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I think a lot folks through these two groups in the same basket, as sort of more rural populations overall but when you explore they are very different cultures.
Western rural? Are you talking Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Dakota’s? Because I think most people here jump to West Coast when thinking of out West, which is a different thing altogether.
But in broad context, cowboys in the former and hippies in the later.
I was born in NC, and basically anyone who wasn't from there or the greater South "originally" (note: this does NOT apply to native/indigenous people) was either labeled as a "foreigner" (meaning immigrant), or a Yankee (applies mostly to northerners, but it also extends to anyone from a liberal/coastal area, including parts of the Midwest). When I lived there, I noticed a general disdain/mistrust/suspicion of non-locals, and a deep dislike for non-conformists and those who flaunt their wealth (and sometimes educational accomplishments).
Living out West for the past ~20 years, many westerners think of southerners as "bible thumpers" or "evangelicals" (the nicer euphemism of the two). There is also a heavy stereotype of southerners being racist, uneducated, poor, overweight, etc. While this is pretty laughable when you venture into actual southern cities and the suburbs since they've become overrun with "transplants" (i.e Yankees and "foreigners"), these stereotypes are mostly based on deep seeded poverty found in various rural communities. There is also a westerner tendency to lump the entire south into one monolithic culture, as if living in Texas is the same experience as Appalachia or coastal communities.
Both groups wrongly and unfairly stereotype the other, and they'd benefit from traveling a bit more since both regions have a lot to offer.
I think we don't think about them very often. Perhaps when Florida Man gets into the news, and during major national elections, and that's about it.
Mostly, if you ask me directly, I will tell you that I've lived briefly on the East coast and I don't like the weather. When I was there, Oregon was a really clean place and Maryland had trash strewn anywhere you looked and there was a septic pumping business who dumped sewage in the woods behind my house a couple of times a week, and I called 11 agencies and no onwe would take a complaint and no one knew who I should call about it. Oregon is a lot less clean now, so they are getting closer together in how they appear.
Until 2020, Southerners expected to BECOME Westerners. Getting to somplace free of "them", is a multigenerational desire, for Southerners. If one generation didn't make-it-out, then they wanted that for their children. "Get out of here, honey, while you still CAN!"
However, with the West Coast being deliberately destroyed by the Puppet Government, this is changing. Now, Southerners regret having children (or simply DON'T have children), because there is nowhere to escape to.
The work was meant as parody. But Mississippians were using it as a MANUAL: learning how to do and be. ...getting ourselves ready for when we escaped. And 'Escaping' was understood to mean SOMEWHERE WEST OF MISSISSIPPI.
Studying West Coast norms, may be why Mississippians have embraced Swinging. Most people never make it out (trapped by embarrassing accents, inferior educations, and just-plain lack of money for transplanting themselves), but generations read about LA Swinging, in Playboy or Playgirl, and came to accept it as a folkway: because they expected to BECOME LA People. Trailerpark People, Yacht Club People, Fratrats & Sorority Suzies from Ole Miss - all have their swing groups. One group in Jackson, was limited to bodybuilders exceeding a certain unmentionable and unlikely biometric (and their wives & girlfriends, who basically just had to exist, since we girls are only props), tried to induct US (DH impressed the right guys, in the shower...).I've heard countless tales, from people still stuck in Mississippi, of classmates from Mississippi State, whom they've run-into, at underwear parties in Amsterdam, or of couples from their Young Adults Sunday School class at First Baptist of Jackson/Laurel/Hattiesburg/Southaven/McComb, on nude beaches in the South Pacific.
This is ALL because of Mississippians' having adapted to what they perceived as being West Coast norms - in anticipation of becoming Westerners.
(since 2020, though, Southerners view Westerners as the new people moving in next-door, whom they hope won't vote Democrat)
But traditionally... If you lived in a city of any size in the west...
It was rare that you met anyone who wasn't from someplace else. It was rare that you met many people who went back three generations or more in whatever western community you lived in. (The smaller the town, the less likely that this was true).
In the south, most people had been in that state or another southern state and their "people" had been there for generations.
The south, for maybe the last twenty years or so is experiencing what the west did for many years with transplants. The difference being that there were already a lot of southerners in those communities to begin with.
This is unlike places like Tucson, Albuquerque, Vegas or Boise... where they were actually very small cities (barely more than large towns) before WWII.
Western rural? Are you talking Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Dakota’s? Because I think most people here jump to West Coast when thinking of out West, which is a different thing altogether.
But in broad context, cowboys in the former and hippies in the later.
West coast is west coast, not western. Western is pretty much east of the Sierras and Cascades. It ends at a line at about the eastern edge of New Mexico, more or less.
Actually, I don't think "westerners" think much about southerners at all, one way or another. West coasters seem to have an opinion from what I hear from California transplants. It mostly seems to be a willingness to avoid the south, or most of it. Maga/Republicans (not solely southerners) who are so vocal on a certain C-D forum, bend over backwards to denigrate West Coast everything in general and people especially. California is a fine place to visit but I'm not interested in living there or bad-mouthing everything associated with the place.
H. L. Mencken's comment "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard" seems to apply to California. Regardless of what other's think, it is ultimately up to California to decide what it wants. Others may not like it. Like Mencken, I was raised in a border state and maybe see different regions as much the same. There are states that wild horses could not drag me to, and they are not all in the south.
No I don't mean west coasters, yeah totally different thing. Cowboy folks I meant.
Yeah, then we just call them cowboys
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