Meanwhile here I am in Texas barely able to move down the street much less to a state not run by Governor Hot Wheels and his Cavalcade of Corruption.
Mod Note: Remember it is okay to argue your positions but attacks against others in the community violates Rule #3 and the Lemmy.world admins require us to moderate those types of comments. Remember not to make things personal! Other than that debate away!
This has been going on since the 1960’s. The Big Sort is a really interesting read explaining some of the trends and why it’s accelerating.
I agree (and it is a good read), but the specifically political/partisan relsted sorting has accelerated recently.
Blue states don’t give an egg.
Red states “where you from, and why are you here? Don’t take my water”.
At least that was last time I visited the Midwest in my own vehicle (but they can’t spot rentals very well, treated me like their kin when I didn’t have California plates and hid my accent as much as possible)
What Midwestern state was that? A lot of folks don’t realize that, outside of big cities and their respective suburbs, most of the Midwest is indistinguishable from the deep south.
The failure of Reconstruction haunts us.
No mention of The Handmaid’s Tale… I guess it doesn’t need saying.
Is the majority people liberal on Lemmy?
Edit- deleted to avoid the inevitable
Idk what that word means.
This is part of the GOP strategy.
Senator Josh Hawley from Missouri has openly acknowledged that the GOP strategy is to make it so miserable for Democrats in red and purple states that they will move to blue states. That would, in turn, cement Republican power in the White House, Senate and thereby the Supreme Court.
It won’t work for long, since they’re making people so poor they can’t afford to move.
Well their goal is to make them too poor to vote as well
And you don’t even have to be poor. We live in Indiana. Our house is worth far less than any blue state houses. We couldn’t afford to buy a house in a blue state. I hate it here, but I’m here to stay until the housing market collapses.
High COL also means high income. You are expressing a sunk cost fallacy.
Wages haven’t kept up with increases in CoL for years, and the pandemic skyrocketed the latter while barely budging the former.
High income if you have a job lined up already. Having been jobless in California, I don’t wish to repeat that.
Agree, Definitely recommend having job lined up before any major change like that.
Or just be willing to hustle? Being young helps too.
I got the job before heading to SF. But another friend of mine in tech sold everything he owned in Ohio, and rented a room in a house for like 800/month and lived with 4 other dudes in a huge house in the inner Richmond. Got by on app hustles until he found a gig coding.
He’s back in Ohio now bc he decided to breed and be closer to family because of it. But he had a solid couple of years more in SF than I did. I kind of regret not just going for it sooner like he did.
For real. I live in Texas currently. If I could afford it, I would move tomorrow. This place is Hell, in every sense.
Right? I’m also in Texas because Uncle Sam sent me there. The moment my contract is up, I’m fucking OUT of here.
Wish I hadn’t changed my state of record to be Texas, but that just means I’ll keep voting there until I can bounce. Right now I’m mad favoring Allred to unseat Cruz in 2024.
Me too. I’m a clinical social worker here, and so many of my LGBTQ+ patients have been struggling with suicidal ideation with the politics here, especially with the most recent legislative session. I’m gonna stay here as long as possible and vote in every fucking election possible. Lately I’ve even been voting in the Republican primaries against the extremist candidates. It’s so sad, because it wasn’t this bad here when I was growing up in the 90s. We even had a Dem governor.
LGBTQ+ patients have been struggling with suicidal ideation with the politics here
This is exactly what Abbott wants. Makes me want to plant more trees.
How “Christian” of him, eh? It’s disgusting. We are human souls who deserve safety and to not live in fear. I have hope that many Gen Z Texans feel disgusted as well, won’t move, and can turn Texas blue. Once more and more are able to vote, we can transform this state. Maybe that is too idealistic, but it keeps me sane while I am unable to move.
This is only a viable strategy as long as the electoral college exists.
Ok. I think people’s actual lives are more important than a 250-year-old document that can’t differentiate between a flint-lock pistol and a machine gun. Don’t you?
