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Moderator Guidelines
My opinion is that we are all people and the southerners have been steeped in racist and capitalist propaganda for a very long time. Their media environment is turning them racist and afraid to the point where the effort needs to turn them around would be extreme. We don't need to abandon our Southern brothers and sisters, but one we get power we should begin reconstruction reeducation. And just accept that a lot of them are too far gone for saving.
As someone living in the heart of South Louisiana.
The Southern States are lost and we need to focus on trying to get people out instead of trying to change the minds of a bunch of xenophobic hicks.
I'm 100% for breaking up the union and expelling the Republican states.
I really hate that the country is so bad I agree with you on this
It truly is sad, but people's minds won't be swayed without totally restructuring our economic and political systems which dictate their material interests, and that won't happen without a total revolutionary war against the system. I don't like it anymore than the next person but that's just the logical conclusion to the reality we exist in.
Humans, as a species, are generally very stupid, selfish, and simplistic with short attention spans. We all simply want the easiest and most effective way to meet our material needs, regardless if a less convenient method would have better results, unless we actively train ourselves, through years of education, to be in the habit of going against our instincts and thinking critically about the world around us.
Unfortunately, due to our current systems, many people have tied their ability to meet those needs with the economic interests of the owning class, which intrinsically is oppositional to the needs of the working class. Most don't understand that the small gains from doing so are simply going to be funneled towards the owning class anyway. Yet, it allows them to be better off than others and that is enough to scare them into contentment with their lot in life.
Additionally, the system is designed to be so convoluted that those who are uneducated in how it fundamentally works can readily be convinced of certain falsehoods, such as increasing wages results in increased price of goods or that immigrants are "stealing jobs", because they simply have no understanding of how those claims are blatant falsehoods.
And they don't question it, because it plays on the inherent flaws of human psychology by appealing to basal fears of the unfamiliar and playing on how our minds are predisposed to certain logical fallacies.
I am 100% against giving Republicans political sovereignty and adjacent territory.
We don't need to be changing the minds of xenophobic fucks but we do need to take their political power. Red state governments can and will cause problems for you no matter where you live.
They're not unsalvagable, but they won't be the vanguard either. They will come when the tide starts to turn, so efforts need to be put at tide turning. Expect local efforts. Local efforts are critical everywhere.
People can forget that when it comes to the South, this is a real old front.
We're tired, and all this ride or die republicanism is because we're still here. We need the help
(Painfully) agree with the first part, second part misses the mark imo. My neighborhood is better because it doesn't have as many racists in it.
I appreciate posts like this. It's nice to see people calling out this shit.
Every time I see so-called "progressives" talking about succeeding from the union or writing off southern states, I feel incredibly terrified and abandoned as a queer person born and raised in Texas.
So... What? I just get to die? I'm just an "unfortunate casualty" Collateral? I get it's tiresome. I get it's scary what's happening. But don't call yourself an ally if you're not willing to fight tooth and nail for us. Cause I guarantee, if states started succeeding, it would be game fuckin', over for a lot of minorities. There would be no way out of the shit holes we're trapped in, and nobody to speak up or fight for us when they start actually shipping us off to "Wellness Farms."
Idc I'm not American I just want you guys to collapse so each state is its own country and maybe have a European union style relationship with each other so that y'all stop being so internationally inflammatory. Stg the main reason for considering learning a language other than English is to enter a conversation that defaults to excluding Americans.
That would just multiply the amount of inflammatory incidents we would start by fifty
Those regressive polices many wright off the south for exist in the rest of the country, but in different forms better suited to the context of the area. They come across as particularly brutal and overt to other areas simply because they’re not tailored to be hidden from them.
At this point I'm just hoping for reduced federal influence over blue states and measures to help out refugees from the places whose own state governments are working against them.
We got brick oven pizza and craft brews down here too tho
To be fair, most of the world is unsalvagable at this point.
People who cheer when southern kids die in a natural disaster because it will hurt their parents, who might have voted Trump: why won’t these stupid fucks vote for my team?
They vote for Trump to own the libs. Dont make it more complicated than it is.
People do that? That is insanely sad and nonempatheic.
No, it's hyperbolic misrepresenting of a generalized statement as being all-encompassing instead of understanding that exceptions to the statement exist.
"You get what you voted for" is obviously directed at those who voted for Trump, not the children or those who voted otherwise.
Unfortunately, people are prone to tie their identity to arbitrary concepts, so when people say things like "People from [Insert State here] get what they voted for", they take offense at having something they identify with be associated with something they don't approve of instead of understanding that they aren't the people being mentioned by the statement.
Bruh just this MORNING, on Lemmy, under an article about Kerrville rejecting emergency management funding from the Biden admin, there was this comment:
"Children of Republican parents grow up to become Republican voters"
YES it was in context with the Camp Mystic deaths. YES it had upvotes.
And it was so fucking disgusting to see.
"You get what you voted for" is still a horrendously fucking ghoulish thing to say in the aftermath of a natural disaster. Even with all your piss poor excuses. Be better.
I'm not from that area. I'm not a Republican. I'm a grown ass adult and parent voting Democrat, living in a blue state. My frustration with this shit ass take has nothing to do with "misunderstanding the target". You, and others saying this shit right now, are being shit human beings.
Are we going to argue that Obama drone striking civilians in the Middle East, or the absurd expansion of the surveillance state under his watch also falls under "get what you voted for"? What about Trump's "drain the swamp" that clearly didn't happen? The point being that politicians lie, gerrymander, and do all sorts of other bullshit that makes things more complicated than "vote for right person, experience no hardships or problems ever".
Are we going to pretend that Republicans winning in that area somehow means that every single adult living there voted Republican?
Go get your scope zeroed in properly. Go after the politicians directly responsible for this mess, not the poor fucks dealing with the aftermath and dead children.
Because what a lot of people read when you say "You get what you voted for" is "dead children are a cause for gloating when it happens in a Republican controlled area". It's explicitly what you folks are doing, so stop pretending you mean anything fucking respectable.
This wasn't a common talking point/repeated phrase (sentiment showed up from time to time, but this specific phrase? No) in these conversations until these kids died. So this "we're not gloating about dead kids" shit doesn't ring true to a lot of people.
Don't bother with your mental gymnastics to try and excuse your shit on my account. I've heard it all already and it doesn't make what you all are doing ok.
Sadly yes, I kept running into it on Lemmy in the immediate aftermath of the Texas floods. I wish it was hyperbole, but if you look in threads about any natural disaster in southern states before mods do clean up it’s all ‘get what you voted for’, like children and people who voted for what you wanted (or even can’t legally vote!) aren’t also dying.