[throwaway729]

> There are so many things wrong with this comment.

I feel strongly about the midwest. I hated living there. There are serious down-sides, and if people move to Tulsa thinking it's "NZ in the USA", they're going to be in for a rough surprise.

Do you disagree?

> First, commuting refers specifically to the to-and-from of your journey to work

My point was that you're probably going to end up driving in either case, and if you have to drive anyways, your commute will suck no matter where you live.

OR, if you don't end up driving, you're actually not saving much on cost of housing. And you probably have a lower salary with which to purchase that prime real estate. Basically, little net benefit over California or other coastal states.

> You can complain about the weather and that's valid, but the whole planet isn't California and we can't all live there for one reason or another. If a bunch of people like me moved out there from the frozen/scorching wasteland of places like NYC, then you'd be priced out of the state. Be thankful that for some people weather isn't that big of a deal.

First, I don't live in California.

I agree with everything else. It's really all beside the point, though.

> Just because your family is stupid doesn't make everybody else's family stupid... So you can stop with the drive-by generalizations here - especially these undeserved "casually racist" ones.

My family isn't stupid. Pretty smart by any objective measure aside from willingness to believe confirmational bullshit, actually. Which is kind of my point. They're embedded in a terrible culture.

Look, I lived in the midwest for decades. I know what I'm talking about.

The politics of the region is dominated by this sort of stuff. It's a LOT more common and MUCH more difficult to avoid in the midwest. The composition of state houses speaks for itself. Name a midwestern state and I'll go member-by-member through its General Assembly to demonstrate to you the obscene popularity of blatant intolerance. Seriously, shoot.

It bleeds over into every aspect of life.

If you're lucky enough to be white male and straight, you can just avoid talking to people all-together, or silo yourself off from your community, and mostly ignore the terrible culture of the region. Which is what I did. But if you like living in a community where you know and respect your neighbors, the midwest can be a tough place to be.

[cookiecaper]

This assumes that one's politics align with the politics and hostile culture in California. I intentionally avoid living in CA due to its culture/politics and have turned down multiple bona fide relocation offers to CA.

Like all places, the Midwest is not without its unhappy quirks or its difficult people, but Midwesterners are noticeably polite and friendly, even coming from other "flyover" regions.

Yes, they are generally conservative (not universally, and especially not among the young), but they can usually get along with their neighbors just fine.

When I lived in the Midwest, we had not only multiple gay people, but multiple gay teachers living in our neighborhood. While I'm sure it upset some of the parents, these teachers were able to go about their business just fine and spent many years teaching at the schools. This was in a very red region, not some liberal enclave.

We had people of all races and it was rarely, if ever, a visible issue. We didn't have anyone shouting racial slurs or visibly denigrating people. I'm sure this happened occasionally, not trying to say that there are literally 0 racists, but it was by no means a sentiment you'd come across with any frequency.

If you live in a big city like NYC or SF, you probably get exposed to more "intolerance" from contrarians/extremists who also live in big cities than someone who lives in the Midwest.

The Midwest is a great place to be. It's extremely unfair to cast such aspersions on it.

[throwaway729]

> This assumes that one's politics align with the politics and hostile culture in California. I intentionally avoid living in CA due to its culture/politics and have turned down multiple bona fide relocation offers to CA.

This is certainly true! To each his own. My point was that the midwest probably isn't a great place to be if you're looking for "cheaper California".

Sounds like we agree on that.

> When I lived in the Midwest, we had not only multiple gay people, but multiple gay teachers living in our neighborhood... these teachers were able to go about their business just fine and spent many years teaching at the schools

1. "Not being fired for being gay" is literally the lowest bar I can think of other that "not being imprisoned for being gay".

2. A school I attended explicitly discriminated against trans people in hiring. And those are the public schools. So, YMMV. I'm sure things have gotten better across the entire country since then, including the midwest.

3. Even without "lose your job/house" levels of hate, the world can still be a nasty place. E.g. imagine driving by this billboard every day: http://www.medina-gazette.com/news/2013/02/22/Passers-by-on-...

And of course most of the people you interact with disagree with the sign, but attend churches that teach the exact same thing. Those "midwestern nice" interactions don't feel so "nice" anymore.

> If you live in a big city like NYC or SF, you probably get exposed to more "intolerance" from contrarians/extremists who also live in big cities than someone who lives in the Midwest.

Sure. The difference is who's in charge! And that's the difference that makes a difference.

> The Midwest is a great place to be. It's extremely unfair to cast such aspersions on it.

For you. I hated it.

[cookiecaper]

>"Not being fired for being gay" is literally the lowest bar I can think of other that "not being imprisoned for being gay".

The point is that the community at large was willing to accept these people as role models for their children and did so with minimal hostility or interference (visible anyway, since I can't see what happens behind closed doors). Entrusting a teaching position is a little different than any other random job.

