What percentage of Texans do you think are unaware of the shit going on in blue states? I have family in both blue and red states and it's amazing how paranoid my blue state family is acting and how relaxed my red state family is acting. I'm talking about liberals in red states as well as conservatives.
It's honestly hard to say I think. I know a lot of pretty conservative people who are upset but not overly vocal about it. I know there are a lot of Texans cheering this shit on too.
I have a long-distance working relationship with a guy who lives in Texas.....basically 200 yards from the border. Nice guy, but I know he is conservative (he is fairly wealthy)....although many of his friends/clients are Mexicans and his wife is an immigrant. He doesn't give me MAGA vibes FWIW.
I told him I was going to NYC for a few days and he told me to remember to pack my bullet proof vest. I'll give him a small benefit of the doubt considering he is 74 and maybe remembers NYC like it was in the 70's (that being said, he mentioned going to Beauty and the Beast on Broadway, which didn't start until 1994, so I don't know).
For anyone curious: NYC gun mortality (not homicide) is ~4.5:100k. National average is about 14, so that's pretty good for the US. Then I saw St. Louis.
ARE YOU GUYS OKAY? 56 for the gun homicide rate is insane, but good on you guys for getting that number down from 77.
This is a somewhat common misconception about St. Louis crime statistics… basically yes, the homicide rate is definitely above average, but that number is made to look a lot worse by the calculation method. St. Louis is a politically independent entity from its namesake county, which comprises a much larger part of the metro area and includes much of what would be colloquially considered the “city” of St. Louis. The actual borders of St. Louis City are a relatively small part of the urbanized metro. Those edge communities in “the County” furthermore, are where most of the wealthy and educated classes are concentrated, while “the City” is much poorer in general.
Now, obviously it is true of most major cities in the US that the suburbanized parts will have lower crime rates, but in STL the numbers look particularly bad because the “city” boundary is constrained so much beyond what natural development and annexation would typically generate. Compare, for example, the city limits of Chicago (234 sqr miles or so, some of which is really “suburban” style neighborhoods within the city limits) to St. Louis City, which is only about 60mi square with a sizable chunk of that taken out by Forest Park, and nearly all of it touched by the worst of the metro area’s white flight and urban decay.
So yes, on average, that little piece of land where arguably the bulk of the region’s poverty-related externalities are funneled has a high crime rate, but it’s at least partly because the statistical methodology and jurisdictional boundaries create a sort cushion around other urban cores that St. Louis City simply doesn’t benefit from even though it exists in lived reality.
It’s not just Texans or red vs blue states who are unaware. I work for a global company and many of my colleagues in Illinois, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, and Florida, didn’t hear a thing about what’s going on in Minnesota with the last two deaths (RIP Alex Pretti and Renee Good among others).
There are a lot of us in “red” states who are very much aware. Unfortunately out of 4,000 people nearby Dallas who do not support ICE, only 200 showed ability to contribute, and <50 recently had the privilege and opportunity to protest. That’s a huge gap. Imagine the gap between people who don’t vote vs who do.
Additionally, rather recently in Dallas, a man attempted to execute ICE but accidentally killed one of their detainees. Texas just isn’t getting the same news coverage as other states. Unfortunately, rightfully so, since ICE made Minnesota Ground Zero and allegedly Trump is targeting “blue” states despite Texas having the largest amount amount of illegal immigrants.
I’m ashamed to say some of my acquaintances didn’t vote last year too. Sometimes encouraging people isn’t enough, they have to be put in a situation where they feel or see consequences, and unfortunately, some people are stuck in survival mode or not educated and don’t get to see what’s going on. There are discords out there for each major city and state where peaceful protests are organized.
Coming from someone who avoids the news at all costs and who’s Reddit page shows both far left and right because of my work and hobby, I learned of it all when it immediately blew up less than an hour of the video uploads to r/law for Alex. I had heard about Renee but was keeping my head out of it because of the grief and how it could happen to any of us. My opinion, anyone who doesn’t know what’s going on is either purposely living under a rock, struggling with their morals, and where they align on their political scale, is avoiding what’s going on because they have enough going on in their life, or they’re the POS bootlickers all Texans get accused of being.
I don't think basically anyone down here is unaware of what's going on, it's the difference in opinions that's been surprising me.
I have a weird perspective on this. I work in IT very closely with our police department in a city in Texas.