It’s not going away.
This argument needs to die. The EC is never going away, so stop pinning various strategies and hopes on it somehow magically disappearing. If people spent 1/2 as much time on actually voting and campaigning for center and left candidates as they do complaining about the EC, we wouldn’t be in the mess we are in today.
I have worked on campaigns and studied politics for years. With the EC, the current SCOTUS, and the voter suppression and gerrymandering tactics of the last few decades , there is no reasonable long-term path to left, or even center, power. People are allowed to complain. People have been organizing, for years. Nothing has worked, and basic human rights are now being violated in ways and for groups that they hadn’t been before. You’re right that with our current governmental structure, the EC isn’t going anywhere. But democracy’s not about elections alone; it’s about the consent of the governed. A whole lot of us don’t consent, and I don’t think the current institutional infrastructure’s going to survive the blast when that pressure gets too high. And if anything (other than a Constitutional Convention based on the same principles as the EC) happens to the current arrangement, the EC goes too. No one in an underrepresented state would willingly accept those conditions.
HALF the population can’t be bothered to vote in most elections. The country is being dragged to the Right and has been for years now and election after election a massive percent of the population doesn’t seem it is worth going out to the polls. In presidential elections it is higher, but still - there are a LOT and I mean a LOT of elections that could have swung the other way if only a few hundred more people got off their butts and voted. We could have gotten rid of that blowhard Lauren Boebart (however it is spelled) last cycle. She won by only a few hundred votes in an election where less than 60% of the population of that district voted. Apparently Colorado is a mail-in state, so these people didn’t even have to go drive anywhere.
The situation is even worse if you look at demographics. No one had more to lose than the youth of this country and their voting numbers are pitiful. What’s worse is that they have the numbers to change elections. They are a massive group that at this point in time have more people than the dreaded Boomers. Yet their numbers are abysmal.
So when I hear about people complaining about the EC or gerrymandering or a host of other roadblocked set up by the Right for them to get their way on election day, I just think back that these are mostly just excuses. I am not saying that gerrymandering isn’t real - it absolutely is - but even some of the most gerrymandered districts could swing the other way if enough people voted.
If you’re overwhelmed by the enormity of the threat the right poses, and you see structural change is impossible, I sympathize. But blaming people who are struggling for not doing something they see as unlikely to produce positive change and that the state is simultaneously actively making it hard for them to do isn’t helpful. I’ve been politically involved since 2000 (academic study, campaign volunteering/work); Barring major disaster, I’m not seeing voter numbers going up from here significantly without legistative changes. You can yell at clouds all you want, but that’s not the point of leverage you’re looking for.
Making everyone a victim who is on some pre-determined path and they have no control over the things that happen to them is exactly the nonsense that I see the youth are falling for. I see posts by Zoomers all the time that essentially boil down to “we’re screwed, so fuck it” or “I give up” or some such. That’s not the America that I grew up in and I refuse to buy into this idea that change is impossible. Americans need “tough love” - coddling them in this idea of “IF ONLY so-and-so was different” then we could fix the environment/housing crisis/healthcare. Be the change you want to be. Expecting that it will simply be handled to you leads to this apathy and tuning-out that far too many Americans already fall into.
I don’t think you understand. No one in my position thinks things will he handed to/handled for us. (Your word choice is unclear.). I think we’re on the Titanic and we’ve struck the iceberg, we just haven’t done the horrible dying in the North Atlantic part. And if I wanted boomers who’ve probably studied our political structure less closely, spent less time doing actual campaign work, and seen less of the way things work than I have, telling me I’m entitled, I’d have asked one of those guys who likes talking about millennials like we’re children whose biggest problem is not laying off the avocado toast. “Kids today are weak, entitled whiners playing the victim card, and I know better because I’m older” may pass for discourse some places, but not here.
