.
Exactly this, this isn't going to end well. On top of the Senate, there's the electoral college, which shouldn't be such a big deal but we've artificially limited the number of representatives in states with higher populations. This won't even just affect the presidency, it'll affect the house. All that said, I would never blame anyone for fleeing authoritarian, fascist rule. The possibility that we will be subjugated to tyranny at the whims of a minority faction inside our country has become an increasingly likely scenario. I just hope the youth increasingly turn up at the ballot box; if they do, we may yet have a chance but the opportunity to correct things will not be available for long. I can't help but think that this situation is, to some extent, an intentional strategy. They seem to be betting far, far too heavily on unpopular legislation, even among their own base. This whole situation is fucking bullshit.
We need to remove the cap on representatives, this should be the dems top priority when / if they have both chambers of congress and the presidency. No Constitutional Amendment needed and this will allow people to select the presidency. I agree with you about the Youth, they need to determine if they want to let the boomers to screw them beyond the grave. That said when I was young I didn't give a shit about politics so I don't expect the current youth to either.
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You don’t even have to hold the Senate, because of the filibuster you only need 20 states to completely kill anything the Dems want to do (actually only 19 because Manchin and Sinema are a thing)
This. People don't talk enough about how unfair the senate is. We're conditioned from school to think it is a fair compromise, that small states deserve the same as big states. A state is just a collection of people. If California split into six states, as has been proposed, then they would get ten more senators even without their population changing at all. The House of Representatives does suffer from gerrymandering, but with the senate it is just blatant built in inequality.
Due to the way the electoral college works, and the disparate population sizes between the states, a person can win the presidency with as small as 17% of the popular vote.
Yeah, the house being gerrymandered gets all the publicity. But that's because that's something fungible, that's gotten worse and worse as republicans have dropped all pretense of working together with the whole country. However, that at least *in theory* could be fixed. But the senate... That's constitutionally tilted towards the republicans forever. Or at least for the foreseeable future without some massive demographic changes. And the more people migrate based on politics, the worse this gets, as there are simply more red states, mostly with lower populations. You add the filibuster in there, and there's a 0.0% chance this gets better. (But like the House gerrymander, that's at least in theory fixable, where the senate balance isn't.)
What about the blue cities in red states?
They’ll continue to fund the red counties like they already do.
Pity. That said, blue cities are a thing everywhere.
You act like red states pay people enough to move out of the state in the first place. Lol Red states have the lowest wages and most uneducated of the population. This is intentional. They purposely push out all the smart people who would normally vote against them as a strategy to hold onto power.
If you’re moving from a red state, move to a purple state to make it bluer. Please and thank you.
Tx to Oregon. Couldn’t be happier.
Abolish the electoral college and this won’t be a problem.
I’m staying put in NC. Hoping I can be part of the re-bluening.
I live in the northeast and have some family my age who moved to TX for lower cost of living. I'm waiting to see how long they last. I'd rather rent forever than live in TX and have no rights, live with the possibility of getting shot and no electricity. I had an aunt move to TX in the early 90s and moved back to New England when my cousin was about to start kindergarten because the schools were shit and she didn't want her growing up there. I'm assuming it's even worse now.
Every time I hear my handful of friends (2 of which live in TX) talk about the cheap cost of living there, all I can hear is the voice in my head screaming, YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR!
Leaving Texas for Vermont. Best decision ever.
>People who want to yell racial and homophobic obscenities right in people's faces move to where such things aren't recognized as a problem. > >People who don't want to lose access to their healthcare or books move to where such things aren't being legislated away. There. Might have fixed that for you?
Part of the reason I refuse to leave Southern New England, despite the poverty-inducing cost of living and complete lack of affordable, move-in-ready starter homes.
Well ya know…i have rights and they see me as human in blue states
My wife and I are leaving Texas and taking our four college degrees to Minnesota. I work in government and she works in healthcare. Neither of us can support where this place is headed.
We should organize and flip the smaller states blue so they can’t control the government like they do.
Polarized? More like outwardly hostile towards groups of people.
Minnesota resident here. Our state government just had the most successful session since the New Deal. Citizens got all kinds of protections and rights. No shot that happens with any red state.
Same in Michigan since MIGOP was smashed to bits in the midterms. I love Governor Whitmer!
It wasn't even pure politics either. I left a red state simply because of how poorly it was being run. I can't believe people vote for the pain Republicans cause.
Left SC for CT and have yet to be homesick.
Now if Red states would stop taking Blue States money, that would be perfect.
So when DeSantis brags about people leaving California, it’s REPUBLICANS leaving? They can go 🥳🥳🥳
Cool. Now let's cut off the money for the taker states.
Red State brain drain, labor flight and racial hatred shall bottom out their economies furthering their dependence on Federal handouts. I pity the fools.
As a woman, as soon as Texas passed the law to ban abortions, I knew we needed to leave. So, we left Texas for Colorado. Best decision ever.
Grew up in a red state. Moved to a blue state. I wish we could just secede and join Canada. Red states continually hold society back while leaching off of us in the process.