I mean, northerners assume that bc on average it’s mostly true. Southern states are absolutely full of ignorant people that prefer to stay ignorant and ignore the world around them. Roll coal baby! Let’s get rid of the dept of ed fuck yeah. Get rid of NOAA what’s it do for me?
I live in a deep red southern state, with a purplish metro area 150 miles away. 99% of my state will continue to vote for stupid policies that are bad for the state and the world at large. Red states exist bc the constituents vote that way.
At a national level, I think some of it just comes down to resentment at popular policies being blocked, largely because of lawmakers from southern and midwestern states. I’d also wager context plays a part in this. Sure, NY has its share of rural Republican voters, but our dumbfuck GOP voters mostly manage to just mess things up for our own urban areas, appropriating funds from the MTA budget to build bridges to nowhere in their home districts so they can point and cry about those god-damned socialists in NYC not even being able to manage the budget for a single agency (that they actively work to undermine) so they can further gut public services.
Sure, it’s not ideal, but at least we’re (mostly) only hurting ourselves. GOP Congress-men and -women from southern and midwestern states collectively hold the rest of the nation hostage through their disproportionate impact on the Senate. Whether it’s climate change, student loan forgiveness, universal healthcare, packing the Supreme Court, or any of numerous other issues, these states hold others with vastly larger populations hostage, impeding broadly popular policies in a profoundly anti-democratic fashion.
It may not be fair to the non-GOP voters in those states, it may be misdirected resentment, but I don’t think it’s all that difficult to understand why people from majority Democrat, northern states might be kind of tired of the south and midwest’s collective shit at this point. If the GOP-leaning demographics in those states could either be dropped into a volcano, or, failing this, soundly beaten at the ballot, it would go a long way towards addressing this stereotype
This is true. My extended family leans conservative but is from the far north(think border of Canada north.) It’s honestly really weird how the more rural you get, the more republican people are.
However, my cousins and the younger members are far more left than the older members(are lgtbq friendly, support BLM, acknowledge climate change is real ect) some of them left the area and some stayed, but in general the difference in generations has given me some hope.
