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Lots of progressive Dem thought here, but also lots of narrow, closed small-town backwoods thinking and racism. Put 'em together and you have a tossup just close enough for elections to be stolen--so they are.
I also grew up in a "podunk town" where people were "not well-read or interested in anything but football and beer." I, too, grew to adulthood here, then left for many years, and now I'm back. It's true that people who do get an education and read and think tend to leave the state--I was one of them, and I am one of the few that has been able to return. As deep an affection as I feel for the place, sometimes the attitude of some people here makes me want to bang my head against a wall.
There is also, as others have said, a good deal of racism here...not everywhere, but where it is, it's very deep and grounded in a lot of ignorance. It's not based on being white and being around black people and not liking them as a group. On the contrary, it's based on being white and NOT LIVING WITHIN MILES AND MILES OF A SINGLE SOLITARY BLACK PERSON, so all they have to go on is the images provided by the mass media...i.e., all black people are ghetto welfare chiselers, criminals, or both. That's the impression white people out in the sticks get, so the second they see a real live black person, if that person resembles the stereotype in the slightest, it's "See?? They ARE like that!!"
I would never move back to my podunk town. Ohio life is much better in the more cosmopolitan "blue" cities, like Cleveland and Columbus. Cincinnati and the deeply impoverished south...forget it. Everyone is as poor as dirt, yet the vast majority of them are fine with re-electing Republicans who will just make them poorer and poorer, so long as they're convinced it will keep away teh gay and they'll be allowed to keep their guns and keep trying to force Jesus on everyone else.
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