Had to scroll too far to find this! I also read that it was totally about strategy in those purple or starting to lean purple states as more young people lean liberal, and the older, evangelical crowd is not being replaced enough with young people to keep a good footing for the Republicans. If the liberal people leave, the states turn solid red, and then they don’t need new people so much to keep power.
Of course no one wants to live in a place that is contrary to their beliefs so you can’t blame anyone for moving somewhere else… but the implications of that are scary for the country as a whole.
Yeah, but the strategy’s multi-pronged, so even if you stay and suffer for your suffrage, they can find new reasons to prevent you from voting/discount your ballot. And then you’ve put your life and happiness in jeopardy for nothing. Not a great recruitment pitch for the Stay Put Brigade.
I’d say it’s a valid strategy, abhorrent though. Because of the rural bias in GOP there will naturally be more counties, states etc that run gop if Dems move to denser blue areas.
redacted
I love living in L.A. because while we do have our right-wingers, seeing a Trump flag even in my semi-conservative pocket of the city is rare.
gonna be fun when everyone starting getting get out of red states because of shit political decisions, crime rates, and just stupidity in general(florida is just an example)
Sure, bring it on and bring the real estate prices down so I can buy some more land in red states.
Climate collapse will guarantee that land is worth nothing.
Not at my elevation haha. I know better to live at sea level or close to it. Someday the beaches might be closer to visit though.
This cannot be good for the stability of the nation.
I heard it put something like this once:
We used to all live around each other, and on the weekends we’d go to the bowling alley and have to listen to each other. It didn’t matter if I agreed with who was talkin, and it didn’t matter if they agreed with me. We talked. We argued. And then we bowled and had fun.
Today, we talk, we argue, and, after the “fuck off”, we get angrier at each other.
This rose colored look at history only makes sense if you were straight, white, american.
I think the issue isn’t that people can’t tolerate each other, and most people I think don’t have as extreme views on the issues as we hear about.
The issue is that the vocal minority seized their chance and have the opportunity to actually make the things they want come to be.This isn’t true. There was always hate but with social media bad people find more bad people. Hell, when the first issue of captain America came out, it had a picture of Cap punching Hitler. They received death threats, not just on the phone but in the street.
The main difference in my childhood was that I never heard from people of hate because i grew up in a very liberal area. There wasn’t a good way for them to organize.Social Media has turned propaganda into a weapon of mass destruction. People want to seek out friend groups. When social media wasn’t a thing, people would have to find a way to make nice with the people around them or be an outcast.
Now people don’t have to be nice to anyone around them because a group of “people” online are encouraging them to be an asshole. Who knows how many are actual people and how many are bots and trolls.
People were bullies long before social media. Your position is revisionist.
Anecdotes are fun, but the reality is this:
State are taking action to eliminate abortion, severely restrict voting rights, alter the state constitution (like in my home state ohio), and gut programs that support poor individuals while giving tax breaks and incentives to the rich.
Outside of the way your neighbors view politics, when your state says “your worthless get out, were looking for someone else” does that really make you want to stay? Is political tension in this country a factor for the comfort that makes people choose a home? Yes. That doesn’t mean that where you live in today’s day and age significantly defines your rights as a human being.
You’re right — my SO and I were just discussing how different states are alienating different parts of the populace. It’s driving people away from each other. It tears apart seams in the social fabric. It violates some of our social contracts, even.
I don’t think that voids the anecdote, though. The more that we can come together and “bowl it out”, if you will, I think the better off we could be. Compassion can come from exposure. Then, maybe, we could get some of the power back from those using policy to divide.
Or, maybe not.
I don’t think such a time ever existed, at least not for the groups currently taking the most heat.
People have been getting publicly harassed for their race, gender, sexuality for as long as this country has existed. They could not “just bowl”. The opportunity never existed for them.
It’s nostalgia for a unity that never existed.
This. The more inclusive this country has slowly gotten. The more the people who were always included have been constantly gaslit to believe that their problems and difficulties. Stem from the newly included groups.
