Austin vs Texas (What the Right Wing Despises)

I live in Austin, Texas. We just got chosen as the best place to live in America for the second year in a row. Interesting that a city built most recently by hippies, artists, musicians, liberals and free-thinkers, has been consistently valued as wonderful place to live.

Austin emerged as a burgeoning city of creatives-- based on the proximity of the University of Texas at Austin. The town attracted IBM and that set the tone for our eventual status as a center for high tech. Technology and creativity make a strong combination.

Austin has problems-- traffic congestion, high cost of living, de facto segregation based on income disparity, and long, hot summers. Almost takes a millionaire to buy a house in Central Austin but people keep flocking here and adding to the population.

Employment is good in Austin, Texas. People can get jobs. There are enough jobs in Austin that you can actually quit your job and feel confident of finding another. Just like all of America from about 1950-1990, before the world turned global and industries and jobs moved to the places with the cheapest labor-- (i.e. China). We have it pretty good in this central Texas city.

Austin collides with rest of Texas when it comes to belief systems.

We are right in the middle of the state, but Texas thinks differently than Austin once you get beyond the city boundaries.

I studied a right wing Texas newspaper from just down the road in Abilene to find out what the rest of Texas thinks. The red votes in Texas are conservative and feel strongly about the conservative roots of cowboy culture. The frontiersman carried a gun on his hip. He needed it for survival in the 1880s. Now a gun seems more like a hobby, a talisman, a symbol.

What do the blue voters despise?

1) The "Democratic" media.
2) The United Nations
3) California-- too liberal, too expensive, proliferation of minorities
4) Gun control
5) Critics of Donald Trump
6) Sanctuary cities-- Austin is one
7) Leftism-- calling the left "a hate cult"
8) Barack Obama
9) Hillary Clinton
10) Sharia Law-- viewed as a real threat to the American system of laws.

Strange how Austin has thrived and prospered in the middle of. The Peoples Republic of Austin attracts young, creative types like a magnet pulls iron filings.

The one thing we all agree on-- the Houston Astros are great!