I'm a Texan who just spent a year living in rural Minnesota (Longville). Let me tell you, Texas is conservative as all hell in many places, but Minnesota's brand of conservatives is so much weirder to me. Y'all have all of these built-in socialized parts of society that are totally accepted and even praised by just about everyone (municipal liquor stores, pull tabs, healthcare), but the Trumpers I met there were among the most blindly following types I've met anywhere, and I've lived in Florida, Ohio and Texas in the recent past.
I had to move back to Texas in August, and at the time, I was literally the only person in Longville wearing a mask that lived there. I was looked at and spoken to like the town crazy person for months when I went to get groceries. I expected Texas to be just as bad when I drove back, but literally EVERYONE was wearing a mask, even in the smaller towns I passed through on the way to Austin. My Minnesotan ex's parents are from Excelsior, just moved to Victoria, are pretty well-off seemingly intelligent people, and they were spouting COVID conspiracy theories and Qanon shit from day 1 of the virus. When you'd speak with them, it was pretty much all about "personal freedom", just like the conservatives from the south, but they also maintained this weird air of superiority about being more advanced and intelligent than Texans and southerners.
Idk, I honestly love Minnesota and would like to go back at some point when shit calms down, but a lot of what I found there was really fascinatingly weird and incongruous. There is definitely a lot more in terms of progressiveness that is normalized there than in Texas, but it almost felt like a certain (mostly v white) part of the population was almost willfully acting illogically and backwards to make some kind of point. The younger population mostly seemed super cool, way more variety in terms of expression of identity than even in the cities in Texas, but they also almost all had an air of exhaustion and deep-seated sadness to them, which seemed to me to be a direct result of having to deal with this viral anti-progressive attitude in so many others.
Idk, just some thoughts I have been having.
TL;DR, Texan who lived in Minnesota for the last year, and the brand of conservative y'all have in Minnesota is particularly weird, especially with making these supposed grand gestures of defiance.
eightcd on December 31st, 2020 at 15:44 UTC »
Wonder why one woman is wearing a mask. Will they even let her in?
dreadpiratesmith on December 31st, 2020 at 15:51 UTC »
Oregon bars and restaurants are starting to reopen, no masks required, with volunteer armed guards outside, in open defiance of state orders.
wizardintheforest on December 31st, 2020 at 19:10 UTC »
I'm a Texan who just spent a year living in rural Minnesota (Longville). Let me tell you, Texas is conservative as all hell in many places, but Minnesota's brand of conservatives is so much weirder to me. Y'all have all of these built-in socialized parts of society that are totally accepted and even praised by just about everyone (municipal liquor stores, pull tabs, healthcare), but the Trumpers I met there were among the most blindly following types I've met anywhere, and I've lived in Florida, Ohio and Texas in the recent past.
I had to move back to Texas in August, and at the time, I was literally the only person in Longville wearing a mask that lived there. I was looked at and spoken to like the town crazy person for months when I went to get groceries. I expected Texas to be just as bad when I drove back, but literally EVERYONE was wearing a mask, even in the smaller towns I passed through on the way to Austin. My Minnesotan ex's parents are from Excelsior, just moved to Victoria, are pretty well-off seemingly intelligent people, and they were spouting COVID conspiracy theories and Qanon shit from day 1 of the virus. When you'd speak with them, it was pretty much all about "personal freedom", just like the conservatives from the south, but they also maintained this weird air of superiority about being more advanced and intelligent than Texans and southerners.
Idk, I honestly love Minnesota and would like to go back at some point when shit calms down, but a lot of what I found there was really fascinatingly weird and incongruous. There is definitely a lot more in terms of progressiveness that is normalized there than in Texas, but it almost felt like a certain (mostly v white) part of the population was almost willfully acting illogically and backwards to make some kind of point. The younger population mostly seemed super cool, way more variety in terms of expression of identity than even in the cities in Texas, but they also almost all had an air of exhaustion and deep-seated sadness to them, which seemed to me to be a direct result of having to deal with this viral anti-progressive attitude in so many others.
Idk, just some thoughts I have been having.
TL;DR, Texan who lived in Minnesota for the last year, and the brand of conservative y'all have in Minnesota is particularly weird, especially with making these supposed grand gestures of defiance.