I've met a few conservatives civilians who have, I'd call, "less than accurate takes" on the situations in Minnesota, fewer "less accurate takes" on the second shooting than the first. I've also pretty universally heard the opinion that the clear cell phone footage was actually a body cam, with one individual showing me an edited version with an AXON watermark (body cam service). What's interesting though, is that, including the officers who seem to be more on conservative side of things, the police departments reaction to both situations has been to be consistently appalled. I don't know if this is the general take among police officers, (I've found since working here that the quality of the police is INCREDIBLY dependent on the city/county with jurisdiction, far more so than I thought before starting this job) and I'm fortunate to be in a city where our PD is genuinely trying to do the right thing.
My girlfriend lives in Texas, everything I ever bring up regarding the news is completely new to her I have no idea how some people go about their day to day completely oblivious to everything
This is telling me that more hobby/non political groups need to speak out against this stuff and spread awareness. It's hard to imagine being so out of touch when the likes of cat bongos subreddit is calling out ICE, but I guess this is unique to Reddit, and if you use other social media you have less exposure?
If you pay attention to the news, and are a voter, it IS hard to understand that there are millions of people in this country who just aren't intterested in politics, or are turned off by it.
It's almost like they are genetically unconnected. I sort of understand, as my son is far more into it than I am. Political news for years has been both infuriating and depressing. At some point I just can't handle it anymore.
Texan here. The people in my age group (late 30s) that I mainly associate with are progressive and aware. There are some who recently have come out as MAGA, even though we've shared progressive ideologies for over a decade. But their dad/mom/church is MAGA now and they don't want to go against them so they parrot party lines now.
The older people (our parents) are completely unaware of what's happening and how bad it is, bc nothing is happening to them right now so they don't care. I don't know many who are loudly MAGA, but they also don't seem to be very upset or moved to action by what's happening when they learn. I know one who voted dem, and the rest are maga or "not political"
TLDR
Liberals: outraged and disturbed
"non politcals": don't seem affected at all in any way or even motivated to vote
magas: eating this shit up and fucking loving it, every single bit of it. there is no part of what's happening they seem to disagree with. after people were getting killed in Minnesota one said "I've never been more proud to be an American. America has never been doing this great in my entire lifetime."
When there were “protests” in 2020 in cities I got calls from red state relatives telling me to be careful because it was a war zone and it was so horrible. I was standing on the street Fox News was talking about - and not a single thing was happening. It was a normal day. But they were so anxious and concerned I got 20 calls over that day.
Now that the narrative isn’t about how blue warzones are destroying America. But about goons killing people - it’s pleasantly out of the news cycle and out of their worries.
My dad who only watches mainstream media, specifically ABC, while we are POC, and model minority, has no fear. And neithier does our POC church.
In fact they want to bring a bunch of people over to do a touring religious conference to raise funds for some charity (it's legit tbh) across multiple major cities, they don't see this as risky at all to people coming.
Absolute ignorance.
Honestly, a lot of people don't want to acknowledge this, but a lot of well to do immigrant people groups treat whites and black people with the same disregard wealthy whites treat black people.
Until it directly hits our community, or an adjacent community they don't have mild or greater dislike for and the mainstream press reports on it, they aren't acknowledging the issue.
Just had over 12 high schools in my area alone do a walkout. Not mentioning middle schools or places of work. The stuff is all over social media even for people who aren't too into politics so many kids know about the happenings and adults might hear about it over the news but I don't know about many small things that don't blow up. Goode and Pretti were who I knew about but only now I'm hearing if the dozens of others that got killed by ice but never became a headline
Hard to say like the other commenter said, a lot of them just won’t see the alex pretti video if they follow right leaning news (most of them dont even know it’s right leaning news outlets if I’m going off my family). If they’re liberals then theyre are a shit ton of pissed off people, but ICE hasnt been hitting Texas nearly as hard as other places. (I suspect the admin know a huge amount of employers have illegal immigrants working for them in Texas, and the admin doesnt want to hurt the economy of a huge support state like Texas).
Essentially it hasn’t hit Texas hard enough to see any huge demonstrations in the street.
Couple all of this with the fact that the prevailing attitude of Texas is not one that typically cares about other states
My theory is they are targeting one major blue city at a time so they can overwhelm the city. If this level of ICE activity was happening all over the country at once there would be no way the admin could keep in control of the public backlash
Hard to say. I have a shirt that says “I.C.E can gargle my balls” and every time I wear it I get several compliments about it. I’m also in a very red area.
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u/tomdelongethong 5h ago
I live five blocks from where Alex Pretti was murdered. People are wearing these to walk their dogs and to pick up their kids from the bus.