Politics

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Had to escape Florida for the safety of my partner and myself. She couldn't even get her hormones anymore.

It would be ideal if blue cities in red states seceded and formed their own 51st state of free cities. The rural voter oriented laws which emerge from state governments impede the right of city citizens to the pursuit of Happiness.