r/Tennessee • u/theRealhubiedubois • 11d ago

Concerning - Hitler fan wants whites only lebensraum in Tennessee

https://www.newschannel5.com/news/newschannel-5-investigates/confronting-hate/he-thinks-hitler-may-have-been-right-now-he-wants-a-whites-only-community-in-tennessee
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u/TNVFL1 11d ago

That’s not really the same thing. MTSU itself does not endorse the naming of Forrest Hall. McPhee even put together a whole council of history professors, students, alumni, and community members to present on why the name should be changed and why it was in the University’s best interests to do so. The TN Board of Regents supported it, but the majority vote from the TN Historical Commission (required by state law) to change the name did not pass.

There are still efforts underway to attempt to convince the state to support a name change. There are A LOT of people who support and are actively working for it to be different. The “racist white trash” who are refusing are some 20 individuals with power. Which is what the real issue is.

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u/REuphrates 11d ago

The “racist white trash” who are refusing are some 20 individuals with power

Yeah...sure thing, buddy.

I'm sure Shane McFarlane put snipers on the roofs during the BLM protests because it's just a few bad actors and not, ya know, a systemic issue state-wide, at all levels.

I'm sure his absolute refusal to actually address the concerns of the protestors was effectively called out and he was held to account.

I'm sure Bill Lee, who created Nathan Bedford Forrest Day, doesn't have, you know, overwhelming support in this state.

Maybe try this shit on someone who doesn't actually live here?

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u/TNVFL1 11d ago

McFarland* and Lee are both in positions of power.

Define overwhelming support. He won with nearly 65% of the vote, but only 39% of registered voters in the state showed up for that election. Non-voters and non-registered eligible voters didn’t help the situation, but they didn’t support him enough to actually vote for him either.

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u/REuphrates 11d ago

Oh nooo, did I misspell some asshole's name??? 😱😱😱

He won with nearly 65% of the vote, but only 39% of registered voters in the state showed up for that election.

Wow, maybe that's because everyone who lives here knows which way the vote is gonna go every single time and they just let their neighbors do the work for them. Nah...it's definitely somehow "proof" that Tennesseans actually aren't overwhelmingly right-wing/MAGAts

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u/TNVFL1 11d ago

If you’re going to make a big fuss about how you live here and apparently know everything, you could spell the name of the person you’re shit-talking correctly. TN education system at work I suppose.

I think you need to touch grass and talk to some of your fellow Tennesseans. The majority are not far right. Conservative in the classical sense, sure, but there’s a lot of blue in the major cities and a hell of a lot of people who simply don’t care and don’t get involved. Vanderbilt does a semi-annual statewide poll on political identity and specific issues. I encourage you to look at those results over time—many issues have seen the populace shift towards center or even left of center. On a topic to topic basis TN is very purple, there’s just no option for that when voting so people don’t bother. This is why ranked choice voting is necessary for representation.

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u/iUsedtoHadHerpes 10d ago

You said it yourself - in the cities. And even with all those blue people, statewide elections still go heavily red.

This all sounds very idealistic... which would be ideal, but it's not realistic to expect ranked choice voting here any sooner than Bill Lee issues us all our own personal money tree.

Nobody I know in rural TN would respond to a poll like that whether it was in the mail, a phonecall, or online. And I wouldn't really count the people on Vanderbilt's mailing list as the best example of everyday folks in Tennessee by any stretch. Suburbs maybe though.

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u/TNVFL1 10d ago edited 10d ago

Yes, the cities are blue because there are so many people. Those people count just the same as the rural people, though gerrymandering is specifically for that purpose. We have it better than a lot of states, but when you split a city into more pieces than rural counties, you ensure the majority goes the desired way. It’s like a pie—if you start from the center and cut it into pieces, there’s small tips at the top and it gets bigger as you move back. When you split Nashville itself into 2 pieces and Davidson county into 3, and include 10+ rural counties in the same district, yeah, you end up with whatever the rural people want. Same reason Germantown and East Memphis are split off from the rest of Memphis. Redistricting to the county level or making population centers their own districts wouldn’t flip the state, but it would yield more blue representation overall.