While I'm sure there are horror stories, in practice it would be very rare to find someone who was legitimately "fired for being gay".

The myth that Republican areas are hostile wastelands with poor quality of life for minorities has much more to do with confirmation bias and a desire to justify high cost of living than anything else, IMO. This is not to discount any personal experience you may have had, just my opinion on the sentiment in general.

[throwaway729]

> The myth that Republican areas are hostile wastelands with poor quality of life for minorities has much more to do with confirmation bias and a desire to justify high cost of living than anything else, IMO.

If only that were true, I'd move back to the midwest in a heart beat.

> This is not to discount any personal experience you may have had, just my opinion on the sentiment in general.

Name a "that doesn't happen here" scenario -- from blatant racial discrimination/brutality in policing to "bobby's parents sent him to pray-the-gay-away camp" -- and I experienced or directly witnessed a friend experience it before coming of age.

Whenever people shame me for being overly harsh on midwestern culture, I stop and feel guilty for a split second. Then I think back to these victims of its excesses and the guilt quickly subsides.

I firmly believe there are decent communities in the midwest. Especially in its cities. I don't doubt your or anyone else when you say you've had good experiences.

Unfortunately, that doesn't change anything about the fundamental cultural trade-winds of the aggregate region. Or the effect they have on people caught in the zip code one over.

[hueving]

>Name a "that doesn't happen here" scenario -- from blatant racial discrimination/brutality in policing to "bobby's parents sent him to pray-the-gay-away camp" -- and I experienced or directly witnessed a friend experience it before coming of age.

So you were born 20+ years ago? It sounds like your notion of the Midwest is about as stuck in the past as the notion that San Francisco is a hippie mecca.

>Whenever people shame me for being overly harsh on midwestern culture, I stop and feel guilty for a split second. Then I think back to these victims of its excesses and the guilt quickly subsides.

And you should feel guilty for continually shitting on a place you have no association with anymore.

[throwaway729]

> So you were born 20+ years ago?

And left less than 3 years ago. Not much had changed. In some ways, it got a lot worse. My perceptions aren't stuck in the past.

Again, don't believe me? Go person-by-person down your general assembly and send an email to each asking how they feel about allowing business owners the freedom to not serve LGBT people, or whether they will sponsor a bill to ban conversion therapy.

Or for that matter, ask if they support legislation to outlaw incrimination against LGBT individuals in hiring! Most midwestern states don't have such a law on the book.

And not just your representative -- all of them. Or even just yours and all from surrounding counties. After all, we wouldn't want to generalize.

> And you should feel guilty for continually shitting on a place you have no association with anymore.

Why?

I don't think the midwest is, on balance, a nice place to live. I think the cultural downsides of the region eventually bleed into your life, even if you try to cloister yourself in one of the urban liberal islands. My opinion may not be fair (I think it is, but allow the possibility that a lifetime of bad experiences was somehow unrepresentative). But it sure as hell isn't uninformed.

I think people who are considering moving to the midwest from a coastal area -- or especially from abroad -- should hear this perspective.

[tomdell]

Stop with the generalizations. They're inaccurate and insulting. You don't know what you're talking about at all.

[throwaway729]

I'm not saying "all midwesterners are racist and believe in crazy shit". I'm saying it's more common and harder to avoid in the midwest.

I think that claim is both true and demonstrable. I even suggested one empirical test.

At the very least, it's not a generalization. Saying "box a has more red gumballs than box b, so if you don't like red, choose box b" isn't the same as saying "all the gumballs in that box are red".

> You don't know what you're talking about at all.

With all due respect, I lived in the midwest long enough to have an informed opinion. Maybe our experiences differ, but mine are PERFECTLY well-informed.

I believe that you know what you're talking about. I also don't believe your experiences are perfectly representative.

[hueving]

>With all due respect, I lived in the midwest long enough to have an informed opinion. Maybe our experiences differ, but mine are PERFECTLY well-informed.

It sounds like you lived in one location in the mid west and have taken it upon yourself to assume that's how it must be everywhere. That's not well-informed, it's just an anecdote about a crappy time spent somewhere in the country.

[throwaway729]

> It sounds like you lived in one location

Also not true. Try again.

> That's not well-informed, it's just an anecdote about a crappy time spent somewhere in the country.

Multiple decades across several states. Both in cities and in non-city areas.

The argument here basically amounts to: "But hey, the densest 20% County-Containing-Major-City, ST isn't so bad, and my college educated software engineering co-workers are all pretty decent..."

And I'M the one making inaccurate generalizations about the region?!

Come off it. Take a week off work on go two counties in any direction. Or hell, to that other suburb where 30% of the metro population but none of the folks you hang out with live. Come back and tell me you still think I'm wildly out of touch.

[dang]

You started and perpetuated a flamewar in this thread. We penalize accounts that do that and eventually ban them. Please don't do it again.

[csutter]

I live in Tulsa and disagree entirely. You have no idea what you are talking about.