Vaguely reflecting my failed, last-ditch effort to find a Place of Sanity, here’s a firsthand account of a Cuckservative who found out the hard way, when he moved from Austin, Texas to Nowheres, Tennessee, that everything he liked about the place was exactly why it turned out to be Left Side Up.
Come with me on a journey of discovery, that Place of Sanity means different things to different people.
Leftists Are Colonizing Red Towns Like Mine, And Local Republicans Are Clueless
h ttps://thefederalist.com/2021/01/13/leftists-are-colonizing-red-towns-like-mine-and-local-republicans-are-clueless/
By Mark Pulliam, 13 January 2021
As 2020 wound to a close, pundits noted the growing toll of leftist policies on residents of blue states, prompting migration from California, New York, New Jersey, and Illinois to Republican-run states such as Texas and Florida, which offer lower taxes and a better business climate. In addition to losing Oracle, Charles Schwab, Hewlett Packard, and Elon Musk, for the first time in its history California is expected to lose a congressional seat in the upcoming decennial census allocation, due to stagnating population. Texas is expected to gain three seats, and Florida is expected to pick up two.
Cuckservatives think it’s all about the economy. “Growing toll of leftist policies” forcing major companies out of the state, bah. The reason the little people are leaving California (population replacement, anti-natalism) is not the reason Fortune 500 companies are leaving California (a new wealth tax about to be levied against the Board of Directors).
This was my first clue that Mark and I are “differently sane”.
Blue states tend to be dominated by urban voters, large numbers of unionized government employees, and.in California.a technology-based economy that relies on large numbers of young, college-educated (and in many cases foreign-born) employees. Even historically red states such as Texas exhibit symptoms of dysfunctional leftist governance in their burgeoning urban areas. Austin is rapidly becoming a clone of San Francisco and Portland.
Predators go where the food is. That’s why urban life skews heavily Socialist. It’s a mistake, however, to think that predators will never feed on the margins. Especially when the predator population has been exploding thanks to a lack of higher-tier predators (meaning the fathers who, when fatherhood existed, protected their kids).
We have come to expect blue states to be .woke,. displaying fealty to the latest academic fads, such as critical race theory and other forms of identity politics. Rural America, the “flyover country” populated by Donald Trump-voting deplorables, is supposed to be immune from this trend.
This kind of thinking is what happens when one relies upon media headlines for his worldview. However can I tolerate living in California? Because I don’t live in either the Gay Area or Los Angeles. California is huge, y’know. It ain’t just UC Berkeley.
As a [new] resident of a small town in east Tennessee, I regret to report that wokeness is everywhere, even in the brightest-red areas of Republican-majority states. My town is home to a small, 200-year-old, Presbyterian-affiliated liberal arts college that appears to be an island of sanity in higher education. But it’s not, and neither is the rest of the town.
Fatal mistake, assuming that any longstanding institution hasn’t been coopted by the forces of weak men holding sinecures because they’re scared of private-sector life.
Hmm, how did he not know that? Serious question.
When we relocated here from Austin, my wife and I imagined the school was comparable to Hillsdale College, except nestled in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.
Located in Michigan, Hillsdale is a quietly infamous college because it rejects all Federal financial aid. Sounds like the author accepted a skin suit imitation instead of following the money.
That’s why skin suits work. They show you what you want to see and that’s the easiest deception ever. I wanted to believe, too, but then I did my homework.
My wife and I quickly learned the reality is otherwise when a supposedly faith-based lecture we attended on campus was devoted to the teachings of Karl Marx rather than Jesus Christ. The lecturer, who teaches “religious studies” at Skidmore College, is the daughter of the host school’s equally-leftist campus minister.
“It was supposed to be a faith-based institution but turned out to be a Marxist trap!” Next time, goober, hold out for a CHRISTIAN institution. Checking for female leadership is step one in vetting that kind of thing.
