Hispanic Fanatic

As all know, life in conservative parts of the country is paradise. It’s euphoria and bliss mixed together and compounded. The red states are so goddamn stuffed with happiness that the only complaints the residents have is that their facial muscles ache from their nonstop smiling.

Well, there is the fact that “red state politics are shaving years off Americans’ lives.” And there’s also the myriad abortion bans that boost infant mortality, force teenage girls to deliver their rapists’ babies, harm literally every American, and basically kill women outright.

But at least you can get plenty of raw milk. You know, because of freedom, or something like that.

Ok, maybe an early death from botulism or an unplanned pregnancy isn’t appealing to you. Hey, there are other alluring factors that these areas provide.

There is the fact that doctors are fleeing red states, which decimates their already shaky healthcare systems. Or maybe you’re gay and want to live someplace where hate crimes against you have quadrupled. Or perhaps you are an ethnic minority, and really dig the vibe of fearing for your life.

That’s a whole lotta charm.

So why do people live in red states, besides the affordability and access to libraries with no books in them?

Well, the “disproportionate power that rural voters wield, and their unusual devotion to Trump” is a plus for those conservatives who hate democracy. They idolize places like Hungary, where free elections have been eliminated. These guys want the United States of America, “one of the world’s great superpowers, to sign onto the program of a landlocked country of fewer than 10 million people in central Europe.”

The GOP has based its entire existence on rural white people who see their power dwindling. These Americans believe they are being oppressed, which is hilarious in that being white is worth, by some calculations, hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of one’s lifetime, to say nothing of the cultural power and comfort that comes from being in the majority.

No, they are still upset over Brown vs. Board of Education, even though school segregation is on the upswing, and they go crazy if Latinos actually try to vote.

And what has all this anger, fear, and hostility brought us? For starters, the United States “is no longer among the 20 happiest countries in the world,” and we stand alone among industrialized nations for our rate of gun violence, which is highest in the red states.

Hey, sounds like heaven to me.

What a time to be alive!

Ha — no, it sucks right now.

But if you live in, say, New England, you will at least get more of this life than your fellow Americans in, for example, Mississippi.

Oh, we all know that blue states consistently outperform red states when it comes to, well, just about everything, including life expectancy.

But did you know that the poorest counties in New England outlive the wealthiest counties in the Deep South and Greater Appalachia by an average of two years?

Yes, if you want to die fast, move to a red state, where “generations of elected officials — most of whom have been Republican in recent decades — have resisted investing tax dollars in public goods and health programs.”

The result is that people in the West Coast’s poorest quartile of counties live 2.4 years longer than those in the richest quartile counties in the Deep South.

Yes, even having money won’t save you in a red state.

But why is this? Well, a recent study implies that conservative, “laissez-faire political leaders tend to create systems that have looser health insurance regulations, leaner Medicaid programs and fewer public and non-profit hospitals.” 

The policies that “can meaningfully change life expectancy” — such as reducing drug overdoses, expanding Medicaid, adopting gun control, and protecting abortion and maternal health — are nonstarters in red states.

Another interesting fact is that in the Deep South, “the region with the distinction of having had the continent’s most repressive formal slave and racial caste systems,” white people have a lower life expectancy than their counterparts in Canada and Western Europe, and they have per capita suicide and psychiatric disorder rates far higher than their Black, Asian or Latino peers.

This is because racist white people “reject policies designed to help the poor and reduce inequality because of animosity toward people of color as well as being unaware that the poor include a great many white people.”

The researchers conclude that “three centuries of formal white supremacy hasn’t served whites very well.”

By the way, we Latinos have much higher life expectancy than whites in America, which researchers call the Hispanic Paradox.

So as a Latino living in California, I am virtually immortal.

How cool is that?

The jargon changes every few years. Over the decades, it’s gone from “bleeding-heart” to “politically correct” to “social justice warrior” to “woke.”

We have no shortage of derogatory terms for people who exhibit compassion toward others.

In contrast, we don’t alter our terminology to describe hardcore right-wingers. The word “sociopath” works just fine.

Of course, there are numerous reasons why conservatives mock those who express concern for others. There is sadism, self-loathing, selfishness, and a few other motivations that don’t begin with the letter S.

But one of the oddest is the bizarre fear of conservatives that any attempt to display basic decency will inevitably lead to widescale cultural weakness and, therefore, societal collapse. Republicans are constantly shrieking that Americans are lazy snowflakes dependent on government handouts, so we need to whip ‘em to keep them tough. In the GOP worldview, businesses that grant paternity leave are turning American men into effeminate wimps and emasculating the entire country in the process.

I’m pretty sure, however, that being too meek is not one of the American populace’s big problems. Look at our political discourse, social interaction, and rate of gun violence.

