“One thing we have really found is a place to feel comfortable being ourselves,” Dean said. Americans are segregating by their politics at a rapid clip, helping fuel the greatest divide between the states in modern history.
One party controls the entire legislature in all but two states. In 28 states, the party in control has a supermajority in at least one legislative chamber — which means the majority party has so many lawmakers that they can override a governor’s veto. Not that that would be necessary in most cases, as only 10 states have governors of different parties than the one that controls the legislature
This can only end badly as conservatives seem to have no problem ruling over land in empty states.
I agree it’s not great, but red states are actively persecuting minorities. Why would a minority willingly stay in a red state at this point? And if you’re an ally or liberal or whatever and see what’s happening clearly, why would you stay and be a part of it?
Polarization is the logical outcome of Republican policies.
It’s an interesting dilemma. As one example, I feel a tinge of regret that two blue votes are leaving Texas when my partner and I leave. On the other, which of us are obligated to stay and sacrifice personal security or comfort for an uncertain political “battle”?
Honestly? We should cut them off.
All these red states rely on blue states for their money. They literally couldn’t afford to have roads and schools if it wasn’t for federal funding paid for by states with healthier economies and more liberal policies (no coincidence).
So let’s take their fucking money. They want to drive the country into the dirt? Let them pay their own way and we’ll sit in our relatively progressive bubbles until they realize they do, in fact, need us.
100% agreed, not sure why we’re subsidizing an entire third world country stapled to America that wants to drag us back to the dark ages and use our own money to do so.
I’ve contacted my state level Democratic party representatives! You should too! If enough people bring the idea forward, maybe they’ll use it!
Seeing the real harm caused by recent legislation in states like Florida, I’m not convinced this effect isn’t mostly women and POC actively fleeing red states.
Yeah, I’m fleeing Florida with my partner because we’re not safe here anymore. I’m riding out the lease here while she finds a place out of state where she can get her hormones and we won’t get hate crimed. ffs, I’d been to Pulse the week before the shooting and the sociopolitical climate has only gotten worse with the current legislation.
We’re trying to get my s/o and her kid out of Florida but her ex husband is kind of a shitbag and purposefully avoiding family court to keep her locked there. It’s straight up awful. We’re already on a like 10 month wait for this process.
There’s also a really good chance she gets locked there for custody for the next decade. Which sucks because she absolutely needs medical care for her bits and bobs and Florida is actively fighting her on it because they’re close to abortions in their nature. Several doctors giving her the run around for endo treatment and such.
All the best to both of you, it’s a shit situation all around. I was incredibly fortunate to be able to find a doctor willing to give me a hysterectomy; she says the number of those surgeries have skyrocketed (bisalps/tubals too) because none of us are sure just how much worse this is going to get.
I’m planning on moving my family out of Texas. It’s not safe to be a woman here and I can’t put my kids through public education that is being systematically dismantled by underfunding, book bans, and restrictive curriculum.
And bullets.
The new kind of lead poisoning
This offhand comment that was quoted in the article is really unsettling:
“Here, the tax dollars naturally goes to the citizens, not the immigrants,”
This isn’t a conservative vs liberal policy thing, this is more insidious. This person’s worldview subconsciously classes “citizens” and “immigrants” as mutually exclusive groups. There’s “us, who were here before and belong here”, and “them, who came here from somewhere else and shouldn’t receive the benefits of our government”. It seems like it wasn’t long ago that the dominant left-vs-right conversations I observed were mostly discussions about economic and foreign policy where both sides had reasonable points and compromise was possible, but this isn’t that. This ideological divide built on religion, xenophobia, nationalism, etc. can’t end well.
It won’t. Sometimes it feels like some people have been reading certain dystopian science fiction and alternate history novels and stories as if they were a blueprint instead of a warning.
At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don’t Create The Torment Nexus.
“Us vs. Them” has been standard-issue fascism for a long time.
Had to escape Florida for the safety of my partner and myself. She couldn’t even get her hormones anymore.
Yeah, it’s wrong to frame it is a “can’t we all get along thing”. People are moving for health, safety and general well-being.
And red states are also the ones suppressing blue votes as well. That’s the only reason GOP win any presidential elections, or probably federal elections in general.
