- Kellee Speakman, a conservative elementary school teacher, moved from California to Texas in 2022 but returned after four and a half months due to Texas’s political obsession and unexpected living costs.
- Speakman found Texas to be not much cheaper than California, with high property taxes, expensive services, and lower wages, which contributed to her dissatisfaction.
- She returned to California, appreciating its lifestyle, public lands, and better teacher benefits, realizing that her idea of freedom involved peace and everyday adventures rather than political rhetoric.
YEP. My experience having grown up here was that Texas was cheap and pretty laid-back politically. Then something changed and the state shifted into being expensive and politically obsessed.
Edit: that’s what I used to like about Texas: everyone minded their own business. They wanted the government to fuck off and let them do whatever. Now there are a lot of people who want to know what’s in your child’s pants.
The Republicans went from christo-conservative to christo-facist. Like an American Taliban.
When did this change happen?
The last gasp of the ‘mind your own business’ conservatives in Texas was either the 2016 election or the one after that. There was a period of time where you had the Lt Governor trying to pass culture war bills (like anti-trans bathroom bills) in the senate and then they would die in the house when the speaker wouldn’t put them up for a vote due to it being bad for attracting businesses. Once the MAGA Republicans got voted in, it’s been full steam ahead for them.
It’s not like things were great before then, but it wasn’t this race to the bottom like it is now.
It really got rolling when Bush Jr got elected governor. It had been festering for a while.
The southern strategy merged with big oil money, and utilized the conservative Baptist churches to try to shame people into getting on board.
Sometime around 2015~2016. Mighta been a few years earlier. I think everyone really started losing their shit after Obergefell vs Hodges. It seemed like people had a “you do you” mindset, but after that case everyone lost their minds and went rabid.
Some people older than me probably have saw it sooner but I’d say definitely when Rick Perry took over in 2000, but it probably started with GWB in 1995. Don’t forget Texas ised to have a democratic governor in the early 90s
DOOM!
Exactly the trajectory Florida is on. I grew up here, we had low wages, cheap housing, very cheap groceries, ugly sprawl, beautiful beaches, so many queer people, circus folk, immigrants from everywhere and environmentalists. Rednecks in the country but cities so blue. So far south we were not the South.
It shifted right some over the years but COVID-19 brought all these racist northerners to our cities, with a lot of money, now we have cost of living average for anywhere but wages still lower than all those anywhere places. Cities still diverse but state politics ridiculous and very Southern.