- Kellee Speakman, a conservative elementary school teacher, moved from California to Texas in 2022 but returned after four and a half months due to Texas’s political obsession and unexpected living costs.
- Speakman found Texas to be not much cheaper than California, with high property taxes, expensive services, and lower wages, which contributed to her dissatisfaction.
- She returned to California, appreciating its lifestyle, public lands, and better teacher benefits, realizing that her idea of freedom involved peace and everyday adventures rather than political rhetoric.
I was thinking about moving to Mexico a few years back. Areas in Mexico are so full of expats, the prices aren’t any better than US. If you don’t mind the occasional cartel massacres, there are still less over-run areas if you habla español.
Texas is five states stapled together at this point. Your experience is going to vary depending on which part you live in.
- Dallas Fort Worth is mostly rich and upper middle class (pretending to be rich) white Republicans with a couple of minority enclaves.
- East Texas is just an extension of the religious right nutjobs from Oklahoma.
- I don’t think people in Houston give a shit about politics other than the rich oil industry people in the Woodlands.
- Austin people are involved in politics because they are an oasis of blue in the center of the state, and the capitol is there. Mostly they are involved in local politics because the state government keeps trying to undo anything that passes there (light rail, plastic bag ban, worker rights legislation, etc). Also because half or more of the education taxes are given to the state instead of local schools. 🙄
- I have no idea what goes on in West Texas. 🤷♂️
Dallas is pretty blue right now as well. Would I say “left-wing”? No, but I doubt the average Dallas resident is feeling that happy with people like Trump, Cruz or Abbott.
Same with most of Harris county.
East Texas was spot on, though.
West Texas is oil drilling and churches
Still stuck in There Will Be Blood.
YEP. My experience having grown up here was that Texas was cheap and pretty laid-back politically. Then something changed and the state shifted into being expensive and politically obsessed.
Exactly the trajectory Florida is on. I grew up here, we had low wages, cheap housing, very cheap groceries, ugly sprawl, beautiful beaches, so many queer people, circus folk, immigrants from everywhere and environmentalists. Rednecks in the country but cities so blue. So far south we were not the South.
It shifted right some over the years but COVID-19 brought all these racist northerners to our cities, with a lot of money, now we have cost of living average for anywhere but wages still lower than all those anywhere places. Cities still diverse but state politics ridiculous and very Southern.
Now there are a lot of people who want to know what’s in your child’s pants.
DOOM!
When did this change happen?
The last gasp of the ‘mind your own business’ conservatives in Texas was either the 2016 election or the one after that. There was a period of time where you had the Lt Governor trying to pass culture war bills (like anti-trans bathroom bills) in the senate and then they would die in the house when the speaker wouldn’t put them up for a vote due to it being bad for attracting businesses. Once the MAGA Republicans got voted in, it’s been full steam ahead for them.
It’s not like things were great before then, but it wasn’t this race to the bottom like it is now.
It really got rolling when Bush Jr got elected governor. It had been festering for a while.
The southern strategy merged with big oil money, and utilized the conservative Baptist churches to try to shame people into getting on board.
That’s when it started, but for a long time everyone was still in that “fuck off, I’ll live my life and you live yours” after that. I remember being taught if you don’t like what someone is doing and it doesn’t affect anyone except the person who is doing it, you don’t have to watch them do it. I think the exact phrase was more succinct. That was in the 80s and 90s.
Even when I left the state and came back in the mid to late 00s it was a lot of “mind your own fucking business” as individuals. No one really started saying shit out loud until the mid 2010s that I remember, but suddenly it was everywhere.
Now we still have shit turnout but a lot of really loud morons who were telling everyone to mind their own fucking business 2 decades ago now yelling about trans women and abortion.
Depends on what part of Texas. East Texas was heavily “conservative Christian” throughout the 80s. This spread to the DFW metro area starting in the 80s as the rich figured out they could use the religious pulpit to push their “trickle down” and “prosperity gospel” agendas. See also the crazy religious sects in the Waco area. I was really amazed Koresh happened there and not at one of the many crazy cults in the piney woods of East Tx. So think of it as an infection coming from Oklahoma and East Texas and spreading all the way down to Waco.
I guess it depends on exactly what part. I remember Longview being run by their kind of culty church, but I grew up not far from there and was taught just not to fuck with others for how they live their life.
On the other hand, looking back I realize I also knew a bunch of proto-SovCits and absolute nutjobs growing up so I might have missed shit and gotten lucky with the people who were actually the ones teaching me. Not just my parents, but grandparents and friend’s parents as well. They all wanted to be left alone and to leave others alone. The nutjobs just happened to be nearby and I was just told not to listen to their nonsense.
