• WilsonWilson [comrade/them, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    26·
    2 months ago

    This made me laugh because I sometimes wonder why places in the usa with the most natural beauty are always politically right wing. You would think living somewhere like this would calm the savage soul but instead they are always populated with angry fascists. They aren’t even conservationists and will vote in favor of strip mining, fracking, drilling and selling public land for development and other environmentally destructive policies.

    • tocopherol [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
      23·
      2 months ago

      I’ve been to a few beautiful rural communities in the US that are more progressive leaning, I think most of the actual serious leftists that move to the country just don’t make any noise politically because they are more serious and doing real homesteading and farm work or whatever and don’t want to be targeted, and we just hear mostly about the neo-nazis etc because they don’t fear the state as much and all they do is go to school board meetings and town halls and yell about woke ideologies.

      • GrouchyGrouse [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        12·
        2 months ago

        Usually it’s also the states with with the most recent and often longstanding fights with the natives as they forced them off and away, or onto the reservation that’s right next door, so it’s chock full of that colonial legacy

      • infuziSporg [e/em/eir]@hexbear.netEnglish
        3·
        2 months ago

        I’ve been to a few beautiful rural communities in the US that are more progressive leaning

        Could you tell me about a few, if you don’t mind? This is a big interest of mine. You could do it via DM if you prefer.

    • Chana [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      12·
      2 months ago
      • Many of the “most beautiful” places are the most settler, they weren’t even states a little over 100 years ago. Their economic base and political background was built on “free” (stolen) land and genocide. Their “culture” is built on myths and truths around independence, basically having like 10 neighbors within walking distance at best.
      • There actually were a lot of rural conservationists, mostly for recreational purposes. Rural entertainment is going outside. Hunting, fishing, sports, hiking, ATVs, snow stuff. After genocide there was plenty of stolen land for these things. The folks were never coherent but they liked their access to public land. Many (most?) rural states were defined via incoherent politics, progressive in some ways, reactionary in others. Some had the earliest feminist policies, for example, even while having some of the greatest violence against women.
      • Reactionaries have congealed around mass media false consciousness, it has risen to the forefront and is now more disciplined. And the children of those conservationists have increasingly left rural areas for economic reasons. What’s left behind is a bunch of small towns that could be replaced by a hospice care center but the nearest hospital is an hour away. Those intransigent survivors are biased towards those who faced the least social violence. Proximity to capital. White. In positions of influence over others. Land owners. They love to chitchat with their 10 neighbors about the worst things you’ve seen on social media or TV.

      If doing an analysis it is useful to remember that the outdoorsy conservationist types do still exist at least on paper. They’re just outweighed by the aforementioned reactionaries.

      There have been some recent course changes to this as well, but it’s mostly an influx of shitlibs from cities, people who buy up land and work remotely or are petty bourgeois. They are basically gentrifiers and care more about NIMBY than conservation.

      • infuziSporg [e/em/eir]@hexbear.netEnglish
        3·
        2 months ago

        This.

        It’s not the natural environment that breeds reactionaries, it’s the reactionaries who are (effectively, over a long time frame) selected to inhabit these areas.

        In the case of Mormons, they were very dissonant with mainstream colonial society early on, and after expulsion and migration and resettlement, the state found a niche for them again. Colonialism enlists frontier missionary Protestantism in roundabout ways.