We were also chagrined to learn that the local public library.in a county that voted for President Trump in 2020 by a margin of 71-27 percent.maintains a curated “antiracism” reading list that includes controversial fare such as Ibram Kendi’s “How to Be an Antiracist,. Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility,. and Ta-Nehisi Coates. “Between the World and Me..
Along with headlines, don’t trust statistics. I hope the author’s relocation research was more than “most Trump-supporting county in USA according to exit polls”.
Ignoring the blight homeless people inflict on library users across America, the local library also provides office space to a newly formed organization serving the homeless, with which the library works as a partner, even engaging in “street outreach.” The library staffer leading this initiative is.predictably.a graduate of the local leftist college. Indoctrination works.
That’s not indoctrination. That’s parasites working the system. The key phrase in that paragraph for me was “a graduate of the local … college”.
Is Mark one of those parasites? Since he intentionally chose a mainline church-aligned college town? Then how did the other parasites not recognize their own?
Even though the area is overwhelmingly Republican, the local paper (owned by a national chain headquartered out of state) is unfailingly and obnoxiously left. The editor admits that one of his .life’s greatest disappointments. was being interviewed by The Washington Post and getting turned down for the job. The local paper is a WaPo wannabe, albeit relying heavily on Associated Press reportage. It consistently boosts leftist ideas, locally and nationally.
Yep, Mark trusted the headlines. “Everybody there is a Republican! except, surprisingly, for the schools and journalists and government officials and mainline-denomination church and all the other people I thought I could trust because they’re credentialed! How could I have known that people whose religion is parasitic avoidance of reality would infest century-old, respectable institutions offering lifetime employment and taxpayer-backed retirements for makework?”
Due in part to the paper’s favorable coverage, a leftist activist who chaired the local Democratic Party and founded the radical organization Indivisible East Tennessee was recently elected to the ostensibly nonpartisan city council. The local Republican Party belatedly.and reluctantly.supported the center-right candidates in a four-person race for two seats. Supported by Soros-funded organizations from outside the state, the Democrat eked out a second-place finish by a few hundred votes, establishing a leftist toe-hold in an otherwise solidly conservative county.
I thought it was great that campaign funding disclosure laws were passed. Not so great that anti-sedition laws were not attached to them. That is typical Cuckservatism. They’re more interested in having a Grendel to play Beowulf against than actually slaying Grendel.
Complacency is a problem for east Tennesseans. They are so used to Republicans winning elections that they falsely assume victory is automatic. It is not.
Dude, your leader refused to fight for you against an obvious threat. That’s treachery, not complacency. Meh, you’ll vote for him next year anyway because it’ll be the most important election ever.
The first step in electing sound candidates to local office is to make sure that someone representing your values is running.
You’re STILL falling for the “Values Voter” scam? You fool.
In 2020, a leftist educator and “diversity consultant” who formerly served as dean of students at the local “woke” college was elected to the county board of education without any opposition. Public education desperately needs responsible oversight, but frequently is captured by letists aligned with teachers. unions.
Sure, the problem with public schools is not enough high-level government regulation. Not their chemically castrating 10yo children against their parents’ wishes.
I’m not even angry anymore. I’m not Certified enough for Cuckservatives to even hear me. Mark Pulliam is trying desperately to live a fantasy in his head, a fantasy in which he can have childlike trust in the schools, the churches and the government without any of those people ever taking advantage of the opportunity.
Mark will never stop trusting the Authorities. He is too broken a human being to live a responsible life. But how did that happen? He doesn’t look soyboy.
Cowardly administrators wishing to avoid responsibility for making unpopular decisions often resort to commissions, committees, and task forces. Ironically, the diversity task force, supposedly formed to collect community input, has been meeting behind closed doors, claiming to be exempt from the state’s open meetings law.
.It.s not our intent for the work of the diversity task force to be aired in the public,. the director told a reporter. .It wouldn’t be fair to them to have those conversations in public..
Treachery, not irony. A conservative would hate that POS director and call him out… Maryville City Schools Director Mike Winstead…
…regardless of his… political identity… hmm. Occam’s Razor says the reason a guy would simultaneously accuse a politician then not hold that politician up to public scrutiny is because he’s trying to handle the matter in-house.