Anecdotally, there was this old guy named Wizard who used to be into all the crystal clutching bullshit and had somehow reconciled it with his Jesus bullshit. I remember my grandfather telling me that he was insane but not hurting anyone so just leave him be.
Sometime around 2015~2016. Mighta been a few years earlier. I think everyone really started losing their shit after Obergefell vs Hodges. It seemed like people had a “you do you” mindset, but after that case everyone lost their minds and went rabid.
Some people older than me probably have saw it sooner but I’d say definitely when Rick Perry took over in 2000, but it probably started with GWB in 1995. Don’t forget Texas ised to have a democratic governor in the early 90s
The Republicans went from christo-conservative to christo-facist. Like an American Taliban.
The idea of having to deal with Texas’s power grid scares me
If I’m not mistaken, the thing that contributes to our instability is also what caused Texas to be at the front of renewables (for a while). What I’ve been told is that Texas’ power grid is pretty loosely regulated, which was why renewables took off here; it was really easy for anyone to start their own power company so small companies were able to spring up and contribute solar, wind, etc.
This was great and fine so long as we weren’t getting extreme, once-in-100-year weather every year. Thanks big oil and climate change. Anyway, now we need regulation to make power companies start planning for things they previously only needed to plan for every 100 years.
Renewables took off in Texas because it’s
- Vast
- Flat
- Hot
- Windy
It’s pretty much heaven for solar and wind, both of which have no qualms building out in the middle of nowhere.
I wonder if anyone’s going to attempt tide generators with our freshly roided up storm seasons. The whole East Coast has barrier islands that are all about to sink, so we won’t even have to go down far to anchor them.
Windmills are taking off now in Wyoming, and I can’t believe it took them this long, loaded down freighters get blown over hourly every fucking day in Wyoming. They built their freeways with massive shoulders just to wreck on. Windmill farms are all down central and Eastern Washington, central and eastern Oregon and California. I can’t speak much to the Midwest but you can’t drive 5miles thru Iowa without seeing 100windmills. In between houses and shit. I like the spirit but goddamn, Iowa needs to chill.
Solar is huge all along the sun belt. Shit I’m off-grid in Washington and I do it off 2500w of panels and 375ah of batteries. It’s not as good as having a tap to grand coulee but I don’t have an electric bill and that does more than just dry my tears, it actually makes happy.
Texas Regulation
Good fucking luck.
Yeah, people call us the Texas of Canada but we’ve had no power interruptions during those -40 and below cold snaps. Part of that has to do with natural gas being our heat, of course. But if you’ve ever been outside in -40… I’ll take the natural gas over that. It’s cold like you’ve never felt it before.
Alberta?
Much of the US, even Texas uses natural gas for heating. Houses in much of the southern US aren’t designed for cold weather so people add space heaters. Plus if I remember correctly the cold shut down the natural gas providers in Texas so that wasn’t even working.
Yup, I believe ten years prior the federal government told them that the gas plants were susceptible to freezing pipes of incoming gas. Since texas grid is independent, they couldn’t force the plants to winterize. After the shit show, the governor blamed windmills, even though they over produced, because a few windmills stopped working.
It’s awful. We lose power if it’s too hot, we lose power if it’s too cold.
Fucking utilities man. ERCOT has made so many recommendations over the years for the regional utilities to make changes and strengthen their grids, but short-term profit motive gets in the way of stability of an essential service. Why we privatized the grids in this country is beyond me
On the plus side, Ted Cruz leaves if it gets too cold
Wish he’d fucking stay gone.
Vote him out! Now’s your chance!
Big Allred fan here! Im not squandering my chance to get Cruz out! <3
Thanks! It’s past time for that soulless motherfucker to go.
I spent three months in Houston about 10 years ago and I’ve never experienced such a wild-ass level of passive aggressive probing to see if I was in their particular in-group anywhere else. I’m from the Midwest and used to some of that but it was every fucking conversation, down to getting asked what church I attend while trying to get a coffee at a cafe.
Ah yes! I also grew up in the Midwest and lived in Fort Worth for a few years and the biggest culture shock was that, “What church do you go to?” was essentially the standard follow-up to introducing myself. I always lied and said I went to a church out in one of the suburbs in the hopes that they wouldn’t try to associate…
“What church do you go to?”
And “sorry, I was raised Canadian” doesn’t work?
The fuck ? thats creepy and weird as fuck :(
The land of libertarians has higher property taxes than California???
