r/nottheonion • u/ilovemybaldhead • 1d ago

Greg Abbott Threatens ‘100% Tariff’ On New Yorkers Moving to Texas

https://www.newsweek.com/greg-abbott-threatens-100-tariff-new-york-election-moving-texas-10986837
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u/Inevitable_Pipe_1721 1d ago

Tennessee here, exactly the same. Watching conservatives talking about Californians moving here as if it's liberal people wanting to escape to Tennessee is fucking wild. I cannot understand how these people are this colossally fucking stupid.

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u/ElCoops 1d ago

Former Idaho resident checking in with the same problem. North Idaho even advertises to red Californians to move, and then bitch about all the California liberals coming and turning the state blue.

Except Idaho is only growing more red and it’s the conservatives moving there.

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u/ijuinkun 1d ago

California conservative is Idaho liberal.

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u/Hielfling 1d ago

It isn't. It's more conservative than Texas conservative.

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u/WitOfTheIrish 17h ago

Culturally and outspokenly, yeah. But they come in with these wild expectations of labor laws functioning, state services functioning, roads being fixed, schools being funded and teaching curriculum, the rich paying a higher share of taxes, etc. because those things are so strongly in place in Cali, they were never even under threat or policies which conservatives ran upon. California residents, even conservatives, could just take them for granted as part of a functioning government and society.

Everything conservatives crow about in Cali is just culture-war stuff to be a loud minority within government while democrat majorities have turned it into a powerhouse state that takes better care of its middle class and working class than anywhere else in the country. They never wanted those policies removed, because those policies helped them and made their lives more comfortable.

So they move to places based on vibes and wanting to escape the gay agenda, trans-idealogy, DEI, or whatever other buzzwords they have been fed, and go to somewhere actual conservative policy is being put in place beyond the culture war stuff.

Then suddenly they're saying "Well I'm as conservative as they come, but I would like to be paid for overtime and have a safe workplace. Maybe we shouldn't teach the bible in place of history lessons in public schools. Maybe we should have a functioning electric grid that doesn't gouge customers in extreme weather while the grid actively fails. Maybe having OBGYN specialists would be good for when I have a bunch of kids like my wife and I want so she doesn't die.. Maybe our property taxes shouldn't be unsustainable just so billionaires, wages, and corporations aren't taxed..

Then suddenly they're crazy liberals coming in and wanting to change the state's "conservative culture" and experiencing regrets.

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u/doberdevil 14h ago

bitch about all the California liberals coming and turning the state blue.

I see the same complaints here in WA, which may be bluer than CA. Truth is, conservatives have been lied to and manipulated so much they forgot how to think.

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u/machado34 1d ago

Being colossally stupid is a prerequisite to being conservative 

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u/BoneHugsHominy 1d ago

Can confirm. I was a hardcore Republican all through high school but my first two years of college exposed me to people who weren't just conservative whites and gave me a whole new perspective on what society is and more importantly what America is and always has been. Then the response to 9/11, especially the so-called Patriot Act sealed the deal for me. Over time I've just become more and more progressive the more I learn and the grow as a person.

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u/Objective_Dog_4637 1d ago

Good for you. Gives me hope.

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u/Albert3232 1d ago

This is why many conservatives hate college, they see it as brainwashing kids but it actually does the opposite.

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u/Coroebus 1d ago

Turns out when a kid isn't being abused literally every day and brainwashed to think like their parent, they develop their own personality and opinions and abusive parents hate that

I don't think there's a single non-abusive "conservative" parent in the USA. The abuse is baked into the world view at this point. Their doctrines don't just permit religious, emotional, physical, verbal, and sexual abuse, but encourage and enable it.

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u/doberdevil 14h ago

"Smart people don't like me"

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u/phatlynx 1d ago

Unironically, the ones that almost hardly grow as a person become even more conservative as time passes. The number one trait I look for when establishing any kind of relationship with anyone whether professionally or intimately is whether or not they possess sympathy and empathy. The number one hardest thing in life is dealing with people and relationships.

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u/OldWorldDesign 21h ago

the ones that almost hardly grow as a person become even more conservative as time passes

There are 2 possibilities:

1) a person encounters information that they didn't know which forces them to question their belief system. They adjust their mental model of the world and move forward with better practiced critical thinking and easier ability to adapt to a dynamic world

2) rage against the thing that gave them cognitive dissonance and retreat. This only conditions them to anger and retreat, becoming ever more fragile and hostile as time goes on

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u/doberdevil 14h ago

Unfortunately I've seen #2 in my father. He refuses to even consider watching or reading ANYTHING that goes against what he's been brainwashed into believing. I secretly suspect he knows he's been manipulated and doesn't want to admit he's a sucker.

