... before they moved to NE Ohio when he was younger than 10yrs to about 45 or so miles north east from where I lived in Akron. He talks about how we northerners' values straitened his shit out. And he was a fairly normal person, Ron Howard directed a movie based on the book (it must have bombed). He seemed fairly normal after that and then the GOP knocked on his door and he went from a conservative to moderate Blue to full blown MAGA. He claims he was trying to explain why lower class Southern Democrats go Republican.
I think it's because they were mostly conservative Democrats. I think it's because since Reagan the definition of liberal and conservative has become the difference between Democrats and Republicans. And then you add a populist (even if TFG couldn't give you a coherent definition of liberal or conservative, or Democrat and Republic if held at gunpoint) and it becomes a cult - the MAGAs.
There are liberal and conservative Democrats and liberal and conservative Republicans. Take national health care: it's a liberal vs conservative issue. Liberals believe in it, conservatives don't. The difference between liberal Democrats and liberal Republicans is how the health care is administered. Democrats want it mandated, funded and managed by the Fed. The Republicans want it want it mandated and funded by the Fed but managed by the states (quite like the ACA is).
I wouldn't have bought it for a door stop, though the book itself was the right thickness to put under the short leg of the table in my workshop "rest area" to keep my beer of sliding off the table.
Akron was a blue collar town in those days before Reagan when they were still building tires three shifts a day. And a lot of those URW members were West Virginia "hillbillies", conservative but Blue. There was a point when there were more West Virginians living in Akron than in Charleston WVA. It was said that they learned the three Rs in school: readin', rittin' and the route to Akron. That when they got heir first paycheck they went down to WVA and spent it. That they all had two cars, one out back on blocks and one in the driveway that was broke down. That if they made it off the production floor and into an office they got a white shirt and became Republican.
Don't get me started.
And then I reverse his move, I went to Texas where I know people who claim the metal serial number tags on the telephone poles are to help the Chinese army from getting lost when the invade Texas.
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