My family has a cabin. We've literally built it all by hand except for the cement foundation. It's legit, signed off as meets code and everything. I brought a pride flag up knowing it might ruffle my grandparents feathers but I planned to talk to them respectfully. Before my grandparents ever saw it, my parents and uncle sat me down and said "we're not going to allow that" and even going as far as saying "if you leave the flag here, we're going to destroy it." I didn't fight them. I left. And despite my blood, sweat, and tears going into that cabin, I'm never going back.

I told them it wasn't as simple as a difference of opinion, it was a difference in morality. They agreed.

I like the "tolerance is a social contract" approach to a tolerant society. My wife and I are thinking of growing our family. We both don't want to subject a future child of ours to my family's beliefs so we're effectively estranged and I think my parents are slowly finding out we mean business and it's not just "their kid throwing a fit." Call me snowflake all you want, my child won't hear it.

This is an amazing article, thank you for sharing. As someone who fled red-state rural America for blue-state urban living I can't put it better than this article. Everything was like reading from my own history.

I went to college to become more skilled in the labor force. I realized quickly that would give me the ability to move anywhere in the country and get a job.

The most welcoming place I've lived is my very blue state urban city. People here don't care who I am, what I'm into (as long as it doesn't hurt other people), what religion I am, or what my profession is. It's by far a lot nicer than "nice" rural small towns

Hallmark and MAGA exploit the void inside of them

Citations needed did an amazing analysis of the Hallmark Christmas phenomenon that touches on this and a lot of other stuff

https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/ep-152-hallmark-christmas-movies-and-the-cozy-conservative-nostalgia-machine

And a follow-up here about the anti-labor tropes of Hallmark movies

https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/a-very-special-news-brief-hallmarks-anti-labor-churn-a-follow-up-conversation

What I think needs to start happening is for groups of people to come together and build intentional communities in and around college towns and small and mid-sized cities in blue States. There's not enough housing to how is these people in the traditional big cities in the States but if a bunch of people were to all move to the same place we can make new big cities complete with all the amenities and culture one expects and places like Southern Illinois and Eastern Washington and Oregon