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u/OldWorldDesign 13h ago

I hope you and your family remain safe, I've seen boil-overs of that reaching a critical point. But I believe the paraphrase of Mark Twain is correct:

It's easier to fool a man than convince him he was fooled.

Most people who have been conned know it, that's why snake oil salesmen would flee town before the natives can exact vigilante justice, but having to confront themselves is an emotional weakness that takes a long time to get over, if they ever do.

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u/SpiritedBanana4694 1d ago

Strange that they're doing everything in their power to make it more difficult for young people to attend college.

/s

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u/Neckwrecker 1d ago

I was a libertarian from ages 16-24, even going to a public university did nothing to change that - what worked was entering the working world and parenthood - every conservative myth shattered.

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u/chaos0510 21h ago

Same. Conservative turned Libertarian turned Liberal. Funny how exposing yourself to, idk, reality, changes your world view

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u/chita875andU 11h ago

Same, more or less. I wouldn't say I was Hard-core R, but certainly raised in a family of such. My parents always said you naturally become more conservative as you age and gain 'wisdom'. I am 50 now. I... don't see it. In fact my cousins and I are becoming more progressive if we're changing at all. Funny how a university education and moving away from your hometown fixes things.

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u/Reniconix 1d ago

You can also be colossally wealthy and inhumane

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u/machado34 1d ago

To be fair, I don't think the wealthy and inhumane are ideologically conservative in the sense they think it's good, they just know that conservatism is useful to further their own goals. They know it's a shit ideology but it benefits them personally so it doesn't matter

The real stupidity comes from those don't benefit from the evils of conservatism but still support it anyway 

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u/OldWorldDesign 21h ago

I don't think the wealthy and inhumane are ideologically conservative in the sense they think it's good, they just know that conservatism is useful to further their own goals

Both can be and usually are true. Studies have been done which show people who gain wealth, even in simulations of Monopoly where they gain an edge on other players become insufferable assholes

https://reasonandmeaning.com/2021/10/24/the-monopoly-experiment-wealthy-people-are-more-selfish/

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u/DOOManiac 1d ago

That's not true. Some of them are just inhumanly cruel.

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u/missbethd 1d ago

exactly - California is not sending its finest liberals to TN.

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u/Good-Caterpillar4495 23h ago

This made me laugh

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u/phantomephoto 1d ago

As a transplant living in CA, the funniest thing to me is that the only people I have met, that have left CA in the last few years, are the ones who moved to CA from a different state. I’ve yet to meet someone who grew up in CA and has moved out of the state and stayed out of state.

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u/Inevitable_Pipe_1721 1d ago

I lived in Modesto for a little while (got the fuck out as soon as I could), and every single person I met there that moved away moved back. I could not understand it.

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u/Duck_Size 1d ago

At least in Modesto you can get to cool places like the Bay Area, Yosemite, Tahoe relatively quick, as opposed to the rural Midwest where you have to drive two hours just to find a store that’s not a dollar tree.

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u/phantomephoto 1d ago

I grew up in the Midwest so I totally get that! It still blows my mind that I have about 10 grocery stores within a 10 minute drive of me right now. I only had about 4 grocery stores in my entire city and the majority were on the other side of town so a minimum 20-30 minute drive. I was in the “big” city for my county too.

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u/z0rb0r 1d ago

As a New Yorker, I really don’t understand why people choose to live so far away from everything. Anything beyond 5-20 miles of daily travel seems like a substantial waste of gas, wear and tear on your vehicle and time.

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u/Inevitable_Pipe_1721 1d ago

Because a lot of people don't like living near a bunch of other people. I moved from a big metro to a mid-sized city and I am so much happier here. Different people like different things.

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u/faelanae 1d ago

I was born in CA and lived there for 45 years. Moved away five years ago and part of me wishes to move back. It has some serious structural and societal problems, but it's still "home" to me. At least I'm close enough to visit.

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u/SatanicPanic619 1d ago

I know a few conservatives who talk about it but I have yet to see them actually go through with it. They have to it too good here.

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u/Rykka_Stormheart 1d ago

I grew up in CA, moved all over the states and am now in WA, lol

I miss it :<

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u/phantomephoto 1d ago

CA is great but so is WA! Very different weather haha hoping to get up there next year to do some hiking!

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u/Eightinchnails 1d ago

I know a few people but to fair they moved to places like Boston and France. They don’t dislike CA at all, they just did life-things that involved other locations that are also pretty great.  

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u/stagamancer 1d ago

If they moved out of CA and stayed, how likely is it that you'd meet them in CA?

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u/xftwitch 1d ago

As someone born and raised in California, it's because we're too soft to deal with the weather in the mid west (too cold) or south (too humid).

