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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   1543 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 3, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Do you live in an area where most of the people you meet, work with, and/or live near are ideologically similar to you?

If you do - do you feel like this is better for your life than the alternative?

If you do not - do you wish to eventually? Or do you feel it doesn't matter, or even find that undesirable?

I live in a deep purple area. This means blue with fleks of red thrown in in a Bob Ross style. I'd argue that there is actually a high percentage of "closet Trumpers" in my area mainly because I can cite about two dozen of them who have "come out" to me this election cycle.

I would definitely like to move somewhere more deeply red. In fact, I have my list built. What keeps me from doing it is that I worry about it enabling me to go too deep into a RETVRN mindset. To be specific, Northern Idaho around the Post Falls area is a pretty hardcore Catholic Conservative area. The FSSP has a parish in Post Falls (which is kind of an extension of Coeur D'Alene). A big part of me looks at this and sees an outdoors oriented recreation culture, a state that will be deep Red for the forseeable future (and a highly libertarian Red at that), a for real Catholic community (not the neutered cultural Catholicism of the Northeast), but with the lack of potential for urbanization that might ruin it with enough emmigration. I'd love to go there right fucking now.

But, in ten years, am I a neo-luddite homeschooling 10 kids with equal parts of my portfolio in physical gold in my basement and crypto? Can I no longer watch college football because the crowdshots send me into a frenzy because they look like Gomorrah? Is my hypothetical future TradeWife (minimum 10 years my junior) afraid of going to the grocery store on her own because of the impure leers she gets from young unmarried men, despite the fact that her wardrobe is primarily ankle length utility skirts?

You can see I'm being humorous here, but the wondering concern is real. The big coastal urban centers are already a no-go (I fled from one years ago). But the "American Redoubt" concepts, while compelling, also seem to me to be reactionary to such a degree as to be inviting more gradual takeover by the PMC. I don't necessarily like the world, but I feel like I have to stay in it to help save it....maybe?

I don't and I physically can't. I'm too contrarian. At uni I became conservative, at a megachurch picnic I'm a bleeding heart liberal. It's in my nature. Even on the same issue, I'll always reflect the anti consensus over time.

But now you're on The Motte, where everybody is too contrarian. If you're finally following the herd here then clearly you're just not metacontrarian enough. Tsk.

Nope! NYC is very captured by Blue Tribe. Most of the ones I meet IRL are NPC-level, spewing mindless hatred. The Motte is probably the only place where I can at least sometimes have reasonable debates with reasonable Blue Tribe-rs that isn't immediately drowned out by mindless shouting.

Better for life? That's a tricky question. It could be thought of as bad that so many people seem to hate your guts if you lean Red. But on the other hand, it means you have an automatic connection with anyone else who does too. It feels like it makes things more fun in a way. In theory it could be good for debates, but I meet very few blues who are intelligent and knowledgeable enough to debate issues and actually have the temperament for it.

Will I move somewhere eventually where most people are more ideologically similar to me? Beats me. As I've gotten older, I've gotten less willing to make big pronouncements for the future, since I have no idea what my situation will be or how I'll feel 5 years from now. I don't think there's been any point in my life where I could have made accurate predictions that far out, so there's not much point in trying.

Naturally, all bets are off if something really out there happens, like an actual national divorce with states and regions breaking away from the United States, or actual secret police hunting down ideological dissidents for long sentences in reeducation camps. I still don't think anything along those lines is really likely to happen in my lifetime, but I no longer dismiss the possibility out of hand. Maybe like 5 or 10 percent chance.

NYC is surely ‘blue tribe’ but it’s also probably the intellectual center of the weird/very online dissident right in the US.

It does indeed have the thing where, yeah the overall culture is super blue tribe, but there's just so many people overall that, no matter what weird thing you're into, you can find some other people into it. So it's not that bad, but still, you can't help but notice that most random people you meet will be somewhere between mildly and rabidly against my political opinions.

I do sometimes wonder if, along FiveHour's point, I may be just too contrarian and independent overall, or at least not quite rabidly red enough, to really fit in in a deep red area.

My neighbors fly confederate flags. I certainly prefer this to pride flags, and consider this a worthy anti-theft device for the neighborhood, even as I, prejudiced against Yankees, grudgingly admit that actually winning the war of northern aggression would have been a bad thing.

The area I live is pretty split down the middle. It's quite nice actually. There is a general understanding that it's bad manners to bring up politics with people you don't know well.

Here as well. Even the public school teachers are mixed.

Where I live, I have no idea what ideologically most of people are, though since it is quite red area, I have my suspicions, but I don't know about each person specifically.

Ideally, I do not mind living around people who disagree with me on ideology, provided the disagreement is not too far. If somebody thinks we need to raise taxes and spend the money on public works projects like building a park, maybe I disagree but I'm fine living with them around me. If somebody thinks enforcing laws is racist and we should cut the police budget and use the money to distribute free drugs to drug addicts and perform gender transitions to kindergarten children - I'd rather live in a place far, far away from that person. It probably will be hard for me to draw the line per policy, but usually such things come in a package, and having lived with the results of applying that package to day-to-day life, I'd rather not go through that again.

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