if living in russia taught me anything, people in distress reduce themselves (and got reduced) to the most basic questions, like who is to blame, and populists have them like a piece of cake.
Most vatniks, not unlike MAGAs, don’t have answers to many questions, they want to be left alone to manage the hole they happened to be born into, and the promise of a candidate or ideology that does just that or even paints their quest as a herioic one, or a sacred sacrifice, would win again and again until there is someone to work with that and educate them.
They are used to live in shit and depend on themselves, don’t know anything better and become pretty jealous if others get that. Others having it worse, especially their ‘enemies’, kinda makes their own living more bearable. Their struggle is a downpainment for a mission of punishing the unworthy ones.
When a person is downscaled to that childish level of consciousness it’s impossible to reach them with rhetorics that don’t directly benefit them.
As long as they continue to be like that and their thoughts are unchallenged, they’d always vote maga.
Really well said
And as they continue to vote against their own interests it becomes a self-perpetuating system.
If you look at the impacts to their lives from the Clinton presidency, it is understandable that they would think that Democracts are not necessarily working in their interests.
Clinton really did fuck us over, though I guess the Bosnians like him.
Well lets hope we can correct course and make changes, unless Trump triggers a civil war or removes too much load bearing duck tape from the federal government and it more or less implodes
I haven’t seen an analysis from your perspective before. Lines up very well with my experience from the Southern US.
Second in American health care. …
Obviously. What else would it be when comparing two American states.
a decent amount of americans seem to think they are the global best in every category so probably not obvious enough even.
I hate having to explain this to people when I talk about the insane cost of healthcare in the US.
“but US healthcare is the best so of course it’s going to be the most expensive”
No, you moron. It’s the exact same procedure by equally qualified doctors using the same equipment.
meanwhile here it’s generally not expensive, but we can’t seem to come up with a reasonable way for foreign doctors to gain canadian credentials and continue to have waits anywhere from hours to coming the next day instead
You can’t come at these people with facts.
I love the “Have you actually considered that the state doing the worst under consistent Republican policy is voting because they’re unhappy with the DEMONRAT status quo???”
They really don’t give a shit about consistency in their arguments. People have or lack responsibility for their moral and political choices according to whatever suits their “LIBERALS BAD” talking point of the day.
Republicans have had a vice grip on our state and local politics for 40 years…BUT ITS THE LIBRULS FAULT
That would make sense if Oklahoma hadn’t voted that way every time regardless of who the previous president was. But I mean, conservatives are pretty good at inverting their arguments. So I’m sure when Bush left office, they voted for Romney because they were so happy with how the Bush admin went. But when Obama left, they voted for Trump because they were so unhappy with how the Obama administration went. Simple!
Damn, did know that. Carry on Massachusetts and the Oklahomans fail to learn and continue to eat shit.
This type of meme isn’t helpful when people already think the Dem Party isn’t for working class people and elites only lol. Trump listened to people issues about material needs even if he lied. It still worked. Harris and Dems went on the whole time not addressing issues with the economy. Adopting a real working class agenda and free college would do wonders and putting resources to getting the crazy folk away from Education.
Ever been to MA?
Crapton of working class people there. I mean a lot. It is possible to have top-tier education and health care yet have working class people in the same State.
Being a rural state does not by default equate to “working class”. If anything it probably means more people per capita on government assistance or in poverty.
Working classes don’t need healthcare or education? Quality of life is irrelevant? A strong economy doesn’t matter? One of the highest minimum wages doesn’t affect working class? I
Free college (depending on income)doesn’t matter?
Maybe they voted against the incumbent so overwhelmingly because things are hard.
People vote based on their feelings.
When they were feeling pain, the message from the Dems was about how great the economy was, but the reality is that the stock market and GDP don’t speak to the quality of life of these people. To them the Dems saying how great things were was dismissive of their real concerns.
Meanwhile, Trump latched onto their fears and concerns. Yeah, his policies are idiotic, and millions will suffer and be in worse shape. But when they said they couldn’t pay the mortgage or buy groceries, he listened. The Democrats didn’t because they’ve abandoned the working class that should be their backbone.
Maybe they voted against the incumbent
I wouldn’t be so confident about assigning such motivation.
They haven’t been unanimous in the counties all those times.
In that one case, they’re a pretty consistent electorate. The general sentiment across America and around the globe since the post-pandemic inflation crisis began has been anti incumbent, which is why we see a lot of changed governments and populist uprisings now.
Sadly Mass is also close to #1 in terms of cost of living.
I like it here but I don’t like what it costs.
I have also thought that before I moved from Mass to Oregon. Just my experience of course, but my state taxes increases 2x and everything seemed to be more expensive.