Smile doesn’t reach her eyes, it’s like uncanny valley off-putting to me.
Disney moms are the fucking worst.
you mean to tell me when you gentrify a part of a place by engaging in mass migration to that place that it sucks now???
Man i never would’ve guessed. Just a little tip for anybody looking to move to places out there, don’t move to the place where everybody else is moving, it’s stupid.
It’s like she somehow traveled to a political future dominated by conservative politics (Texas), hated it, and traveled back. But still gonna vote conservative. Boggles the mind.
Conservative decides to leave a very liberal state and move to a conservative state, doesn’t like it there, moves back to liberal state because it’s better there.
Is probably still conservative.
???
Conservatives aren’t exactly known for learning lessons.
You’d think that a teacher would be able to learn lessons.
You must be thinking of a learner.
That’s the delicious irony of it.
I recently had an insight on (US) politics that applies here. Our ridiculous two party system is unsurprisingly to blame for this. Both parties encompass both reasonable and terrible ideas. And members of both parties are fed entirely different pieces of propaganda. So republicans are fed the idea that all democrats embrace the worst, extreme ideas that fall under the democratic umbrella. While democrats are fed the idea that all republicans embrace the worst, extreme ideas that fall under the republican umbrella. This makes members of both parties see the other as simply evil and so the opposing party is impossible to embrace. It often doesn’t matter what experiences a person goes through.
I was trying to come up with an example of a reasonable Republican policy but I failed. Can you help me out with an example?
So nothing in the Project 2025 Manifesto jumped out at you as being fun and cool for everybody?
I’m sorry but this false equivalence is BS. Conservatives are eating propaganda happily and there is definitely liberal propaganda. But nobody is making up the awful things conservatives are embracing in vast majorities worldwide. You don’t need to make anything up to find awful things in the right, the way the right is making things up about liberals.
Honestly, I agree with what you’re saying. And yet, conservatives are told that liberals are killing babies via abortion. It’s a bunch of nonsense IMO. But once a person embraces an idea like that, they’ll probably never vote democrat again.
My comment isn’t saying that one side or the other is better. I was explaining why people in the US pick a political party and usually stick with it for a lifetime. It’s because they believe the other side is evil regardless of reality. We have a messed up system.
Edit: well this is ridiculous. I stumbled across this post only 5 minutes after writing this comment. Somehow, it’s actually worse that the random example I offered. I hate our political system. It’s awful.
No, again, both sides are not the same because that, ‘regardless of reality.’ is not the same for both. Democrats aren’t aborting live babies. That is made up. Trump separated children from their families at the border and killed them. That is a fact.
The reason both sides are not the same is easy just follow the money. Who owns what and who do they support, both here and abroad?
Right wingers have an unreasonably radical view of liberals because that’s what the right wing hate machine churns out relentlessly. Liberals think most right wingers are confused but reasonable because thinking otherwise clashes with liberal philosophy. Leftists think that right wingers are rabid fascists because right wingers always show themselves to be rabid fascists the moment someone gives them permission. Enlightened centrists think both sides have equal and opposite prejudices because they like that vibe, not because it reflects reality.
Yeah unless youre born here its hard to take. Even so, much of it is a shitstorm that you have turn off ocassionally to hold onto even a wisp of sanity.
I made the same mistake, moved from NY for a tech job in Texas during covid.
The honeymoon phase ended in the first week when I couldnt find decent quality food at restaurants. I haven’t had political issues like she mentions. I struggle with the poor infrastructure here, the frontage roads spaced everything so far apart it makes the area feel like a giant strip mall that goes forever.
By the time my lease ended the tech layoffs came. Been struggling to find jobs back home so now I feel stuck in Texas.
Its depressing, but I try to make the best of it… There’s lots of really nice greenways so when it’s not too hot I bike around. I felt way more free and happy in the Northeast corridor.
I can see the difference between California influence and original Texan culture. There’s pros and cons to both, but when both of their flaws come together it’s the worst.
I will never relocate for a job again once I get back. You either hire me as remote or I’m dodging a toxic work environment.
This is one of the annoying things about all the California people moving to Texas.
They have contributed to an absolutely massive spike in home prices, and despite the complaints of all the “California liberals” moving here, in my experience it’s mostly conservatives who are attracted to the Texas GOP’s insanity, so they’re shifting things further to the right.
We should tell them that Russia is now welcoming their kind with open arms!
She’s not the sharpest tool in the shed.
She admitted the mistake, so she’s not the dullest tool either.