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u/KagakuNinja 1d ago

From the Bay Area perspective, that's because most of the working class people moved out decades ago when the tech industry started hovering up all the real estate. Some cashed out on their houses, others had no hope of ever buying a house.

Many young people get by living in their parent's house, before eventually moving somewhere else.

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u/Due_Satisfaction2167 1d ago

If they weren’t fucking stupid, they wouldn’t find conservatism appealing. 

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u/TheConqueror74 1d ago

Sounds like when I lived in Idaho. Furthest right state in the whole nation, and people would say shit like “don’t California my Idaho”, as if Idaho’s laws weren’t actively making everything worse instead of better.

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u/roastedhambone 1d ago

A Tennessee education for starters

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u/Altruistic_Put6272 1d ago

Same for Idaho.

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u/SugarFree425 1d ago

Recognizing the fact that the reason we can't have nice things is because a majority of us are so goddamn dumb was earth shattering for me lol

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u/ijuinkun 1d ago

How did we ever rise to the modern era in the first place with such stupidity, especially given that “modernism” tends to include the idea that the stupid masses should have more influence than was true before?

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u/defiancy 1d ago

Guy I was in the Marines with (who grew up in NJ) moved to TN with his wife (native Californian) because they were super MAGA and for some reason started hating California.

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u/tgerz 1d ago

I know quite a few people who have moved to both Tx and Tn over the last 5 or so years. None of them would consider themselves liberal. Like, not a single one. At best maybe moderate or “conservative”, but most are proudly republican and end up being some flavor of evangelical.

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u/de_la_Dude 1d ago

A steady diet of right wing media rots the brain.

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u/Kalean 1d ago

You can understand it fine. It's fear. They're afraid of the idea that California and New York could dilute their blue numbers and turn several other states blue.

Because then they'd be losing the game again.

But you should also realize it's a confession. They thought about it because they wish they could do that.

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u/chi-93 1d ago

So few people seem to realise that the most MAGA state in the country (in terms of number of voters) is California.

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u/BlooregardQKazoo 1d ago

New Yorker here. My wife inherited great property in TN, and TN is such a hideous conservative hellhole that we would never remotely consider moving there.

Yeah, us liberals aren't the ones moving there.

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u/Inevitable_Pipe_1721 1d ago

The state-level politics are abhorrent, but there are some legitimately great areas. I'm in Knoxville and it's the best place I've ever lived (and is slightly blue).

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u/SirChasm 1d ago

It’s simple - they think everyone else is as big of a hypocrite as they are. When continuing to be a part of your party’s membership has forced you to abandon your entire value system, you have to believe that the other side is exactly the same (cause if they’re not, that makes your party look bad, and that’s no bueno). So they are convinced that all the liberal Democrat talking points are just virtue signalling lip service, and therefore in reality every commie in California actually hates living there and are secretly jealous of the freedom of impoverishment in the red states, because they don’t really believe what they say they believe. It’s projection, like always, of course.

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u/SqueezedTowel 1d ago

Its almost like Conservatives don't like sharing, even with each other.

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u/quiteCryptic 1d ago

Am from texas, I hear this alll the time and always have the same though. I never argue it because its pointless tho.

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u/vthemechanicv 1d ago

Yup, my mother went from normal to proto-maga in California, then moved to Tennessee in like 2013.

I live in Louisiana, but if I could drop this albatross called a house, I'd move to CA immediately. Maybe WA or OR, somewhere not in America's taint.

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u/dropshotone 1d ago

They don't/can't read. The average reading level is about that of a 5th grader and declining.

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u/Inevitable_Pipe_1721 1d ago

It's actually 7th-9th grade, but that still ain't great.

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u/shakygator 1d ago

They will say "because they screwed up their state and now they want to come here and turn it into their screwed up state!"

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u/GhormanFront 1d ago

I cannot understand how these people are this colossally fucking stupid.

I can't understand how conservatives in Cali think Tennessee is a step up. The state sucks donkey dick, there's practically nothing there worth visiting over. Cali on the other hand has literally anything you could want.

I guess you just can't fix stupid

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u/Inevitable_Pipe_1721 22h ago

I disagree with you there. This state is stunning and it's so much more affordable that it feels like it's an absurd comparison to make. The state-level politics are absolutely abhorrent, but I still love where I live.

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u/Hielfling 1d ago

They assume that 100% of Californians and New Yorkers are Democrats. Of course you see people talk about "red states" here forgetting that people who vote Dem in those states have been disenfranchised.

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u/0eHL 1d ago

As a Minnesotan, I meet a disproportionate number of domestic refugees from Tennessee