That describes white suburbanites whose main differences were how much they should fund parks and drive away undesirables. Things in which they agreed on wanting to do, but not how.
I think this analysis completely misses the why.
The why being that America is a racist country that would rather have less prosperity than social cohesion.
That white Americans would rather close pools than share them with black people.
That white Americans rather the government let them starve than get over their “racial resentment.”
American history is written in genocide, bondage, and fear of the other. This is always where it would lead because we culturally refuse to deal with or acknowledge it.
No. We talked, got argued at, and whichever side was louder or more numerous bullied the others into stop talking. Then the dominant side laughed at the others and the others left, or shut up or stewed privately. People were ostracized for being different. There were countless sitcoms and tv shows in the 80s-90s that showcased this exactly and tried to fight it, ideologically.
Now, like-minded people can actually find communities they feel safe in. That’s true for LGBT as well as Nazis, so it’s a double-edged sword there. I’m not going to say the past was better. Look at gay and trans communities: they were closeted or didn’t exist in the past because bigots shouted them down, bullied them and murdered them.
Conservatives are going to make it legal to outright murder progressives, so there’s definitely safety in living in a blue state
I wish democrats would make moving to places like Montana, the Dakotas and Wyoming a priority
But don’t I have to be a republican to like guns, hunting, and outdoorsy stuff?
You don’t have to enjoy any of that to move there. If you bring your liberal community with you, you can just keep doing what you enjoy, just in a significantly cheaper state.
bring your liberal community with you
Is that easy to do?
As a progressive person who likes fishing and doesn’t put up with bigotry, it is very challenging to find fishing buddies.
Who’s going to give up their entire quality of life to be a small snowflake hoping to make an avalanche? For the politics, it’s a very small contribution. But for the family, it’s huge. You’d be losing job prospects, friends and family, activity availability, local politics, healthcare quality and access, and most importantly: being treated like a person if you aren’t a right-wing cishet white male of means.
Almost no one’s going to take that trade and they shouldn’t.
You mean lefties. Democrats are neoliberal assholes. And I’m still not moving to some red shithole.
I think more Democrats moving to swing states like Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania, North Carolina would be higher priority if people are free to move wherever purely based on political reasons.
Why would we want to live in a shithole state like that?
Montana and Wyoming are among the most beautiful places on earth. Not sure why the Dakotas were included…
Isn’t Montana pretty chill lately? My memory was they passed some pretty sensible stuff in the last few months.
You’re probably thinking of Michigan.
The idea is to move there in enough numbers to overwhelm the GOP majority and make the state not be a shithole anymore.
Yeah, it’s hard enough to get blue voters to stay in those red shitholes. Why would any sane person who already lives in a blue state want to move to a red one?
Have you done this? A few people suggesting people uproot their lives and ruin their QOL to maybe make a dent that a single GOP law could thwart.
Never said I have done it or even endorse it, just explaining the concept since OP seemed to not understand the theory behind it.
If you bring enough people with you, it wouldn’t be a shithole state.
You’d have to bring a whole city. What I’d be losing moving from D.C. to Wyoming is not fixable by bringing a few friends. Museums? Enough population that shows and bands play there regularly?
Also, who can actually convince friends and family to move themselves across the country to a shithole for politics? Have you done that?
The cost of living in my “red state” is much lower than most places in “blue states” so I’ll be staying here and enjoying my financial well-being even though I’m not a Trumptard. While I don’t enjoy seeing rednecks everywhere showing off their dumb opinions, I still enjoy having money more than I don’t like that other stuff.
I’ve said before, and ill say it again. For myself, I’d rather be poor in a place that respects human rights, instead of rich in a place that shits on them.
Sounds mighty principled of you. As for me, I’ve spent enough of my years in poverty already, so now that I’m out of it I’m pretty content with my situation.
