I was curious how common it is to be, say, a leftist in a very conservative area.
My county, family, and school are all very conservative. It makes it a bit intimidating to engage in any political discussion. I also rarely get to hear leftist opinion anywhere in person, which means i need to devote a lot of time to considering and thinking about arguments that are probably already solved.
Are you, or have you been, in a similar situation?
My entire family is maga, which is awful, but it’s literally just them. Otherwise I’m in an urban city, in an educated and liberal profession, and dating an awesome guy with a very sweet family. Being surrounded by normal and healthy people really makes my interactions with my family feel that much worse. :) Sometimes I’ll bother to tell them they’re wrong, but it doesn’t matter. They’re not acting out of reason. They’re acting out of hatred and avarice.
at least you dont live with them. it would be problematic if you have to live with them and hear them rant everyda.
I live in Texas… I consider myself Progressive… yeah it sucks. Only saving grace is I live in a city and most all my friends are liberal, so I can be open with them.
Outside of there though, i used to have to stay quiet, but lately, if someone brings up something political, I very much am more outspoken about telling them my thoughts. I usually get disgusted looks, but don’t care.
Some though, are truly just ignorant. Was talking with one person about Madhani and she asked “isn’t he trying to make everything islam there?” I told her about all the things he’s doing, including a coop grocery store for lower prices and she was genuinely surprised.
I live in Kentucky, so I’m in a similar boat. It’s very isolating. It’s frustrating to know that no matter how I vote, Democrat or third party, it really isn’t going to make a difference. My goal at this point is to raise my daughter to be a kind, empathetic, honest person, despite what she might see from other people around her.
I live in a very blue area, but most of my coworkers are conservative. I spend a lot of time at work so inevitably political topics come up here and there. I have to handle them with kid gloves when we do talk politics, but they do extend respect to me and can agree to disagree with me. Well, as respectful as they can be considering some of their conservative political beliefs.
I have slowly but efficiently removed every single Republican from my life (except for my grandmother, because I love her to death).
If I find out that you are a Republican, that will be the last voluntary interaction we have.
I have eliminated all from both parties. They both are the problem. They both are guilty of genocide… even little precious AOC
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I live in Canada and on an island where the capital city is historically extremely liberal and leftist, but immediately outside of that city it is conservative country all around. Its pretty wild living 25 minutes out of the city where I can go from being out in full pride gear to feeling less and less safe the closer I get to home.
This was two years ago but I was in Canada for a business trip and in Montreal, was ridiculously liberal. I mean colored hair, piercings and furries walking in the street without a care in the world. Then we drove about 1.5 hours into the woods and I saw fucking MAGA flags? In Canada?
Yeah MACA/MAGA is unfortunately a very real thing here. On the island it was mostly just a lot of Fuck Trudeau flags.
Most of the people I interact with have different viewpoints, and I consider it a positive. The danger is never examining your beliefs and just accept them, even when new facts come up or the environment changes.
I can certainly appreciate the sentiment behind this comment but I would have to challenge its applicability in a deep red part of the US. The danger here is expressing incompatible beliefs to people who vocally and energetically talk about rounding up and “shooting all of the democrats” they can find. As much as I would like to accept the fact that they have the right to this opinion, I am also self-aware enough that I chose to keep my own politics (independent but left-leaning) to myself.
Would they really kill me? Probably not. Would I be immediately treated with hostility? Almost certainly.
I think there is a stark difference between “different” and “opposing” viewpoints and I imagine it would be nice living in a place where being open-minded was a common virtue. Unfortunately for me that isn’t really viable at the moment.
I have not experienced what you have in the deep red part of the US. There can be actors on both sides who don’t act in good faith. I was looking at it more from an exchange of viewpoints instead of a dominant / submissive dynamic. When having an exchange of ideas with someone with an opposing viewpoint, it always valuable to understand why they have those beliefs. Then, once you establish that you can ask what facts would have to be known for their viewpoint to shift.
Thank you for clarifying and I don’t disagree at all with the points you raise. Unfortunately in application, the higher ideals seem to be lost on these red-hat troglodytes who are in the majority in my local area. I used to believe similarly that minds could be changed with rational and candid discussion, but my own experience has been that MAGA types just double down when presented with anything that doesn’t align with what they have come to believe; until they are negatively affected by one of the horrible things they support of course.
