Despite the title, I’m not sure this is appropriate for the politics forum. Mods, Feel free to move if necessary.
I know current events have had an effect on international travel, both to and from the US. I’m curious as to whether the political climate and growing divisions in our country have had any similar effect on domestical travel.
Have you purposefully avoided any parts of our country for political reasons? I have friends and family in a number of States that I would love to visit, but going to places like Texas, Georgia, Florida and South Dakota don’t sound appealing to me at all. The idea of being surrounded by a bunch of red hats, racism, and guns just isn’t my idea of a good time. I know there are good people everywhere. The people I want to visit are good people. But this isn’t the country I grew up in. Or maybe it is and I just didn’t realize it.
Ten to fifteen years ago, I wouldn’t have hesitated to visit any part of the United States. I was raised on family road trips and absolutely adored seeing many of the States. Now though, I’m feeling like I want to stay in friendly territory. I can’t be the only one who is feeling this.
If I may push back on this a bit, as a longtime Texas resident, you’re statistically much likelier to be around blue-purple folks than the folks you describe. You’re likelier to be in places like Houston, San Antonio, Austin or Dallas travel-wise than in the prairie.
I’ll partly agree with @Velocity; the USA is as purple as ever and the reddest areas in your own state are probably not much less red than those in the worst of red states. If less red at all.
Mostly the latter. But not entirely. IMO …
The forces and attitudes we see & hear so loudly now were there all along. Mostly nascent, mostly quiet. At the same time, a lot of people today are being whipped into a frenzy by very professional propaganda.
So I’ll say that while the odious attitudes you will find today were there throughout your lifetime, the odds you’ll encounter somebody waving them under your nose or acting on them in public are higher now than they were 20 or 40 years ago.
So I suppose it depends a bit on whether you like your evil to be overt or covert. Sometimes it’s better to know who the evil people are rather than not.
I think the divide is more rural versus cities. Most big cities will be fine to visit no matter which state you are in.
As a liberal I would avoid spending time in any rural area. I’ll stop for gas, buy lunch or something but otherwise keep moving. I’ll avoid local roads in rural areas too if I can. Stick to the highways.
I travel to a quite red state from my very blue state for business. Even though I only go the bluest area of the state (the largest city) but even there I see a lot more MAGA shit than I do in the reddish suburb I live in (our state rep and state senator are republicans).
States have general police power. Like the state attorney general getting involved when a State Police office was going to have a “friendly chat” with the residents in our neighborhood who had Black Lives Matter signs in the yard. Totally unofficial of course, just stopping by on his way home in his cruiser, in uniform, with sidearm.
Based on the public statements of the red state’s AG, he’d have told any complainants to GtFO.
As a liberal living in a quite red rural area who’s expecting to see her face in the front row of pictures of a local protest yesterday, I’d say that depends quite a bit on the specific rural area.
In the sense of not being blatantly attacked, verbally or physically? I expect so.
I do occasionally see reports in the news of people being beaten up around here; but it’s almost always locals beating up other locals, and not as near as I can tell for political reasons. And we get a whole lot of tourists coming through – it’s winery country. (Though I expect we’ll be awfully short on our usual Canadians this year.) Locals may grumble about them, but don’t want them to feel unsafe.
It’s been a lot of years since I was in the US, but when I was there, I minimized travel to red states not because I couldn’t find safe blue pockets but because I didn’t want a fucking dime of my own money being collected by and for state-level taxes and fees to support programs administered by bad people for bad reasons. If that means some small businessperson in like Miami goes without my sandwich money, I can live with that. I’ve told my wife we won’t be holidaying in European places like Serbia for the same reason.
