“One thing we have really found is a place to feel comfortable being ourselves,” Dean said. Americans are segregating by their politics at a rapid clip, helping fuel the greatest divide between the states in modern history.
One party controls the entire legislature in all but two states. In 28 states, the party in control has a supermajority in at least one legislative chamber — which means the majority party has so many lawmakers that they can override a governor’s veto. Not that that would be necessary in most cases, as only 10 states have governors of different parties than the one that controls the legislature
This can only end badly as conservatives seem to have no problem ruling over land in empty states.
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.
That’s really sad to hear. I myself used to consider myself moderate before I realized that I was being taken advantage of by cynical Republicans who only wanted power and would do anything to get it. Now I’m anti-Republican. Whatever the mind-virus is that has spread and made them all Trump-sucking morons is incredibly damaging to democracy itself. And I’ll resume having policy debates and such once there is a firm grasp on the levers of power and it is kept away from these crazies who want to steer our country into the ditch to own the libs.
Ugh, such a shame. I’ve explored the length and breadth of MT (by car) several times . Western MT is such a beautiful place … the mountains, lakes, wilderness, groovy college towns &etc. It never really used to feel radical-conservative to me, but from what you say, sounds like the Christian Fascists have really gotten out of control.
I’m on the other side of that cesspool of Northern Idaho from you. N. ID is a lot like MT in the beauty sense, but it’s circling the drain in a “civil society” sense faster than anywhere else in the region. Billionaires got theirs - just watch all the private jet flights in/out of CdA and MSO and Kalispell on sites like flightradar24.com … they’ll be perfectly happy to have the local Poors getting dumb and dumber and at each others throats over manufactured culture-wars BS if it means they can eat and ski and screw around on the lakes at even less cost than now, all in (“elite”) privacy of course. And yeah, the ID Poors/fascists/conspiracy-types got nothing better to do than to try to export their sad, pathetic lot to anywhere that seems “better off” (i.e. somewhat civilized). Sorry ya’ll have to live through this shit.