A theory im playing around with that the apparent Vulgarity and crudeness of American country/redneck/Conservative culture is actually an adaptive mode of Counter signaling akin to Orthodox Jewish or Amish cultural adaptations to maintain high birth rates and internal cultural coherence in the face of the homogenizing anti-natalist effects of Mainstream Global-liberal-urban monoculture...
American redneck/conservative culture, and Orthodox Jews especially are unique in being the only wealthy cultures to maintain high birth rates beyond the global middle-income, and that both adapted and are defined by their hostile largely hostile relationship with the the most advanced strains of the global mono-culture found in Urban America and the Urbanized anglo-world.
Nations as far afield as Hungary, China, and Iran are trying to save themselves from declining birthrates... Should they try to import American Country culture?
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Notes -
Neither the core Red Tribe nor the Haredi/Hasidic/etc. strains of Orthodox Judaism are a good model for whole countries because they are dependent on outside money to maintain a first-world standard of living (even if you accept the Red Tribe cope that the net flow of transfer payments to red states goes entirely to African-Americans, getting paid to fight the Blue Tribe's wars isn't a business model which works for a sovereign state). The Modern Orthodox in the USA appear to be fiscally self-sustaining - whether or not they are in Israel is a ranting issue over there.
There are a few examples (like the Amish) of high-fertility, low-productivity communities which don't suck on the fiscal teat, but the Amish are poor enough that they would not be an attractive model to a middle-income country like China.
The best example of a high-fertility, high-productivity religious subculture is probably Mormonism. Also, secular Jews in Israel have a TFR which seems to hover around replacement level, which is quite impressive for a group selected for being irreligious.
Re. your original point, I don't think the dates line up for the thesis that Red Tribe vulgarity is a defence against anti-natal Blue memes. The Red Tribe starts seriously trying to fortify itself against anti-natal Blue memes in the late 1970's with the foundation of Christian orgs like Focus on the Family and the Moral Majority. The Red Tribe doesn't become ostentatiously vulgar until well into the 21st century - the Falwell-Robertson era Christian right set a huge amount of store on being politer than their opponents, as the Mormons do now.
I think the vulgarisation of the Red Tribe is driven by secularisation. How many Red Tribe thought leaders in the 1980's truly embraced Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour (rather than just ticking the "Evangelical" box on the census and going to church on Christmas, Easter, Mothers' Day and when running for office)? Almost all of them. How many now? Pretty much just Mike Pence and Amy Coney Barret.
The red tribe is over represented in military service, but the majority of their economic activity is in agriculture, transportation, manufacturing, and extractive industry with some skilled trades and small businesses on top. This is a perfectly reasonable economic base for a sovereign country.
In any case, while Mississippi is about as poor as Britain, that’s still only about as poor as Britain. No doubt it’d be a bit poorer without the influx of federal money, but there’s kind of a long way for it to fall before it stops being a very wealthy country. If the US collapsed into 50 different states tomorrow Mississippi in ten years would still be much wealthier than any country south of the border, with the possible exception of Uruguay.
That Mississippi is wealthier than Britain is an indictment of Britain but it says nothing about Mississippi’s quality as a state, only about the fact that it’s a core part of the richest country in the world with extensive fiscal transfers to poorer states and both open borders and open markets with much wealthier ones. Mississippi is ‘rich’ for the same reason that Poland has done so well since joining the EU and for the same reason that the UK would be much wealthier in 20 years if it became the 51st state tomorrow. As a counter example, consider Southern Brazilians of German descent in cities like Florianopolis. They’re much poorer than Germans or Americans, and it’s because of the country they’re attached to rather than anything else.
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