My reason for posting this question is to get some perspective, since I don't live further west than Indiana.
Indiana has a lot of conservative tendencies, usually opposes progressive policies, and a little old school bigotry in the form of religion based disagreement with people's life styles, like letter community.
From an outsiders perspective, TX, OK, MO etc are even more extreme.
This permalink above from a comment from a person referencing recently proposed legislation against letter community people specifically, though there's tons of examples of bigotry like the school principal getting sued for discrimination due to a kid's hair (black hair).
We know Lemmy is a bit more populated with left than right thinkers, but regardless, what's going on in these western plains states? Is it as bad as it looks?
Do you personally know some sweet old church ladies who 'hate the gays because they'll going to hell' or are there just more extreme law makers being elected that don't represent the majority?
EDIT: tried to fix link to a conversation instead of a login page.
The cities are liberal, but there’s a lot of rural communities that have never had to deal with people before.
The northeast is known for being kind but not nice. Four New Yorkers will carry your luggage down the subway stairs and never look at you once. The south is known for being nice, but not kind. That’s where the poisoned sweet tea comes from. The west is known for neither, if you have car trouble, the best you can hope for in Portland is being ignored. The Midwest is known for being both nice and kind, where neighbors will shovel you out and wish you a nice day before going on to the next car.
Full agree. But I’ll add something to the Midwest description, we’re nice, kind, and if we’ve never met your kind before beware. Midwesterners will fight tooth and nail for trans people when we know the neighbor kid who turned out trans, but if we don’t we’ll fucking ban that shit because it’s clearly a mental illness that must be stopped before it spreads to here. We’re similar on racial issues, gay rights, etc. And I’m not fucking around, I know people who weren’t uncomfortable towards middle eastern people in the 00s, but got so uncomfortable around black people it was real bad, and exposure was the crux of it. We’re so community focused that we fall into deep tribalism.
I tend to agree with the nice and kind part of Midwest, with exception that it seems like we're becoming more hard-line against things people call woke or alternate life styles.
I'm using a universal 'we' since, and I think you're right - there's a difference between urban city thinking and rural community thinking.
I have a whole theory about the city thinking and rural thinking having to due with ownership or property, but that's a whole other thing...
I don’t know if it’s property so much as just being around and having to live around so many different people. Like, if I take the bus, I’ll probably pass a hundred different folks to and from work, and only two are going to annoy me.
But, it’s a lot easier to be insular if I live in a small town with 300 people, and can easily assume all my problems are someone else’s fault. I’ll see three new people a week when the tourists stop at the gas station.