I moved from CA to NC and the taxes were absolutely worse.
EDIT: They were, I even had a check that was half in one state and half in another, and guess what? The CA check was bigger.
Yeah, I alternate between proud that we have a $15 minimum wage and horrified at what it probably should be
I was advocating for the $15 minimum wage back in 2010 when I was barely earning $9 in retail, as even then $15/hr was considered the bare minimum needed to avoid poverty.
I’d say we should be pushing for $25 now given how much the value of a dollar has changed between then and today. But then by the time the state finally implements that in 10-20 years, we’ll probably need to be at $30 or more to just break even with inflation.
Butcher knife is always gonna lose to hand pistol.
I prefer toe pistol, myself. No one ever expects it.
Massachusetts is also 4th in the country for states with the most people leaving to live elsewhere.
No doubt due to cost of living because Massachusetts is ridiculously expensive. The friends I have there are either leaving or totally resigned to not owning a house or ever retiring. Comparing a historically important coastal population center to a historically poor and strategically insignificant flyover state doesn’t prove much.
The states with highest domestic emigration (e.g. people voting with their feet to leave) are overwhelmingly left leaning. (Except for Louisiana and Ohio)
So progressive places make a place so desirable to live in that people are willing to compete with each other for the experience.
“Why are blue states always so expensive?!”. It’s supply and demand. High demand to live someplace makes it expensive.
My million dollar house is worth as much as it is because of its located near high paying jobs, good school, and good neighbors. It’s expensive to live where I live because lots of people want to live here.
There’s higher demand to live in Florida and Texas. Look at the domestic immigration numbers. People are leaving CA, NY, IL and MA in droves.
Yeah, crappy places are more affordable. “Look how cheap the shitty places are, let’s make the whole country shitty so it is cheaper” is a strange logic. Is rather bring everything up to MA standards so the supply is higher and demand isn’t driving prices up.
Sure, it is known as gentrification.
How is people leaving almost exclusively “progressive” places an indicator of competition?
Look at the inverse of that chart. Most people in the country are moving to places like Florida, Texas and Idaho.
strategically insignificant flyover state
Cushing, OK has a bone to pick with this.
Assuming that is a missile silo or something in which case I stand corrected on that front!
Major petroleum marketplace. The commodity trading floor is in a big city somewhere else. But a lot of the oil actually changes hands in our around Cushing.
Gotcha. FWIW I have no bone to pick with Oklahoma at all. If anything the fact that people criticize it for being a backwater probably means that it’s awesome.
As an Ohioan that tracks. We’d long been the poor person’s progressive state but yeah I’m ditching to go somewhere I’m safe, even though it sucks to leave somewhere affordable
When plebeians do something that makes sense to them, but not to him, the “Intellectual Yet Idiot” uses the term “uneducated”.
- Nassim Taleb, Skin in the game
Now do healthcare and quality of life
The hidden costs of health care are largely in the denial of antifragility. But it may not be just medicine—what we call diseases of civilization result from the attempt by humans to make life comfortable for ourselves against our own interest, since the comfortable is what fragilizes.
Less Is More
For instance, a small number of homeless people cost the states a disproportionate share of the bills, which makes it obvious where to look for the savings. A small number of employees in a corporation cause the most problems, corrupt the general attitude—and vice versa—so getting rid of these is a great solution. A small number of customers generate a large share of the revenues. I get 95 percent of my smear postings from the same three obsessive persons, all representing the same prototypes of failure (one of whom has written, I estimate, close to one hundred thousand words in posts—he needs to write more and more and find more and more stuff to critique in my work and personality to get the same effect). When it comes to health care, Ezekiel Emanuel showed that half the population accounts for less than 3 percent of the costs, with the sickest 10 percent consuming 64 percent of the total pie.
- Nassim Taleb, Antifragile
Some states need to lose their right to self govern
Post civil war, the USA should have imposed rules that enforced integration.
They didn’t have the will, and now we reap the consequences as a nation, to have the south still stuck in the moral degradation that comes with dehumanizing a portion of our population to the point of enslavement.
I’ve recently been imagining separating the countries of the US, or as Americans like to call them; the states.
Unfortunately there are liberals in those red states. That would be death sentence for them.
I crisscrossed Oklahoma on one of my cross-country trips, the state absolutely sucks and they even know it that’s why you can legally drive like 80mph through the whole thing.
This doesn’t really tell the fully story, 1/3 of MA’s pop. Still voted for Trump…
This shocked me the most. I thought we would be a darker shade of blue than ever, despite what other state voters do. I’m so disappointed