Does anyone seriously believe that the main issue with Americans is that we are too nice? Really?

But if you insist that keeping one’s nose to grindstone, feet to the fire, and balls to the wall is the only way to ensure Americans behave, you might be interested in a few statistics that show how well that hard-driving philosophy actually works.

For example, red states are less likely to offer government support to their citizens. This keeps their citizens honest and creates a thriving population of happy, prosperous… oh wait.

Red states are pretty much a hellhole when compared to blue states, evidenced by the fact that liberal areas outperform conservative areas in just about every economic or sociological category. 

Even the Republican argument that a red-state existence is better because of the lower cost of living is not entirely accurate. Yes, it is cheaper to live in Mississippi than in Minnesota. But wages are usually lower as well, so it’s at best a tie, or even a slight advantagefor blue states. 

OK, so rugged individualism isn’t such a winner in those cases. 

But surely our approach to healthcare is tops in the world. After all, we don’t have socialized medicine and all the government dependency it fosters, so our citizens must be the healthiest on the planet.

Yeah, you saw that setup coming, didn’t you?

As everyone knows, the United States spends far more on healthcare and gets worse results than every industrialized nation in the world (and several non-industrialized ones), simply because we refuse to accept universal healthcare.

Studies show that just during the pandemic, hundreds of thousands of Americans died because we don’t have a system like Japan, Australia, or Finland.

But don’t worry, because “nationwide, many hospitals have grown wealthy, spending lavishly on advertising, team sponsorships, and even spas, while patients are squeezed by skyrocketing medical prices and rising deductibles.”

Still, at least all those sick, destitute people aren’t dependent on big government.

And speaking of poverty, America stands alone when it comes to our high rate of homelessness. Other industrialized countries have homeless citizens, of course. But those nations, big governments all, don’t just have a lot fewer homeless people. They actually try to solve the problem.

In America, we believe that giving people housing will make them soft, even though research has shown that providing free or inexpensive housing with no strings attached is an effective way to reduce homelessness.

No, we won’t be having any of that commie crap here. We would rather have a half-million Americans live on the street, even while there are “hundreds of thousands of vacant properties owned by city and state governments” that just sit there empty.

But at least we’re tough.

In fact, we’re so tough that we are committing suicide in record numbers. Yes, while the rate of suicide has declined in every industrialized nation, America is the “one high-income country [that] is a particular exception to the downward trend.”

And that’s part of a larger development brought on by “years of widening economic inequality, compounded by the pandemic and political storm and stress.” And this development is that “life expectancies have been falling” for Americans, which is odd for a nation that takes such great pride in being exceptional.

Yes, we can’t even keep our own residents alive, but we’re number one!

Our declining life expectancy has opened “a window on a set of pathologies unique to America among developed countries.”

And a root cause of this pathology is the belief that trying to help one another is wrong. In truth, however, this demented credo is only making us weaker.

So the United States has resumed its wild, impetuous stab at having a functioning government. After this latest farce, internet sites are alive with comments along the lines of the following:

“We need to kick out every member of Congress and start fresh.”

I know we live in a country where nearly half the citizens people can’t name the vice president, but I find it hard to believe anybody is so ignorant of the political process that he or she thinks voting out all 535 members of Congress is a realistic option.

We’ll start with the fact that elections are staggered (hence the term “midterm election”). As such, I doubt anybody’s rage is going to last another five years or so, which is how long it would take to excise all the offending congressmen and women. And we’ll add on the stat that while most people hate Congress, they tend to like their own reps, so we will likely see most of these supposedly toxic incumbents return.

This idea is even less practical and more insane than the delusional belief, which I’ve written about before, that we can easily deport 11 million undocumented immigrants.

In the interest of saving time, here are some other political ideas I’ve heard recently that appear just as likely to happen.

“We need to separate into two different countries. Red states and blue states.” (I’m pretty sure we fought a war about this, and the outcome was rather conclusive. We appear to be stuck with one another for the foreseeable future.)

“We need a task force of really smart leaders who will come up with bipartisan solutions to our problems.” (That’s what Congress is supposed to be.)

“We need to mandate IQ tests to make sure people are smart enough to vote.” (Anyone who thinks an IQ test accurately measures political acumen probably doesn’t have a very high IQ.)

“We need to confiscate every gun in America that’s not in the hands of the police or military.” (It amazes me how liberals think that Second Amendment advocates—many of whom are paranoid and all of whom are armed—will somehow go along with this idea.)

“We need to use Jurassic Park-type technology to reanimate the Founding Fathers so they can tell us their original intent regarding the Constitution.” (OK, I made this one up, but wouldn’t that be cool?)