Which implies this is a clash of two in-groups.
Why do voters tolerate such high-handed actions by their public servants?
Many are uninformed; few people read the local newspaper.
Which is it? Are they uninformed or do they NOT read the local newspaper?
Whatever do you mean, the newspaper has what they need to be properly informed?
Most ordinary people in small towns are busy working, taking care of their families, and living their lives. They do not spend their time on social media or the internet, putting them at a disadvantage compared to better-organized, tech-savvy activists on the left.
Translation, “we Old Guard people should be able to trust the government to do its thing but can’t because the Newcomers are co-opting us”. Old Guard meaning… hmm, mainline denominations, Ivy League academia, political loyalty proven (ideally) by credentialism… Yankees?
When I first got into blogging, I didn’t understand the hatred for Yankees. I thought I did. Southerners hated them for the Civil War and its aftermath, yes? Not quite. I finally clued in that the Yankees have been the ruling class for all of America since then. By “ruling class”, I don’t just mean the D.C. Beltway. The sort of blind faith in America’s institutions that Mark is demonstrating here is the blind faith born of 150 years knowing that Your People have a reserved seat at the top of society. “Values Voting” makes sense if all of the politicians have already been vetted. It’s all ice cream, just pick your favorite flavor.
Not just political dynasties, then. We’re talking about a Yankee subculture that, like all ruling subcultures, erected institutional barriers to keep the Dirt People out. That’s where the love of Credentialism came from. Why Republicucks won’t hear my voice just because I got no sheepskin.
I’d wondered how the Jews were able to coopt American government so thoroughly. Fifty state governments, hundreds of subcultures, some of them openly hostile to Zion. The answer is that the Yankee had already fought that war, so to speak, and usurping the Yankee was easy thanks to 1. a shared hatred of the rest of America and 2. reliance upon institutions to undermine local-level independence.
Yeah, yeah, I’m late to the party. But I’ve been played for a fool my entire life.
Most residents of small towns are trusting, good-natured people who naively believe that civic leaders will “do the right thing.” East Tennesseans are nice, and they assume that their niceness will be reciprocated. Sadly, all too often local elected officials betray this trust, in order to dole out political favors or do the bidding of business cronies.
Mark is trying to rebuild the mound of Yankee-ism. He assumes their betrayals are only for in-house problems such as bribery or political favors because the truth… a new religion motivating his Yankee peers to burn down their own homes… would mean he’d be ON HIS OWN for the first time in his life.
When Mark fled Austin, he wasn’t fleeing the Convergence. This is obvious just from his continued, location-independent participation in the Federalist. Yankee Culture had lost its grip there and he was trying to stay inside that culture. A different situation from me seeking a place where the government hasn’t yet criminalized my existence.
Thanks for nothing, Yankees.
For example, our Republican county mayor, the most powerful local elected official, supported the opening of a methadone clinic located near a daycare center. Astonishingly, the owner of the methadone clinic is one of the biggest supporters of the Democratic activist who was recently elected to the city council.
In short, weak leadership, public inattention, lack of organization, and general complacency make small towns vulnerable to aggression by liberal activists. Wokeness can be resisted successfully when the majority of voters actively oppose it. But in the absence of political resistance, the left’s agenda will take over, as inexorably as the rising tide.
Don’t bring a knife to a gunfight and don’t bring a politician to a religious war. Especially when your religion of choice is a witch-ruled empty husk called “Presbyterian”.
Unless rural voters in states like Tennessee wake up, they may find that their communities have become knock-offs of Portland, Minneapolis, Austin, or Nashville. Like it or not, small towns are embroiled in the national culture war. They must fight back or they will lose.
Too late, Mark. Nowhere to run. No place will welcome you. You will either worship Christ or worship the State. Your people don’t run the State anymore and Christ requires soul-searching about how your people have so misruled America that foreign invaders didn’t even have to try to conquer us.
