The Nobles of Iowa moved to blue Minnesota. The Huckinses of Oregon moved to red Missouri. Their separate journeys, five weeks apart, illustrate the fracturing of America.
Mr. Huckins and his wife, Ginger, were leaving Portland, Ore., one of the most progressive cities in the United States. They said Portland’s tolerance of homeless encampments, along with the open use of hard drugs and rising crime, had filled them with despair. So they headed 2,000 miles east, to deep-red rural Missouri.
Driving around their new hometown in June, about an hour outside St. Louis, they admired the old Victorians and a tractor defying the minimum speed limit on a state road.
“One thing I do like about Missouri, there’s lots of American flags,” Mr. Huckins said as he steered around a traffic circle where the Stars and Stripes flapped crisply on a pole. “In Portland, the American flag was offensive.”
One day earlier, in a neighboring state, another couple making a politically motivated move had a different flag on display — a Pride flag on a T-shirt.
Jennie and Jeff Noble were packing their possessions into a 26-foot U-Haul truck in suburban Iowa. Ms. Noble, 37, who was wearing the Pride T-shirt, and her husband were leaving Iowa for Minnesota.
Their only child, Julien, came out as transgender at age 11. Now 16, Julien uses prescription testosterone. After Iowa banned gender-affirming medical care for minors, criminalizing their son’s treatments, the Nobles — lifelong Iowans — concluded they had to get out.
One moved because they hated poor people and loved nationalism/fascism. The other moved to ensure their child has access to appropriate healthcare without interference from religious dogma and bigots. These two are not the same.
You could also say they wanted space and backyards, which could also be negative but sounds much more reasonable. You can’t directly align nationalism with fascism. I mean yeah, it’s a core component, but nationalism isn’t that automatically fascism.