Conservatives want to eradicate anyone that isn’t Straight, White, and Christian, so why would I ever move to a red state if I’m not in that group?
Right? I just want to live around people I’m not certain would shoot me if there were no consequences.
Affordable housing.
Built with zero regulations so it falls apart in two years.
You mean land that is cheap because, by definition, people don’t want to live there? Blue areas aren’t expensive because of failed policies, they’re expensive because successful policies (in the context of liberal capitalism) make them highly coveted locations, and housing markets follow that supply and demand thing of which capitalists are so fond.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the US will break up like the USSR in my lifetime.
It’s going to be messy, and there’s going to be some serious consequences for certain states that wanted to control their own laws based on Church/Hate despite being completely unable to go it alone economically.
It’s gonna be that or fascism for everyone, so I’ll take the messy breakup.
Considering how things are going here in Urop, unfortunately I think fascism for everyone is what’s going to happen in the coming decades. Ask yourself how easy it will be to get rid of fascist dictatorships that have panopticon-level surveillance capabilities and far reaching control of the media landscape including traditional media and the Internet
Oh, I know. I’m just trying to get people to stop eliminating the one option that might spare us.
nah. i mean, maybe stable authoritarianism is a risk, but its not currently what’s happening. we can catastrophize about what will happen decades from now all we want, but the fact that fascists exist right now doesn’t mean they’re gonna win, or that they will organize an effective surveillance state, or that that surveillance state will last. all it means is that we have bigots screeching about bigotry, which historically is nothing new whatsoever, and even if we’re ramping up to nazi 2.0, our response should be the same. fight back.
Have you been paying attention the past 25-50 years? I’m not someone who became a pessimist because of Trump. The problem is largely structural, baked into our social, political, and economic institutions. It’s because I’m a student of history and politics that I think the way I do. The patterns in our political life over the past several decades have many historical analogies, none of them good. I believe in fighting back, but sometimes strategic retreats are necessary to win a war.
i’m not currently in a position where a “strategic retreat” is possible. if fascists take over, i’m fucked, and alot of the people i love are fucked. so forgive me if i don’t want to die to win your war. the reality is, no matter what you think you’ve discerned from historical records, the information landscape, the technology, and the material conditions are different now then they were then, and having such certainty about decades into the future is, to my mind, mostly foolish. analogies are not prophecy, and portents of doom are useless at best. doomers suck, the world has changed, is changing, and will change, and if we don’t involve ourselves with that process then your prophecy will come true.
i dunno, this whole attitude just pisses me off, honestly. i don’t care for your imagined apocalypse. people need help right now, fascists need bashing right now, not decades from now. maybe you are currently politically engaged, taking the necessary steps to stop this bullshit in its tracks, that would be great, but to be honest that usually isn’t the case for people who seem resigned to just let the tide take them. the reality is that we’re all going to die, regardless of if fascists take charge or the earth burns or we all live in paradise. everything we build is gonna turn to dust. and we can whine about that all we want, mope about how its hopeless, but living life that way is boring and stupid. the past is just books, and the future is just stories. all we have is now.
i genuinely used to feel the way you do, too. it turned out it wasn’t because i really had enough knowledge to be certain the world was ending (fun fact, you don’t. nobody does, and every single person throughout history who thought they did died of something that wasn’t the end of the world, or is currently living in a conspicuously not-ended world.), but because i have clinical depression. if you already want to die, you can confirmation bias your way into a near infinite quantity of information justifying that belief as it turns out.
The point of my statement was, in part, that people like you are fucked either way. If fascists take the country, you’re fucked, and if they take your state and the states that don’t suck leave, you’re fucked. So I honestly don’t understand why you think I want you to die for, or even be involved in, “my war.” By my estimation, none of it effects you. You’re going to be a hostage whether others can escape or not.