I wouldn’t hesitate to visit any of the 50 states. A few years ago I spend a few days around Prescott, AZ (a red area of a red state) and enjoyed the town and the mtn biking - no politics to be seen or heard or felt. Three years ago we visited Alaska (a red state) and loved it. We saw no signs of politics, and it never came up in conversations, even with other travellers. We spent Thanksgiving in Boise, ID (not necessarily a tourist hot spot) and again encountered no overt politics. The south holds no particular destinations of interest to me, but politics would not be a factor at all if something there piqued my interest. I would be glad to visit Texas and have a beer with ThelmaLou! The people you encounter while travelling are good. Go travel and enjoy and don’t erect artificial barriers because of politics.
Would state or national parks/forests and such count as “rural areas”? Would I expect to get any political friction from any locals if I am day-hiking in Yellowstone say? [Aside from ye olde “Service clerks secretly hate your guts” kind of thing]
My brother and his husband were driving through South Dakota and stopped somewhere for lunch.
The restaurant was a nice one and catered to tourists as well as locals. Food was good. Service was good.
But they did say that when (via what they were discussing or something) it became apparent they were gay men two tables got up and moved. No one gave anyone trouble, but they moved away from the gay men.
During trump 1.0, living as I do in a blue bubble, I never worried about encountering MAGAts, and in fact, never did. But these days… even here at The Home, you can’t bring up politics, because scratch someone you liked and respected and you find out they think trump is doing a great job. The hairdresser here at The Home-- and she does a great pixie haircut, something that’s not everyone can do. I also found out that one of my closest friends (of almost 40 years) has gone over to The Dark Side.
But as for general travel and encountering groups of people, I would not expect any trouble. Maybe if you went into a redneck bar where the parking lot was full of pickups with trump stickers and confederate flags, yeah, you’d be asking for trouble. But that would be true anywhere in the western hemisphere.
I live in Arkansas, the Natural State, deep in MAGA country. Like Paladin, I am a knight without armor in a savage land. As I’m already mired in a terrible place, I don’t feel the need to avoid most other areas because of politics. I look like your typical MAGAt sans stupid red hat, so I don’t feel particularly threatened going anywhere. I would avoid going to Florida though, both because I don’t like DeSantis and that’s where Trump hangs his hat.
I mentioned the States that I did because those are the ones that I’m being asked to visit. And while I’m more than aware that cities tend to be bluer than rural areas, my friends and family don’t live in cities. They live in suburban and rural areas. If I were only asked to visit big cities, I wouldn’t have the same hesitation. I still might not visit, due to not really wanting to help the economy of those states with my tourist dollars, but it wouldn’t be for the same reasons that I don’t want to visit more isolated areas.
Disclaimer: I’m a cis white male, who looks very much like my European ancestry (Irish, in particular), so I recognize that I’m speaking from a place of privilege.
I live in suburban Chicago: my area is pretty strongly blue, and the Chicago metro area ranges from deep blue (the city itself, and its near-in suburbs) to purplish-red (some of the collar counties). You need to get outside of the MSA, and into the rural counties, before you really find strong Trumpism in Illinois.
I regularly travel to Alabama for work; my clients are based there. But, when we go there, we aren’t going to rural Alabama; we go to Birmingham, which is comparatively cosmopolitan, has a large Black population, and was one of the focal points of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
I’ve not ever felt intimidated or worried about being in Alabama, though when I’ve been there during election season, I found the political ads on TV to be humorous (as each candidate tried to stress just how strongly they will “stand with Trump!”). But, then again, I know enough to just keep my liberal trap shut when I’m there – not that politics ever come up when we are meeting with our clients.
We’re going there for a couple of days next week, for meetings. I’m not worried about it, but three of my female colleagues, all of whom are, AFAICT, liberal, have expressed a strong level of discomfort over the trip. (One lives in Minneapolis, one lives in Columbus OH, and the third lives in suburban Dallas.)
Much as hate what’s going on in this country, I refuse to let it affect my one of my greatest loves, that of travel. Both domestic and international, actually. I just came back from London, and I have plans to visit NYC, Sydney, and New Orleans over the next few months.
The hairdresser here at The Home-- and she does a great pixie haircut, something that’s not everyone can do. 
I also found out that one of my closest friends (of almost 40 years) has gone over to The Dark Side.