The Road to Splitsville THEY WISH THEY WAS IN THE LAND OF COTTON

The Newsletter for Subscribers to THE SPLIT

Number 9…Number 9…

Let’s be fair: Several weeks ago we wrote about the “Brain Drain,” the exodus of many college-educated/professional people from (anti-intellectual, often homophobic, arguably misogynistic, flauntingly religious) red states to (more enlightened, less bigoted, culturally more diverse) blue states. So now it’s only proper that we acknowledge the “Right Flight,” the comparable migration of conservatives from (live-and-let-live, union-friendly, rainbow-respecting) blue states to (live-and-let-die, anti-union, reactionarily binary) red ones. Because if this doesn’t amount to an eight-lane, high-speed segment of the Road to Splitsville, we don’t know what does.

Kindly direct what remains of your poor, tattered attention to this April 18 article in the New York Times, in which reporter Eduardo Medina writes about real estate agent Jen Hubbell. She’s doing big biz, helping right-leaning families re-locate from their icky libtard blue communities to Greenville, South Carolina. What’s the draw? Hey, what isn’t?

Real estate agents like Ms. Hubbell say many of their clients are religious conservatives whose reasons for moving include opposition to policies like abortion access, support for transgender rights and vaccine mandates during the pandemic.

See, what liberals in places like New York and California refuse to understand is, half the fun of being a conservative is the opportunity—the necessity, really—to be indignant about how other people live. Why should they be allowed to do something (e.g., be gay; have non-marital sex; smoke weed), when you can’t (even if sometimes you hypocritically do)? It’s not enough to think, “I’m against abortion, so I and the people in my family won’t have one,” or, “Transgenderism goes against God’s laws, so neither I nor mine will pursue it, thank you very much.” If you can’t use your freedom to deny other people’s freedom, how free are you, really?

No wonder conservatives are flocking to South Carolina.

Last year, about 15,500 New Yorkers, 15,000 Californians and 36,000 North Carolinians moved to the state, which has a population of more than 5.3 million.

And is that so terribly wrong? No. It’s called “voting with your feet.” (NB: This is a metaphor—which is not to say that, after this November’s election, people like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Kari Lake won’t try to mount lawsuits protesting certain outcomes because they heard somewhere that that’s how a lot of people cast their ballots. “Where in the Constitution,” Greene will say in her paint-peeling, Dremel-on-your-eardum voice, “does it say you’re allowed to vote with your feet?”) It’s a free country, it’s what the Brain Drainers do, and it’s what the Right Flighters should be able to do, too. So let’s talk about chickens.  

“If you would have told me five years ago I would have chickens, I’d be like, ‘You are lying,’” said Lauren Gomes, a conservative who moved to Greenville County in 2022 with her husband and three children because she was angered by the liberal politics in Minnesota, where her family had lived for seven generations.

Ms. Gomes, who described herself as Christian and anti-abortion, said she felt compelled to leave because she was getting yelled at in grocery stores for not wearing a mask during the pandemic, and because abortion remains legal, with no restrictions, in Minnesota.

She said she was also worried about how, in her view, “transgenderism infiltrates all aspects of education, public life, when you’re out and about” in Minnesota.

Like you, we were shocked to read this account of a violation of the ethos of Minnesota Nice. Why couldn’t Ms. Gomes’s antagonists get it through their thick Minnesotan skulls that if, during a time of pandemic disease, when even asymptomatic carriers could be unaware that they were infected, and could transmit a virus to others, her not wearing a mask in public was her choice?

Because isn’t that what America is all about? For example: You know how, when someone disagrees with you, it makes you want to move to another state? This lady sure does:

Yana Ghannam, a recent client of Ms. Hubbell, said that she had moved to Greenville from Livermore, Calif., because she wanted to make friends who wouldn’t criticize her for voting Republican or for being anti-union. “It was very much, ‘Oh you have to do this to fit in, you have to do that,’” Ms. Ghannam said of her life in Livermore.

Who needs it? And sure, Ms. Ghannam’s lament smacks of the sense of Republican victimization and self-pity which is so darn big these days. But if (as conservatives are) she’s so susceptible to feelings of having-to-fit-in, she shouldn’t live in Livermore, on the eastern edge of the San Francisco Bay area and one of the most cosmopolitan places in the U.S. She should move to a city in South Carolina.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering: Are politics the only reason people are moving to South Carolina? Well…

Politics, of course, are not the only reason people are moving to South Carolina. The weather counts for something, and jobs have been a big draw, including in a growing electric vehicle industry.

Here might be the place to register amusement at the fact that “a growing electrical vehicle industry” is the result of Federal regulations promoting and setting quotas for non-fossil-fuel-run automobiles, largely advanced by Democrats and opposed by Republicans, in an effort to mitigate climate change, which 97% of the world’s actively publishing climate scientists take seriously and which conservatives don’t “believe in.”

So, fine. Let like migrate to like. Let “E Pluribus Unum” be replaced by “Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish.” Does any of this truly foretell of a Split?

“When I walked inside banks or stores or schools, there was always Christian music playing in the background,” said Lina Brock, a conservative who recently moved to Greenville from Temecula, Calif., where she was dismayed by the vocal support for access to abortions. “I felt good, I felt welcomed. I felt like I was in the United States.”

Mm. And when you’re in any of those places—and there are several—where they don’t play Christian music in the banks or stores, Ms. Brock, where are you then?

(Hat-tip to reader vonkob.)