I haven’t given up entirely but active avoidance appears to be the simplest near-term solution. The problem is the currently dominant political party has done a very effective job of demonizing anything and anyone with an opposing viewpoint to their proponents. That alone makes open discourse almost impossible.
My county always votes red by a landslide, but I keep showing up.
Bloody completely. I’m in Utah, and not the progressive pocket of SLC, but ultra conservative Utah County. It is completely maddening.
Though there is a decently sized neighborhood in my city that is like the Berkeley of this area. I want to go to there, but it’s expensive.
My whole life has been a weird back and forth of this. I grew up in a hyper conservative household and lived in a hyper conservative town, but I wanted to go to art school. So I moved to Seattle.
Fast forward I was a conservative in Seattle of all places, and racist af to boot. Being 18 coming off the heels of my family meant I had no original thoughts and just repeated everything my mom taught me.
I quickly learned better, both through college education but also meeting the people I’d been brought up racist against. Being in a multicultural hub like Seattle means having to see the charicatures my mom had painted for me live, breathe, and talk to me, and it’s hard for anyone with 2 braincells to run together to keep thinking those things when you interact with the people daily.
I stayed in the area after college and became increasingly more leftist. Then at a point I ended up moving to a small conservative town again due to financial issues.
Here I faced the flip side of what I’d experienced in Seattle. I’m white so everyone would try to pull me into conversation about immgrants or people on welfare or LGBT people and I was the sole voice against those views. I tried to reason with them, provide an alternative perspective, and over the years I’ve had mixed results. But the thing I’ll say that was different was the amount of violence and threat I’ve felt being the outsider in these communities.
I said some straight up racist shit when I was younger in Seattle. I lost friends and reputation over it but I never felt afraid. In the small town though, I lost jobs, was threatened, flipped off, verbally abused… I never had anyone physically attack me but it came close a few times. And the only thing I said in those areas was things like “they aren’t bad people because they are Mexican, they’re bad people because they did X to you, Debra.”
The racism and homophobia was the biggest hurdle honestly. People in that sphere dont think the things they are thinking are wrong. Often they only know what they have somehow been slighted, and they misatteibute their frustrations to race or politics. “I can’t afford groceries because so many (insert race) people are on food stamps.” No, you can’t afford groceries because your work isn’t paying you anything but beans and Walmart is the only grocery store in town. There are so many people on food stamps because they are socio-economically disadvantaged. Perhaps if you can’t afford groceries you might also qualify for food stamps."
But that’s hard to quantify, it’s easier to blame the have-nots as being morally lacking than it is to be mad at systems that are hard to quantify.
We just moved cross country out of a loud Trump 2016 and 2020 area to a firmly blue state.
I will admit I see a lot fewer Trump flags/hats/shirts than I did a couple of years ago. I don’t care though, I’m not going to be surrounded by closeted MAGAts. Just because they are too embarrassed to fly the flag now doesn’t mean they won’t in the future.
I live in a supper conservative, traditionalist and patriotic country… I’ve worked in different corperations from small to big and most people have been racists conservative at worst and reactionary centrists at best.
At work I’m often considered a mood kill as I often can’t take it and have trough in a sarcastic remark that breaks their minds a little bit so they move on from their distastefull discussion.
In my free time I mostly hang out with people that are leftist as well and I also enjoy going to leftist political marches and activities.
Im in the us and one side is so ludicrous I can’t even pretend its legitimate. So I have discourse with various levels of left and center and im old enough to remember some semblence of conservative philosophy when it had some legitamacy but you don’t encounter it anymore. I mean the blatant violation of our founding document is just not something to be debated on if its ok to do.
Practically 100%.
I live in the only red district in Hawaii. I have a few anarchist friends and left leaning folks I cruise with, but by and large , if anyone here is political, they are maga.
That being said, I do go work on progressive campaigns in progressive areas. But here it’s red red red.
15 years in Panama City, FL, which is about ⅔ red and ⅓ blue. It was fucking annoying. Fox News on every single fucking public television.
Hampton Roads, VA is so much better.
