You aren’t wrong, but I also want to throw out a challenge to anyone with similar thinking: help us. You might be surprised by the number of people living in deep red areas who crave political change. We can’t do it without political and financial support from the more liberal parts of each state / the country. There’s even the option of moving here and being part of boots-on-the-ground change. Some of these communities can and will change in my lifetime, even if it is a slow process. And the housing is cheaper too.
I am not going to sacrifice my children's happiness so that I can move back to Oklahoma and somehow stick my finger in the dike against theocracy. It's all well and good to propose that an influx of reasonable people would help reform a state's politics, but when it comes down to your own family you are talking about specific people, not averages.
Your children don’t give a damn. They’re children. They will live wherever you live and be completely oblivious to whatever adults argue about on forums and the news. Don’t prop your children up as an excuse.
You live a life of sheltered ignorance if you aren't aware of what young people go through in such places when they are of minority races, minority religions, not heterosexual, or not conforming to gender binaries.
Really? Painting all of the Midwest as a "racist theocracy?" Those $300k homes are also Nebraska, Kansas, the Dakotas, even blue states like Minnesota, Illinois, and Michigan.
Wow, spoken like a truly superior progressive where the only morally good place to live in the world is SF. And, apparently every other city will get you killed due to racism. Please consider never leaving your ‘liberal democracy’ because folks like you destroy cities.