I'm a conservative. I live in Minnesota. To be exact, Saint Paul - sometimes called "Chicago on the Mississippi". Not a friendly place to be a conservative.
Still, David's got it worse. He's across the river in Minneapolis - aka "Berkeley on the Prairie". Saint Paul at least has some shred of common sense; during the 2020 riots, its police chief was the one public figure in either of the Twin Cities not to completely beclown himself.
At any rate, I'm not going to say it's getting lonely (or lonelier), but a lot of people are leaving Minnesota for elsewhere. It actually started long before the tsunami of fraud became public knowledge, back when mere tens of millions in daycare fraud made it onto the Twin Cities mainstream media (sort of); people were already getting tired of feeling like suckers.
A few years ago, I was visiting my sister and her family in Montana. She and my brother-in-law live on a nice chunk of land out in the country, still far enough west of Billings that we could spend an evening cooking out, skeet shooting, shooting up old appliances, and enjoying cocktails (in that and only that order) in the back yard on a beautiful July evening.
Of course, it used to be waaaay west of Billings. The city is growing out to meet them; some of the neighboring land that used to be farms a mile or two to the east is getting developed.
And with development comes neighbors. And a lot of those neighbors are from California. One of the first to move in to a small plot up the road stopped by to reassure my sister and her husband that she wasn't one of those Californians.
But plenty of those Californians - the ones who are fleeing the taxes and social collapse - are moving to Billings, and they're bringing their politics. They've already had an effect on the Billings school district, and it's metastasizing.
My sister and her husband were talking about it over a drink after the shooting and barbeque. Their neighbors are, or were, largely farmers and tradespeople who wanted a little elbow room. They're people for whom politics is a necessary evil, warranting a trip to the local school to vote every other year. Not door-knocking, fundraising or any of the other dross that goes along with political activism - the stuff you can do without when you can trust the society you live in not to kill your culture and wear it like a meat suit.
Which is what has happened in formerly vibrant places as disparate as the Twin Cities suburbs, Raleigh NC, and the entire states of Colorado, Washington, and Vermont.
And some red-staters are noticing - it's not stopping there (language NSFW):
This video sums up how the #Colorado #native feels about #Californians over the past 40-years https://t.co/YoMlCUnhPb
— Big Timber Lodge (@NickRogersBTL) January 10, 2026
Ya think?
I've asked my friends who've left Minnesota - "what? You think they're not going to come for you in Tennessee, Florida, South Carolina? Even South Dakota, someday?
Because they will:
Buy stock in Caterpillar we’re coming to the Carolinas with bulldozers.
— John Ʌ Konrad V (@johnkonrad) January 10, 2026
Millions of us holdouts after Mamdani.
Or, hear me out, we band together & smash the GOP machines in “blue” states that keep rigging primaries with the worst candidates possible.
pic.twitter.com/5FLb98EACA
Is that a parody account? Who knows. Either way, it's not wrong.
As I told my sister and brother-in-law, it's sad but true - the days when you can trust your neighbors not to screw up a good thing are passing fast, even in solid red areas. You're going to have to fight - politically, rhetorically, personally - for what you've got, or you will lose it. You can mind your own business, but Blue State politics will not just leave you be.
And for those of us who are still in America's blue cesspools? You can run, but they're not going to stop coming for you.
It's high time we let them do the running. Politically speaking.
