Originally Posted by
AntsyVee
Yes, Terry, these are some of those same conservative states. It's like the people in these states are brainwashed. The towns are so small, it's like these people never get exposed to others different than they are...they never are exposed to new ideas...and when they are, it's soon denounced as "fake news" and "liberal crap". I'm sure you've seen a few of these brainwashed people here on NMP. That's really all I can give you to explain it...how people can vote for people and policies that work against them. I used to live in one of those states 20 years ago, and I never will again. It was like that 20 years ago, but they didn't have anyone in office to give them the "okay" for some of these beliefs. They wanted to be "shouty" but it wasn't accepted.
The only other theory I have is based on racism. Yes, the Civil War ended slavery, but through the "Jim Crow" laws in many of these states, most black Americans were disenfranchised from many of the rights they had gained as citizens. It wasn't until over a century later that it began to change. In many of these states, continuing racism was accepted even after the Civil Rights movement...the Confederate flag was still flown, people still said "the South shall rise again", the antebellum still romanticized, many activities were still segregated, like separate sports clubs for blacks and whites, black and white separate proms at school, etc. I remember when I lived back there, in school growing up (the 90's), they brushed over the impact of slavery causing the Civil War; instead it was about "state's rights." I remember the teacher discussing stats in class about the US becoming more and more non-white, and acting like it was scary, and all the kids being scared of it too.
Then in 2008, Obama gets elected. Now, he was not the perfect president, no president is or ever will be, but I think the message was in these states was "Look, everything that you think is wrong in our country right now, is the president's fault...but yeah, this one is different. He's black." Most presidents are usually blamed for the problems in a country, but they've always been the same color, and generally the same religion, as the people in these states. But then a president gets blamed and he's a minority. Suddenly policies once just associated with the democrat party or liberalism were now associated with being black and minority...and I think it felt like a threat to a lot of these people.
Will they ever admit it? Probably not. After all, they don't want to even admit that the war that killed the most Americans than any other war was caused by slavery, and slavery was bad for all classes, even slave holders. In fact, just to keep from admitting it, those kind of people would call what I'm writing to you right now as "revisionist history". The truth hurts.
And then a president was elected who voiced many of the racist and xenophobic sentiments that people had grown up with for years. Many Republicans sold their souls so-to-speak, to win their election. It's sad that support of one's political party has outweighed doing what's right. Even though I'm not registered as a Republican, I really respect Walsh and a few others who have chosen to run against Trump because they want to give their party a choice. The good news is, that even if Trump is re-elected, he can only serve four more years. Only time will tell though the impact on our country.
The two-party system has many draw-backs for both of our countries. While some argue that the parties can then act as watch-dogs toward each other, most of the time it just creates gridlock and a lack of choice.