I agree people need help and fascists need bashing right now. However things change, that remains true. And, actually, I used to feel like you. I was politically engaged (studied politics at university, was the Secretary of my college Dems group, volunteered and worked on political campaigns, voted in almost every election) for 20 years, which is why I feel the way I do now. And putting my decades of severe clinical depression into remission only made me believe this more strongly. I want to finally really live, and a fascist takeover of the whole country will really put that in jeopardy. I’ve studied our institutions and historical analogies enough to know how bad things are. If you have to deny that, if you have to believe the electoral system will save us, to get through the day to live somewhere you can’t leave, I can’t begrudge you that. But don’t come for my political knowledge or involvement. I have receipts.
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Splitting us up is the goal, divide and conquer. It’s one thing to hate your queer neighbor, it’s so much worse when you can point to another geographic region of “queers coming to harm your children” that military force can be used against. The separation is for two reasons, one is to help hold on to senate power by getting blue voters out to make sure red states don’t turn blue or purple, the other I think is to prepare for war and make war more likely, separating the sides. Civil war is hard when everyone is mixed up.
We’ve seen what "conservatives’ do when they have power, they literally owned other humans, chattel slavery. We’ve seen what the goals of the military industrial complex (arguably the most powerful industry), more war,everywhere. Giving these groups the benefit of the doubt is dumb and will lead to real bad things.
No one really wants a civil war. People are too comfy for that. Something will shift and people will realize they are being manipulated. The anger will just burn out eventually.
Nobody wants a war? A good 15% of the US population is seething to use their guns against gays or liberals.
I don’t believe that. People that say that are just LARPing. People in general are good. They don’t sit around in extreme states of anger all day every day. Something has to trigger and feed the hatred. Eventually the fuel for it will stop working.
I don’t know that they’re actually ready to pick up a gun, but I’ve definitely seen that hate in people’s faces. There are some people who flip a switch in their brains the moment they see me and instantly go into anger mode.
I’m pretty good at diffusing it in some people and avoiding it in others, but it’s 100% there. And powerful people are doing their absolute best to cause it to spread.
What evidence would it take to change your mind? What makes Americans more likely to be good than people who participated in authoritarian atrocities historically? Where is your confidence that things will be fine coming from?
Wanting civil war isn’t the question. The question is, what do we do when the right manipulates the system to give itself perpetual, absolute power? Give up? Fight? Leave? Leave and fight? Not many people want civil war because it’s not obvious to them yet that the alternative is worse. Give it time.
Have you read “Christian Nation”, by Frederick C. Rich?
Not yet. Which parts of this topic is it relevant to?
Civil war in contemporary USA. And the right manipulating the system to give itself perpetual, absolute power.
It’s an interesting alternate history novel.
The article mentions the types of people who left these states, but I am more interested in the economic activity in the years to come with all this movement. This is a classic example of people voting with their feet. Reagan spoke of this stuff back in the 80s.
[…] this is one of the—the built-in guarantee of freedom is our federalism that makes us so unique, and that is the right of the citizen to vote with his feet. If a State is badly managed, the people will either do one of two things: They will either use their power at the polls to redress that, or they’ll go someplace else. And we’ve seen industries driven out of some States by adverse tax policies and so forth. - Ronald Reagan, November 19, 1981
We have yet to see how all this movement will impact the individual states themselves or the country as a whole yet. For example, we do not know how all this will all play out economically for the red/blue states. COVID mixed with Remote Work has upended a lot of the soft lines that kept people within a state to begin with (for many, but not all). Truly wild times we are in.
Actually, West Virginia might well be an example. They have been facing brain drain for a generation (if not more), and it’s affected the economy to such a degree that WV will regularly offer raw cash to people moving in. Nevermind that they won’t spend that money on their own services…
I’m not educated enough to speak to causes. Anecdotally, though, everyone I know from college left or is trying to leave because it’s dangerous to be there if you’re queer. That sort of privilege only comes with money, though, so if that anecdote means anything than their highest earning queers and allies are fleeing the state.
The problem is that the real divide still is urban vs rural, not state v state. I always lived in red states and am very leftist. There’s always strong leftist communities in every red state, even in small cities. Every state is less than 10% off from true purple last I checked.
People know that. But power isn’t divided that way. So when people look to alternatives to federal power, they usually look to the existing political infrastructure of states, not, for instance, less-organized/-powerful counties.
Yeah, the urban/rural divide is awful, so now the question, how does that get addressed?
