Comment by adamrezich | Hacker News Reader

Comment by adamrezich | Hacker News Reader

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>We do need people to come to texas to flip it blue. Just know this is a backwards place in many ways.

putting aside the specific political affiliations mentioned here, I find this sentiment generally offensive. what could possibly compel you to encourage people of a certain political persuasion to move to a specific region so as to topple the existing, different-than-yours, popular political persuasion? if you live in a Republic of fifty States, why can't you and everyone that agrees with you politically find another state to take your political values to? what makes you think that your perspective on how things should be should matter more than the millions of people already living there, such that your ideal worldview should replace the existing popular one in a specific state, via interstate mass migration?

obviously there's nothing wrong with people who live in a given state having different political values compared to the prevailing local political values and trying to change things locally themselves and/or with the assistance of other like-minded locals. but when you advocate for mass migrations of people to come and change things...

It's a value statement. You can't put away the specific political affiliations in this discussion. Examples:

"Putting aside the Uyghur genocide and one party system of China, who are you to say China should change any of their behavior?"

"Putting aside banning Christianity and subjugating women to be objects of their family and murdering journalists and activists in their embassy, who are we to wish Saudi Arabia would change their political behavior?"

I'm a lifelong Texan, and it's possible I will remain such. The Texas GOP is an embarrassment to enlightenment. As I've stated elsewhere in the thread, I wish we had more political parties so that "reasonable conservatives" had a party that incorporated good faith debate and values in their platform rather than hatred of the "other" and performative outrage.

That's why we need Texas to flip.

If you're a conservative or otherwise a GOP voter and live in Texas, I'd be interested in what drives you to that decision, though it may be off-topic for HN.

you didn't even read what I wrote, or, if you did, you didn't actually respond to it, and instead chose to try to connect entirely unrelated points. as I said, there is nothing wrong with trying to change things in state and local politics, it's the best part of our political system and woefully underappreciated by most. the point of my above post, which I repeated like three times within it to the point where I thought I was being overly-redundant, was that encouraging mass migrations of people in order to achieve your political goals, in a Republic of fifty States, is ridiculous. if everyone played that game, things would not end well for anyone. I was going to refrain from commenting on this directly, but if I "can't put away the specific political affiliations in this discussion," then, well: I've only ever seen this from "the left"/"liberals"/the Democratic party, and I find this interesting.

Ah, I see. Well, I disagree with your implication that by being a republic of fifty states, that one state does not affect the other. See, critically, the Senate.

You don't see the GOP mobilizing voters to flip states red so much, because the GOP is already over-represented in the Senate.

It's unlikely that liberals will move to Wyoming in numbers sufficient to flip it. But the demographics and economy and geography of Texas do seem to suggest that becoming a swing state is a possibility in the near future.

So to reiterate my answer to your question "Why move to other states instead of being happy to change your own?" - Because we are one country, and because until the Senate as an institution is dissolved or reformed beyond recognition, the political affiliations of each state matter to the others.

Extra credit commentary: We aren't functionally a republic of fifty semi-independent states. In many critical issues that require federal answers (climate change, welfare, healthcare, and military) we are one nation afflicted with a potentially lethal vestige of our Constitution: The Senate.

The miscommunication between you and me(and the other person) is that you don't see (or at least, acknowledge) how different states' politics affect each other's, whereas I and the other person took it as a given that they do.

I completely agree with everything you wrote above, except for the last sentence—I don't disagree that state politics affect each other because of the existence of a federal government, and therefore this is not the miscommunication between us.

the interesting part to me is exactly what you highlighted in your third paragraph: Democrat voters encourage each other to move to certain states that meet certain criteria, and, as far as I can tell, no other group of citizens in the country engages in similar behavior. I believe the miscommunication here is more ideological: I cannot imagine myself moving to a given state with given criteria in order to alter elections, or to otherwise bolster any kind of ideology or demographic.

this is really interesting to me because it for me this is just an idea that would never cross my mind, and I'm trying to figure out why that is, because this ideological distinction seems significant. I don't buy that it's just because of Senate seats.

> what could possibly compel you to encourage people of a certain political persuasion to move to a specific region so as to topple the existing, different-than-yours, popular political persuasion

My daughters' human rights as women supersede the misogynist wishes of Texas politicians

> why can't you and everyone that agrees with you politically find another state to take your political values to

I was raised to stand and fight for my rights. I don't need carpetbagging coastal elites like the Bushes telling me what texans want.

> what makes you think that your perspective on how things should be should matter more than the millions of people already living there, such that your ideal worldview should replace the existing popular one in a specific state, via interstate mass migration?

Texas has more democrats than republicans. My views align with the majority. Texas republicans are so terrified of democrats winning, they made it illegal to vote straight party line on ballots.

So I feel pretty god damn good telling people about the problems in this state and how they can be fixed.

like your sibling poster, you didn't actually engage with the point I made repeatedly above, which is the mass-migration-to-achieve-political-change part. do you believe that this concept is generally justifiable and everyone should be encouraging it everywhere to further their own goals of political change? or just this one specific instance?

1. I'm not sure my original comment was "encouraging mass migration"

2. People are free to move anywhere they like for any reason

3. If people from Connecticut can move here and change our politics, I see no problem with others moving here to change it back.

4. If corrupt politicians can rig the game in their favor, getting more legitimate voters might be the only ethical way to counteract such brazen attacks on our republic

5. This isn't the "gotcha" you think it is

I am not trying to "score points" or make "gotchas" here, I am genuinely engaging in honest discourse. I am unable to see how the sentence "We do need people to come to texas to flip it blue." can be interpreted as anything but literally "encouraging mass migration." as far as I can tell, Democrat voters encouraging mass migration of other Democrat voters to specific states that meet specific criteria is the only instance of this pattern of behavior that exists in the country right now, and I'm interested in digging deeper and trying to figure out why this is, where the ideological difference comes from. I don't think many people acknowledge that this is a core ideological distinction at play here, because it's difficult to imagine oneself as having the opposite worldview.

I gave several very specific examples of why people should NOT move to Texas.

And I don't agree that democrats are the only ones doing this. Visit some firearms\guns message boards if you need some examples of conservatives encouraging other conservatives to move to make sure those dang demonrats dont take our guns.

I would be very surprised if said message board posters were actively encouraging each other to move to California in order to sway gun rights laws there—let alone actually actively doing it in appreciable numbers.

> I would be very surprised if said message board posters were actively encouraging each other to move to California

It happens. It's pie in the sky type of dreaming but it happens. Other states are def more targeted

> 1. I'm not sure my original comment was "encouraging mass migration"

You literally said "We do need people to come to texas to flip it blue."

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