My grandparents retired to live on Lake Sam Rayburn. I spent a great deal of my childhood and early adult life on Lake Rayburn and out in the Angelina National Forest.
The conservative love affair with painting San Francisco and to a lesser degree, Chicago as dystopia hell holes is really odd. I am very critical of both cities, and in reality neither city in practice is terribly liberal.... but they are also two very attractive places to live for many Americans and there are thousands of places that are worse to live in the United States. For example I heard a lot of conservatives talk about violence in Chicago. First from a per capita basis there are many areas in the South and the Midwest far more dangerous. Further the vast majority of Chicago (like liberal city NYC) is extremely safe. The fair criticism of Chicago is the incredible racism and segregation as well as a general indifference in the city towards violence in poor black areas of town. I have literally heard white people say: “Well I don’t live there so don’t care.” San Francisco also has issues and is guilty of hypocrisy when it comes to treatment of poor people. People in San Francisco do not want poor people living in their city. They have consistently stopped affordable housing development. I was even involved in a legal fight there years ago. Even with that... neither city is a dystopia... if you want to see America falling apart, go to rural America in places like the Midwest and Rust Belt. These are conservative communities with limited jobs, poor educational opportunities, a drug epidemic and decreasing populations.
Heroin was a massive problem in San Francisco when I was a federal prosecutor years ago. I still keep in touch with people in that line of work. Meth and synthetic opioids is a problem in rural areas. It is worse in rural areas than crack was in inner city black areas.... entire communities are being destroyed in rural towns. The poverty is bad. Many of these people live on government assistance and seasonal work. They are stripping the wiring and plumbing in all the vacant homes, robbing elderly people in their towns. Young people essentially doing nothing and it has been long enough that now many of the children have parents addicted to synthetic opioids. People with prescriptions are using half and selling the other half for money to addicts. Shady doctors open pain clinics in these towns knowing addicts will come in.
Speaking of East Texas, I would pay good money to send Louie Gohmert to NYC or San Fran or such, put him up in a nice place for 2 months, and watch him, reality show style.
Can't speak for Kansas or Mississippi because I've never really spent time there other than a drive-through, but the others are pretty ****ing awesome places. Maybe not Alabama so much, but the beaches and fishing are really nice.
Trading Spouses...but with Congressmenpersons? I love this idea, make it happen. I suggest an internet twitter campaign.
California also has nice scenic places. I'm referring to poverty rates, k-12 education quality and rampant drug abuse.
For something to be a "dystopia" implies that there was some promise or expectation that it could be a utopia. No one would have ever said Mississippi or East Texas was going to be some kind of utopia. It fits better with San Fran because it is held up as a model city, one of the great world cities, etc. You can apply this idea elsewhere, like Brownback's Kansas, because his efforts to make it into a model libertarian state didn't work out like he hoped. But I don't think the handle quite fits for a place that has been poor since the Civil War at least, with little indication of even trying to do or be anything special.
Nice... I was born in SF (Children's Hospital, then Elsie Street, then moved to SSF). Great city... with the best restaurants in the world, especially those on Clement Street. Now I know who to go to for new restaurant recommendations (suspect those I frequented no longer exist).
No offense but what’s your point? I think I only mentioned East Texas as a way of pointing out that FoxNews is just running propanda again and again to make the people that live in areas like East Texas or Mississippi think that Democrats screw up cities with socialism etc. but your good ole boy GOP representative brings you a utopia. People that live in Mississippi and East Texas have blinders on to their own issues with poverty and homelessness. Some of which can be driven be bad political decisions by their representatives. I don’t really get the dissection of the word Utopia or dystopia. East Texas is neither. It’s just fine and as I mentioned, I love it and am obviously not scared to live there despite the poverty and all the “dangerous looking” people who might make some feel uncomfortable in certain settings. Homeless people in San Fran, Seattle, and Austin don’t really bother me personally either. FoxNews and the GOP propaganda outlets are just gaslighting.
Plenty people romanticize of places like Mississippi being utopia in terms of being rural having small populations, neighbors depending on each other etc et etc Think country music