It’s not principled. Some people just read history. Money only means safety when equal, stable, rights (ownership is a right) are enforced by the state. Not trying to change your mind, just be careful. The people you think are being “principled” may see threats you don’t.
“People want to live where they know their neighbors don’t want to wipe them from the face of the earth. More at 11.”
Both sides?
My generally open minded historically liberal friend called me the other day.
He moved to a very conservative area a few years ago, and the other night in a phone call he was saying “I’d feel far safer being a liberal at a Trump rally than wearing a Trump hat at a BLM antifa rally”.
It is very much perceived on the right that the left is a violent mob waiting to burn down your neighborhood at the smallest slight. While the right is a bunch of friendly Sunday school help thy neighbor types.
I tend to lean towards this is all bot farm propaganda trolling, and that only a very small percentage of either side are actually bad people I would want to avoid.
The problem is, this is how people are getting their information now days, and the idea that “Oh that’s just people on the internet” is no longer valid. Social media and algorithmic rage bait driven content are having a very real impact on the “real” world.
Since he is an old friend, I was able to get him to pause for a breath in this talking point fueled screed he was on, and point out “Dude, I just want the same simple things you do, abortion access, religion out of schools and politics, reasonable gun ownership, healthy air/food/water, a strong national defense, etc”.
When one of the first arguments you bring up is the “violance” of drag people reading books to kids, well shit, I just don’t think we’re having the same conversation.
liberal at a Trump rally than wearing a Trump hat at a BLM antifa rally
So in the discussion of red states vs blue states, the ‘both sides’ examples are:
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Trump, a member of the republican party (Red) who rose to presidency as the republican candidate, still has many followers and is part of the republican mainstream
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BLM antifa, fringe movements which have no official part in the democratic party (Blue) and have never held any political power
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Exemplified by the fact that we have started having free states again like during the civil war. The Maryland governor has been very clear and direct that the state of Maryland will take in political and social refugees from Florida and Texas. Where transpeople are being forced to die or pretend not to exist in Florida, Maryland is codifying their right to be and live as who they are.
You can’t blame lefties and progressives for wanting to escape to freedom when their other option is death or hiding.
There is a real threat of harm to various minority groups living in red states. Hell, there’s a real threat of harm to women who can fall pregnant living in red states. I’d certainly not want to live there if my accidentally falling pregnant (which would likely be ectopic in my case) would result in a very high chance of my death.
TBF considering red states want to make my existence illegal and send me to jail for being me(Trans) it does make sense for me to go to a place where I’m not threatened. Pennsylvania is more of a purple state but at least I know they aren’t going to turn on me for some political points.
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It makes me sad that leftists are leaving Florida. They are turning a purple state into a red one. Every sane person that leaves Florida means the ratio gets tilted more and more into the looneys.
People need to stay in red states. Voting blue in Colorado isn’t going to do anything
Yep I’m still in Missouri basically out of spite now. I did move into the city so at least I’m in a blue area now, but fuck em.
I agree with you in a macro sense, but individually it takes a lot of courage and sacrifice and I’m not sure I’d expect that of anyone. Something systematic has to change.
I’m going to stay and vote against every single GOP Trumper until the state goes blue
It will go blue. Just like California was once red. Texas will also go blue.
Remember there are plenty of people too poor to move.
Voting blue in specific locations in Colorado will actually do things. If 600 people from FL moved to Boebert’s district and voted blue in 2022 she’d be out of the House. Do that in a couple of districts across the country and Dems would control Congress and be able to actually pass policy again. People can move to blue states and still have an impact; the Presidency isn’t the only thing that matters.
I see your point although I’d wager a large majority aren’t moving to the red districts
I am wrestling about this as a resident of Florida. Both my kids are leaving. My trans son is leaving next week and can’t use a public bathroom on the way out of the state without causing confusion or chancing arrest. The state doesn’t deserve him, Maryland does. As for my husband and I, I just don’t know.