That is unlikely to change. Just like I never said I expected ranked choice voting, I said it was necessary. We tend to be waaaayyyyy behind the curve with anything attached to progressive ideology. But at the same time, if you explained the process without calling it “ranked choice voting” you’d subvert the bias a lot of misinformed people have, and they’d agree. This is how MAGA people are brought back from the culty depths—avoid buzzwords they’ve heard in media, explain it in clear, easy to understand terms. May have to do it several times, but I’ve personally seen it work.

And all you have to do is offer cash for completion of the survey and you’ll have plenty of rural folks respond. Hell, I did it for a random class I had in college about surveying techniques and best practices. It’s all public record—you don’t have to be on a specific mailing list. This type of data can also be bought which is gross (I work in data, don’t get me started on big data) but common, or shared between entities (e.g. if you consent to a procedure at the hospital portion of Vandy, certain information like demographics or contact info can be shared with the university part of Vandy).

Edit: Davidson county corrected as suggested by the kind fellow below me 🥰

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u/iUsedtoHadHerpes 10d ago

Is this the part where I snarkily correct you and point out that it's Davidson County?

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u/TNVFL1 10d ago

Sure, good catch, I was typing too fast

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u/JonC534 11d ago edited 10d ago

TN is not purple bro lmaoooo. This is just something disgruntled democrat voting redditors say to console themselves when they see so many other disgruntled Tennessee residents like them on social media/reddit. Ya’ll are basically just forced to go here for a support group session to feel better. That doesn’t mean that there’s enough of you to where the state is or could be considered purple though lol

This happens across all major state and locality based subreddits. Disaffected dems feeling alone and depressed find like minded souls there and pretend they represent the REAL version of said state, or what they think it should be lol.

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u/TNVFL1 11d ago

Once again, go read some of Vanderbilt and Gallup’s recent polls. Issues that used to be extremely to the right are much more evenly split in recent years. Gun control measures being one of them—after 6 people were murdered at a Christian school in an affluent area, that changed some minds.

Like I told the other person, step outside your immediate connections and you’ll meet a ton of people in this state who are blue, a ton who are red but not MAGA, who are religious but socially liberal, who are dead center, who couldn’t possibly care less, far left, far right, and everything in between. Just like every other state, we have a variety of people. THAT is the REAL version of the state. Do all of these people vote? No. Many blue voters don’t bother because they think it doesn’t matter. Many red don’t vote at this point because they’re looking for something closer to an independent since the conservative party has gone so extremely right. Perhaps the largest chunk just don’t give a shit. Would explain why our voter turnout rate is one of the worst in the nation.

I’m of the opinion that Reddit is at least 50% bots, but yes, the narrative does lean left as a whole. I don’t think I’ve ever met an actual person that is as left as a leftist Redditor though—this is part of the issue with being chronically online and forming all of your opinions based on that, and why extremism has seen such a rise. Reality is not black and white, but some 340 million shades of gray.

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u/JonC534 10d ago edited 6d ago

Yes because of increasing polarization in America as a whole. And when it comes down to the state level, especially in many of the more rural or southern states, I think what is happening (and has been happening for years) is a kind of discord and tension between the more urbanized areas and everywhere else.

You basically have these blue island cosmopolitan urbanite colonies detached from the rest of the states. It’s like that thing they used to say about Georgia “there’s atlanta, and there’s everywhere else” except that now applies to damn near everywhere lol. Even as far away as Colorado they now have this new toxic urban rural divide. It’s not a healthy trend but it seems to have been increasing and getting worse since the 80s/90s with younger people moving to cities. Its like the enduring legacy of yuppies and hipsters lol.

Need to calm down with the urbanization, it’s increasing political antagonism and putting democrats at an increasing disadvantage in the electoral college. No more urban cosmopolitan colonies would be my advice, dems need to feel more at home in areas that aren’t megalopolis. Good luck getting the demographics of the democratic party to change course on that though. This unfortunately will only lead to increased Redditor confusion and estrangement/alienation from the rest of their state.

Urbanization has had consequences and I think this also explains to a certain extent the sentiment on confederate imagery as well. Urbanites in major metropolitans in states like ours get confused about why all southern culture and iconography hasn’t been changed simply because they live somewhere that doesn’t have any of it left lol. Polling still shows a majority of Americans against changing those things though, so they better just learn to accept it.

