Bye, Bye Crockpot!

* I  read this piece on the reason we have so much stupidity in Red States.

A LOT of people in red states don't travel. A LOT of those who do travel don't go far. A LOT of those who do stick to other ruby red areas.
There are a lot of disingenuous arguments made about other places. They'll call “blue cities” dangerous, despite statistics showing their little rural hometown to be far more dangerous on a per capita basis.

There is a staunch “If you don't like it, leave” mentality, as if it's some world-collapsing bluff. The prevailing opinion in many deep red areas is that is just doesn't get any better and the world outside is spooky and an assured quick and violent demise. It's eyeroll inducing.

Education is an afterthought. What good is philosophy? You can't use it to hammer in a nail! If you can't immediately monetize something, it's worthless and a waste of time.
Religion and superstition reign absolutely supreme.
Racism is RAMPANT. Anyone who wants to challenge me on this, go F yourself. Yes, racism occurs everywhere, but Red states, particularly in the South, take the cake. You can try and hide it all you want, it's a facade cheaper than the shxt stucco on every crappy strip mall built in Florida.

Self-interest only extends to the front door. Look, Louisiana is a perfect example of this. Without New Orleans, the state would be utterly broke and a world-class hell hole. Hell, most of the entire Gulf Coast would be screwed without New Orleans.
But Louisiana's state legislature would rather see New Orleans crumble than accept that they actually need the “blue city” to succeed. New Orleans would do far better as an independent city-state than the rest of Louisiana without it. Yet, instead of allowing it to flourish, they'll consistently put the screws to New Orleans despite it harming the rest of the state. Better to “own the libs”, I guess?
Pridefulness and sentimentality rule the day. “Granddaddy told me” means more than any expert opinion. “Granddaddy built this house, so it's worth more than they're saying!”. “Só you're calling my dad a liar!?”. That stuff permeates in Red America.
Vigilante mentality takes precedent over the facts.
It's beyond a proven fact at this point that Red States are the consummate “welfare queens”. How anyone living in a Red State gets off bitching about welfare or aid or assistance is beyond me. Subsidized to no end, but because they're not receiving a personally addressed aid box, it must not be true.
So what you typically wind up with is a population that largely never leaves the immediate vicinity, has no frame of reference of elsewhere for comparison, is largely undereducated, superstitious, racist, and interested only in short term instant gratification, that puts more stock in misguided pride and sentimentality while caring more about looking tough than actually being tough, all while relying on others to actually do the heavy lifting.

Why, you ask, are they so astonishingly stupid? Because they've largely refused to progress with the times and were never really forced to. The biggest mistake the US has made over the years has been allowing Red States to go about their whimsically merry way of trifling horseshXt than allowing them to be the failures they so desperately want to be, because Blue States paid attention in biology class and understand that allowing parasites to rot away will hurt the whole.