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[Outcast9428]

America is not a country. It should be called AmericaCorp or some business name because we all just live inside a big business and are the workers in it. Everyone treats everyone else like shit.

I honestly want to go back to America just for a few months, merely to gauge how bad everything has gotten. Seeing things in the news and social media makes it look like a hellhole. But I’m really curious as to how bad it actually is. I know that a decade ago it was already like this, so I imagine it’s 100 times worse.

Depends on where you go I'd say.

A friend of mine and I recently drove out to West Virginia, and I can see why West Virginia has a reputation for being one of the most conservative states in America (that is, measuring conservatism on the pathetically low bar that the United States sets for "conservatism"). The establishment literally has no presence out there. I looked for the bank I use in Virginia and was surprised to find there was not a single bank in West Virginia. West Virginia has different banks then we do. Not only that, but there's an incredible lack of corporate presence in West Virginia. Almost all the businesses out there are small businesses. Even the internet is hard to get in a lot of areas of West Virginia. I looked it up and apparently 25% of people in West Virginia don't have access to the internet. A lot of the businesses are literally the owner's house. As in you'll see a surprisingly large number of "restaurants" that appear to be setup in the owner's own home. One time we saw a pizza restaurant set up in a trailer home which I thought was the most West Virginia thing imaginable. My friend and I cracked up laughing when we saw a "strip club" that was literally just the owner's house.

You can tell West Virginia is completely dominated by Republicans. The confederate flag is everywhere, so are Trump signs. In restaurants you can hear the locals making fun of Biden. Towns in West Virginia do seem to have a decent sense of community and the girls are surprisingly cute. As for the people there. I don't think they're as bad as people think they are. Pretty much everyone we came across was polite and friendly. One thing that's different about WV though is that you can tell that everybody knows you're not from there. People do look at you a little weirdly. Not in a hostile way, but just a "you're different" way.

Personally though, West Virginia is too undeveloped for me. Its actually frighteningly rural.

As for Virginia itself. Virginia itself seems pretty sane in comparison to what I see happening in the rest of the country. At least, if you avoid college campuses and the downtown cities. Rural areas in Virginia literally vote Republican at between 70% to as high as 88%, so the rural areas of Virginia may be even more right-wing then West Virginia is so there's not much need to move to West Virginia when you could just go to a rural area of Virginia and be a little closer to civilization. The suburbs in Virginia are a very mixed bag.

Travelling to so many other states in America recently though has really grown my respect and appreciation for Virginia. We really do seem a lot more sane then people in the rest of the country are. Sure things could be better here, we're not Hungary or Japan after-all. But I can't think of any state in the US I'd rather live in. According to surveys I've seen that actually measure people's social views and not just voting behaviors, Virginia people are actually more socially conservative then the people in Texas, Oklahoma, and South Carolina are. At least, if you exclude the Northern Virginia people (who don't count as Virginian by the way. I don't even think of them as Virginian, I just think of them as Washington DC people).

Don't get me wrong, nowhere in the US is truly conservative. But Virginia is as close as you are gonna get while also living in a state that is pretty well developed and not out in the middle of nowhere. We don't have any gay pride parades out here. Hookup culture kind of exists here but in a much milder form then in other places. People don't really go around trying to pickup random people at bars or nightclubs. Its more like people know each other, and occasionally people hookup and its not really stigmatized, but for the most part people have relationships instead of hookups. Its nothing like it was at my college where hookup culture completely destroyed romantic relationships and essentially made them impossible to find. Pursuing nothing but hookups is definitely stigmatized here regardless of if you are a guy or a girl. I've had a couple co-workers actually mention the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers owning the US government. The people around here who actually gave a shit about the COVID crap were a small minority of people that everyone made fun of. Our state government still had mask mandates but it was pretty unenforced. I've worked through the entire pandemic and hardly ever was asked to wear a mask.

As a personal matter, I feel like the pandemic has barely effected me or my life. I don't know or seem to be around anybody who actually gave a shit about it. The same is true of the vaccine bullshit. Its not just my personal social circle, none of my co-workers seem to care either.