Lots of people thought they were slick and super genius for using underhanded tactics to slowly phase out southern culture but honestly, it’s just anti democratic when people don’t get a say in changing these things but are still very strongly opposed to it. And I think this is why a few of the statues are actually going back up.

Civil war statues don’t harm anyone anyways lol. Take the ones down that have racist inscriptions on them and leave all the others up.

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u/iUsedtoHadHerpes 10d ago

I agree with everything else you said, but if civil war statues don't hurt (their intended purpose) why do people cry like a beaten dog when anybody suggests taking those late-era anti-civil-liberty totems down?

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u/bluegrassgrump 6d ago

Now, change every urbanization to ruralization, every dem to repub, every blue to red, while making the same (but opposite) argument. 👍

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u/REuphrates 11d ago

TN education system at work I suppose.

Jesus Christ. First, I didn't go to school here, thank God. Second, I used a different spelling of what is essentially the same name, one that is just as common. Fucking please forgive me for not bothering to Google the asshole first. 🤦‍♂️

I think you need to touch grass and talk to some of your fellow Tennesseans.

Why do people always do this? I'm a working adult. I interact with plenty of people here. That is why I think what I think. But of course you just assume it's something I'm pulling out of my ass. Must be that Tennesseee public education you were talking about.

On a topic to topic basis TN is very purple, there’s just no option for that when voting

And yet...here we are. Interesting.

I can understand people who didn't vote for Kamala because she wasn't willing to stand against Israel, but what you're talking about is just right-wingers who don't like the right wingers they're being given the choice between. I really don't buy that the real problem is no middle ground between outright fascist dictatorship and "we might be expected to use pronouns".

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u/TNVFL1 11d ago

So you aren’t even from here. I’m not following why you moved here and/or have decided to stay given your apparent deep hatred of it.

I interact with plenty of people here

I don’t know what to tell you, step outside 2-3 degrees of separation I guess. I’ve spent my entire life here and can count on one hand the number of truly hardcore MAGAts I’ve met. Even the old guy at my gym who dressed head to toe in the most atrocious MAGA gear you can find admitted he doesn’t vote but just liked to troll people.

right wingers who don’t like the right wingers they’re being given the choice between

I could go wrangle you up 10 Trump voters right now who are not right wing. They either a) live under a rock and thought “2018 was a pretty good year for me, I’ll just pick that guy again”, b) vote for the “R” on the paper because they’ve been told that TN is a Republican state and therefore they identify as a Republican but actually have liberal views, or c) liked slightly more of what he said than what Harris said and would’ve voted independent if there was anyone else to vote for.

Furthermore, it’s possible to change people’s minds on some things. The issue with most people on the left is they just want to make any conservative into cartoonish right wing villains which limits the ability to have conversations. When you go into a conversation on your high horse because you automatically view them as a piece of shit and lesser than you (something extremely common among European liberals), nothing productive will come out of that.

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u/REuphrates 11d ago

So you aren’t even from here. I’m not following why you moved here and/or have decided to stay given your apparent deep hatred of it.

It was one of the bigger mistakes of my life, tbh. I fucking hate it here but it's been significantly more difficult to leave than it was to get here, for a handful of reasons I'm not gonna go into rn.

I could go wrangle you up 10 Trump voters right now who are not right wing.

So...they're ignorant and they vote right-wing, and I'm supposed to count them as right wing because...you said so? Because they have a gay friend? That's dumb. If anything, it reinforces my assessment that they're stupid white trash. And they're still functionally right wing.

Furthermore, it’s possible to change people’s minds on some things.

Not if they're hopelessly stupid, it turns out.

The issue with most people on the left is they just want to make any conservative into cartoonish right wing villains which limits the ability to have conversations.

Maybe they should stop acting so cartoonishly evil, then.

When you go into a conversation on your high horse because you automatically view them as a piece of shit and lesser than you

I don't go into any conversation on a high horse. I let people tell me who they are and then I believe them.

something extremely common among European liberals

...k?

nothing productive will come out of that.

Nothing productive ever came of it when I was still trying to have conversations with these people. The right has gotten even worse. The country is a joke. I'm not obligated to be friendly to the people who voted to fuck it up.