There’s this guy whom I’m guessing owns the bar, who’s asked about why people should consider visiting South Dakota, and he answers, (paraphrasing): We’ve got a lot of freedom out here. You can come here, but if you come here with your values, you leave and take your values with you. We don’t want them here.
There’s another lady who follows, echoing the same sentiments. Come here if you want, but don’t stay too long.
I mean, Christ! How welcoming is that?! Is that how you address visitors to your region??? I can’t imagine anyone from Chicago answering that question the way these people did. I mean, would any blue-tinged person here or anywhere say, Yeah, you can come here, but don’t spout that bible-thumping Trumper crap, or you can leave. No, they would go on about the local attractions, the scenery or the food hotspots.
If I were religious, I’d freaking pray for this country. I mean, yeah, it’s just one little town in South Dakota, but goddamn! How many more places are there out there like this?
I recall driving thru SD a while back, and relatively close to the eastern border there was a billboard saying something along the lines of (paraphrase) “In SD we hunt and eat animals, so if you don’t like it, please leave.”
While a part of me respected their being upfront about it…
But you gotta appreciate the cluelessness of an idiot claiming to respect freedom - so long as one’s personal freedoms reflected the speaker’s own personal preferences! Come and leave your $, but then leave and don’t infect us w/ your values!
There are certainly culture war issues unique to the US that go very deep, and I’m not trying to defend that in the slightest.
But I wouldn’t say that the attitude expressed in the video is necessarily reflecting of our unique American culture issues. Small town provincial attitudes like that are common to small towns throughout the world. The benefit to that is that everybody knows each other. they understand each others’ values because they are so homogeneous. The downside is that everybody knows each other. They live in an echo chamber, and they are distrustful of strangers.
Big cities, on the other hand, have a lot of transient activity. Lots of people coming and going on business or vacation. People move in and move out. Residents of a city may be more accepting of strangers and their different values on a surface level, but you could live in a city and never really get to know your neighbors past a nodding acquaintance. People mind their business more in a city.
I think that’s the perfect way to describe what the party that wants a small government thinks a small government is. You can do anything you want, as long as it’s something I agree with.
It goes right along with their interpretation of Freedom of Religion to mean that you can be any religion you want but it has to be Christian. Also, you have to be religious.
I’m always amazed at how deeply people seem to truly believe that Freedom of _____ means “I can do what I want, but you can’t”.
I’ve had a few notable incidents where I had to (not calmly) tell a customer in my store that the freedom that allows him to hurl those insults at that woman are the exact same freedoms that allow her to wear a hijab in here. IIRC, he was citing his freedom of speech for why he was allowed to start talking like that. He seemed to forget that you check that freedom at the door when you walk into a private business.
There’s definitely people in Chicago who would say “MAGAs stay home” if given the option. I think that the actual realistic view is more resignation that such people are around since you don’t get the same near total “blue” penetration in even a liberal city as you get in a small rural red town. So, since you co-exist with them anyway, it’s pointless to get ruffled that someone from Smalltown S. Dakota might visit and “bring their values with them”.
Wasta, S.D. (80 inhabitants as of the last census) is so far out in the sticks that it hardly even qualifies as rural. They have a luxury hotel though.
Full disclosure: I’ve never stayed there or patronized any of Wasta’s fine dining establishments* or cultural attractions. Passed by on I-90 plenty of times though.
*outside of the Wasta Bar which offers meat, the nearest places to go are in Wall, of which the best description is ecch.
Small townsfolks experience a different type of fear that us big-city folk don’t have to worry about. They have a deep fear of being overrun and outnumbered by newcomers.
The clip in the OP is filmed in a town which has a total population of…(wait for it)…65 people.
So when a local bartender sees a carload of 6 tourists come visit, bringing their “foreign” values…he has a logical reason to hope they take those values with them when they leave . Two or three more cars like that is a threat, and puts him in real danger of losing his local culture, his lifestyle, and his status in the town.
When a carload of 6 rednecks comes to visit New York., well,for some reason, nobody worries.
But it’s a natural human reaction, and happens in the big cities, too.
When a half million “snowbirds” from the north descend on southern cities like Miami or Pheonix, the locals complain, too.
Also, when work-from-home millionaires move from silicon valley and buy up all the property in mountain ski resort towns…yeah, the locals complain.
All over the world, people don’t like to suddenly find themselves outnumbered.
It’s basically a right-wing version of Popper’s Paradox of Tolerance: You can only keep freedom if you prevent freedom-opposing people from coming in, or expressing their views. Otherwise freedom will be undermined by anti-freedom people who abuse that freedom.
Note that I’m not saying conservatism is true freedom, just giving 2 cents on the mindset.
I’m not sure the homogeneity is even a given. I grew up in a conservative small town, and it’s really more about tribalism.
That ‘bachelor’ who lives on his own but can’t see to find a good woman to marry but whose family has lived in town for 4 generations? Maybe doesn’t want to settle down, just like that Rock Hudson fellow
That black coach who’s been around forever but keeps winning? One of the “good ones”
That former wild child who left town one day and came back a few years later with a wife from south of the border? Well, he’s settling down now and she seems like a good influence
It comes down to tribalism. Do/be whatever you want behind closed doors, present the appropriate face in public, and none of the rest matters…as long as you are “one of us”
If you aren’t “one of us”, then keep your head down and toe the line or else. Maybe in a decade or three, you’ll be fully accepted
Most aren’t militantly hardcore about heterogeneity.You can have a different religion or not be cis-het or be the wrong color or whatever. But they want that sort of nonconformity to be limited and, most importantly, subservient. If appearances slip, that implies a lack of dominance, which they can’t abide at all
I’m honestly not being snarky here, but who in America that owns a TV or radio, or doesn’t live under a rock doesn’t know there is a huge divide in this country. More than the linked video, I’m more shocked that someone would find that shocking.
I remember sitting in a village hall on the Boso Peninsula on the far side of Tokyo Bay. I was there because the village was listed as endangered, one of 900 in Japan. The old men gathered in the hall were concerned. Since the 1970s they had watched young people leave for jobs in cities. Of the 60 left, there was only one teenager and no children.
“Who will look after our graves when we are gone?” one elderly gentleman lamented. Taking care of the spirits is serious business in Japan.
But to me, a native of south-east England, the death of this village seemed absurd. It was surrounded by picture postcard rice paddies and hills covered in dense forest. Tokyo was less than two hours’ drive away.
This is such a beautiful place," I said to them. “I’m sure lots of people would love to live here. How would you feel if I brought my family to live here?”
The air in the room went still. The men looked at each other in silent embarrassment. Then one cleared his throat and spoke, with a worried look on his face: “Well, you would need to learn our way of life. It wouldn’t be easy.”
The village was on the path to extinction, yet the thought of it being invaded by “outsiders” was somehow worse.
