Comment by sojournerc 17 hours ago
Cool take. Shitting on the south is an age old American tradition. I have a hard time understanding why people gleefully have these attitudes towards fellow human beings. Does someone from Mississippi not deserve factual actual push back against these laws? If we can't fight it there, it'll be in Connecticut soon enough.
By any number of metrics, Mississippi is the least developed, most backwater state.
My own personal metrics: Everyone's got that once racist uncle. Mine moved gleefully to Alabama. I have never known anyone who moved to Mississippi. Or from there!
I bet MS has some amazing old homes out in the swamp with great fishing.
you're probably from a place that is just as racist and backward as mississippi. maybe new england, the most racist region in the united states? if you feel this way about the south, just say you hate black people and be done with it.
When you consistently shoot yourself in the face despite all evidence because you believe it'll make you wiser, at some point rational people just need to point out that maybe you've blown your own head off too many times to make intelligent decisions and accept your agency for your actions. Mississippi is governed by fear, full stop. Specifically, a fear that their individual mediocrity will trickle down to their children and so they will vote to make life as difficult as possible just to make it harder for people in even lower social strata to compete with them. I've lived through decades of this stuff and watched it up close and personal.
They're SO racist that when you give them statistics about their state and their communities, the first thing they'll do is handwave them away because to them, statistics are irrelevant if they contain data regarding minorities UNLESS said statistics are there to condemn minorities. Same thing with people in different economic classes. Generalizations are there for them to make about other people, not the other way around.
Mississippi has one of the higher murder rates? Irrelevant to them because they have a higher number of black folks. Murder rates among whites in the state are high? Irrelevant because it's the poor whites who are murdering each other. At some point, you just have to accept that the conditions they're living in are the conditions they're choosing to live in and treat them accordingly.
Your writing is confusing and your use of slurs is disgusting. Stop it.
> get them to stop actively voting against their own interests
Such a tired trope that I wish would stop. The whole point of a plural democracy is that people will have different interests, and there are few things that rub me the wrong way more than the idea that people are too stupid to recognize what their own interests are and vote accordingly.
what do they call it when a lot of the people in the state don't vote because of a history of disenfranchisement? or when power is taken away from groups of people due to redistricting? when many people can't get to the polls because it's far away or they have work? and when the absentee ballot process is hard? or when they purge the voter registration, requiring people to re-register, if they realize it before it's too late? this last one happened to me.
less than 60% of eligible voters in the state cast a vote in the 2024 election. there was lower turnout in 2024 election among black voters. here is more data: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidentia...
what do you call it when both candidates aren't good enough for those people, so they resign to not vote?
what do you call it when college-educated liberals disparage the poorest, blackest state in the union? definitely not progressive. maybe "racist"
While I share your frustration can I also share with you that I think your original take is entirely dim-witted and ignorant that populations are not singular voting blocs? That's to say, I lived in Texas for a long time as a leftist and people like you would come in to dunk on our suffering. Nearly half the state votes Democrat but that didn't matter to folks like you. It's unproductive and isolates more people than it gratifies.
Well it’s true. The cuts to healthcare and other budget cuts are going to hurt people in Mississippi more than California.
If you ask them why they vote the way they do, it’s because their “interest” or some combination of Trump was sent by God, we must save Isreal so Jesus will have a place to come back to (I don’t have an opinion about Isreal, I just think that’s a crazy reason), evil immigrants and something something “fighting woke idealogy”.
Can you name a single modern Republican policy that would help people in Mississippi?
And I emphasize modern because nothing about today’s national Republican Party resembles the one I’ve known from 1980-2016 or even between 2016-2020 when many held the line against some of the craziness.
And if your response is Democrats have also gone too far in the other direction and out of touch, you won’t get any argument out of me.
Your right that interests are varied but to be more specific, what's being pointed out is that people are manipulated into focusing on an emotional interest (hating woke or whatever the current thing is) so that they'll vote against their practical (economic) interests. It's a perennial marshmallow test failure.
They aren’t being “manipulated”. This is no different than the old “Segregation Now. Segregation Tomorrow. Segregation Forever.” George Wallace inauguration in the 1960s.
The south has always cared more about culture wars than their own self interest.
FWIW: I have lived in the south all 51 years of my life - GA until 3 years ago and now Florida.
> The south has always cared more about culture wars than their own self interest.
Another way of saying that they[0] value preserving their culture more than economic or financial concerns, is it not?
[0]: Insofar as any group of people can be generalized, of course.
It wasn't close to 51/49. The south doesn't work like that. I've lived here my whole life.
In 2024 Mississippi went 61/38 for Trump. They haven't sent a Democrat senator to DC since 1982. In their most recent state house/senate cycle, 2023, overall voting was 62R vs 34D.
They voted for this.
You could very well read that as praise for Mississippi
Hating on Mississippi is an age-old Southern tradition.
Unless you're from Mississippi, then you hate on Alabama.