FTFY (plus enough characters to make nine)
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Oklahoma = Capitalism. Capitalism = Evil.
Minnesota = Socialism. Socialism = Good.
…eh, I don’t think it’s that simple. I moved from Minnesota to Colorado (which is next door to Oklahoma, and shares it’s petroleum fields and tornadoes), because Minnesota is a very good place to live…if you’re rich. By ‘rich’, I mean your household income needs to be about twice the average American’s in order to cling to the bottom rung of the middle class. Between having to buy a lot of heat for 6 months of near-Canadian winter, paying enormous taxes to benefit everyone but yourself (good public schools for the children of doctors, but you’ll never be able to afford to breed), and nothing but the best of everything for everyone above you in the socio-economic pyramid.
Minnesota’s a great place to live, unless:
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You ride public transportation. The bus is late, and you’ve been exposed to sub-zero temperatures while the union bus driver drives like he knows he can’t be fired.
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You need medical care. Hope you got real good Private insurance!
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You can only afford a firetrap apartment with sketchy neighbors and leaky windows. Not all of the neighborhoods in Minneapolis are filled with white-collar professionals, unless you consider drug-dealers to be ‘professionals’.
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Don’t forget that in the 90’s, Minneapolis earned the nickname ‘Murderapolis’.
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Minneapolis (Bloomington) is the location of the Wells-Fargo corporate headquarters. I know, because I used to work on the ninth floor. I thought the Happy Mutants considered Wells-Fargo to be the enemy of the people?
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Did you forget about the I-35 Mississippi River Bridge overpass collapsing onto another highway and killing innocent taxpayers wholesale? During a rush-hour traffic jam? My taxes paid for that bridge.
Minnesota had the same economic policies back then, so why is Minnesota now being considered a worker’s paradise?
“We’ve got to face the truth,” Jones said. “We need somebody who’s willing to tell the truth about how we got here, where we’re at and has a plan to get out.”
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I-30 in Arkansas was like that for at least a decade, from Texarkana to Little Rock. We’d make that journey at least a couple of times a year and never saw any construction, in spite of what the signs said. We figured it was a cheaper method of traffic enforcement, i.e. close it down to one lane and voila! no one’s speeding.
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There was a site called SomaliAnarchy that, if it was satire, was very, very well-disguised. I also saw this about 12 or 13 years ago, on the part of several people who were actively editing Wikipedia’s Somalia article.
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If it follows the pattern seen elsewhere, the idea is to leave the Black/Hispanic/poor kids to rot in underfunded public schools (and then get them arrested as soon as possible afterwards; gotta keep the imprisoned labour supply going) while the middle and upper class white kids are shifted to defacto segregated religious private schools.
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but how in all the hells have to voters bought into being willing sacrifices on this altar???
My personal theory on why people support politicians and parties that benefit the rich at the expense of everyone else is that the American Dream teaches them that if they just work hard and apply themselves then one day they will themselves will be super rich. And they don’t want to ruin the party before they even get the invite.
Or, as John Oliver put it: “I can clearly see this game is rigged, which is going to make it even sweeter when I win”.
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That’s the new motto of the right though.
Tell the voter it wasn’t their fault, tell them it definitely wasn’t the GOP’s fault - it was those dastardly Jews - sorry, in newspeak - globalists. Give the Republicans another term and you too can be a millionaire stamping down on uppity minorities.
It’s the same vicious prejudices from the 1930s wrapped up in shiny new Facebook algorithms and Sinclair Broadcasting soundbites.
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After having lived the first 46 years of my life in the relative paradise of Northern California, I can say that the last year and a half living here in Oklahoma has been more of a culture and political shock than I was expecting. I have experienced enough elections here to see that two and only two things matter to the voters: being against abortion and loudly proclaiming your love for Baby Jesus. If a candidate takes the appropriate stands on those issues, he will get the votes. Economic policies are essentially irrelevant. I saw an ad recently by a Republican candidate for governor, claiming it’s time for a change. You’re a Republican, sir. A change from what to what?
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Oklahoma politicians are just nostalgic for the Grapes of Wrath days and just want to have those good times back.
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That’s a misquote, BTW.
So it wasn’t “poor people vote against their interests because they think they’ll be rich someday”, it was “most of the communists met by Steinbeck were middle class poseurs”.
Which may describe 1930’s American communism more broadly, or it might just describe Steinbeck’s choice of companions.
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If that’s true, it may be the result of the scenario I described. It’s hard to justify spending money on an election you can’t win, when those resources could help a candidate in another state.
Misquote or not, I tend to think this is the ultimate answer. Additionally is the belief that if you are poor it is your own fault. “Just try not being poor. Honestly it couldn’t be easier!”
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I wish you were wrong but you aren’t. The only other thing is that poor rural white kids are given the same treatment as their black and brown brothers. I live 300 miles south of Chicago and our kids here, black brown and white get little from the state for education. We get beat to death on property taxes though.
The voting block is in the north and the southern part doesn’t get a damn thing. Ancient school buildings, poor teacher pay, poor equipment and sadly here as elsewhere, athletics usually gets more than its share. And now betsy devos to help them all…I’m sorry kids
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The only person I’ve ever known from Oklahoma made very sure that he went to uni out of state and never went back. His family followed him to California as soon as they could afford to.
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Does any one know if Oklahoma Students are being accepted by out of State Colleges and Universities at the same levels that they were before the State went to a four day School week?
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There is plenty of Minnesota that isn’t the Twin Cities. (I know people from the Cities call the rest of the state “outstate” as if it isn’t Minnesota at all, but really it is.) Duluth, for example, is very affordable, and also quite pleasant during the 3 weeks of summer every year.
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Now, now, to be fair - Dioptase1 was probably “educated” in OK so let’s not expect too much.
Sure. Sure. Burnsville.
But, Farmington…
That’s another thing altogether.
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