Democrats need to offer financial incentives to help bring back jobs to rural areas. There needs to be something to counteract republicans using Christian out as a means to get votes. Until that happens you want see the left winning anything in rural areas. It sucks but the democrat platform tends to heavily favor cities.
We also need to figure out how to get people to stop choosing the worst possible reponses to crises all the fucking time. “Oh wages are stagnating? I want to commit genocide against trans people now! THIS MAKES PERFECT SENSE AND I AM A GOOD FACTS AND LOGIC BOY!!1!” ~Strawberry
Why can’t we admit rual areas are a failure and get people closer to where they work and what they provide?
Farms have been living on government hand outs for decades. It’s just unfair to act like rural areas arent ALREADY taking more than they give.
Rural America is a failed state.
How can you compete with an echo-chamber of lies?
Ignoring their economic issues is not an option. Republicans run unopposed in many rural areas because there is no counter to their platform.
How do we set one up? And how do we get people to stop responding to crises by rushing over to the first dipshit that says genocide is the best response? Why was that the response for many people??? ~Strawberry
I honestly think the infrastructure bill is the message that needs to be pounded into their ears. So many rural areas are absolutely crumbling from an infrastructure perspective. Literally everything is old, crumbling, and jobs are leaving. Democrats need to point out where the money for projects came from and where the new jobs came from. Then build off that. Representatives always have to run off of constituents saying, what have you done for me lately? Show them and plan for their future, cause the republicans don’t have anything but identity politics.
I can see how a platform built on internet access to rural areas could really negate the need for local jobs. You could be educated online and work remote jobs from anywhere. A lot of tech people are moving to rural areas for this reason. Unfortunately I don’t think rural people are very interested in that kind of work, but their children are.
I live in a blue state I love and my immediate family lives in a red state. I’ve seriously considered moving to be closer to them even though it would be a bit of a downgrade, geographically. However, I’m not going to move somewhere that my wife won’t be able to make her own decisions about medical care. We’re not sure whether we’re going to have kids yet, but there is no way we’d do it in that red state. And even if we decide not to go the kid route, things don’t always happen as predicted and I want her to be able to get all necessary medical care without having to drive to a different state.
I’d be okay with being blue in a sea of red, but not at the expense of my family’s health and safety.
I used to be able to tell myself that I was okay living in Montana. We were “conservative” but not “Conservative”. We had democrats in the Senate and as governor.
But now the things that conservatives claimed they stood for no longer matter. They used to say that they wanted to be left alone. It’s why you see so many unironic no step on snek license plates up here.
Even here, where we have a fantastic drag scene and (in the larger areas) a “do not fuck with one of us no matter their orientation or identity” vibe; we’re seeing the GOP mind virus take hold.
At our last Pride gathering we had out and open white supremacists begging us to attack them. Our city soccer league has had an, everybody is welcome no matter what, policy. We almost had to cancel this year because our insurance doubled after a single sick bastard took issue with out having three transitioned players. He threatened to come back with his buddies after we confronted him. We still had to file a police report.
And it’s not even the majority of ruralites! Both of the incidents I described were Idahoans coming here to stir shit up.
It is a real shitty time to be a gun loving transgender anarchist…feels like there is nowhere for me to go.
This is by no means to compete but to add, I’m an autistic adult and I don’t feel welcome anywhere. Living in the bible belt. It’s not the same, you have it harder, but even as a cis white dude, I can’t find a place.
I know the feeling, I’m autistic myself and I’ve got C-PTSD so I find it extremely difficult to fit in anywhere. It sucks.
I’m a blue person, stuck in the southeast. I’m nearly 59 years old, so I can’t transplant easily. My spouse has family roots and a house here too. (I don’t, I’ve been more mobile before I met her).
She’s not likely to sell her house either (despite being liberal) because she bought the home she grew up in; Nostalgia. I’m hoping that in 8 years when I retire, she and I will be more on the same sheet of music. Maybe she’ll be ready to downsize (though she still harbors the idea of keeping the house, renting it, and being able to will it to her daughter), and we can consider leaving.
The only game plan I can come up with is get a nice van as our “second home” and live full time on the road; Quite an expensive way to escape. Sigh…I hope she and I sync up eventually.
