“I’ve found that most people believe that about New York State — that 100% of it is like New York City. It’s a huge, fairly rural state. And everybody outside NYC hates NYC.”
It is a large, semi-rural state. And you are right: Pretty much everyone outside NYC hates NYC.
It’s that like here in Illinois. Illinois is a pretty rural state, and everyone in the state who is outside Chicago hates Chicago.
My very first political memory was around the time I was 12 or 13 years old (1963 or 1964). We were living in Ithaca, NY. I remember Dad and his buddies all complaining how all the taxes they were paying in NY State were going to the bums in NYC! Some things never change. Well, actually they do change. They go from good to not so good to bad to horrendous. We are at the horrendous stage now.
And in Georgia everyone outside of Atlanta hates Atlanta and avoids it like the plague. Every state has that one city that they avoid. Usually it is the capital of the state where all the corruption and crime resides. Coincidentally (?), it’s usually the largest city in the state controlled by Democrats.
CA, NY, and IL should have an electoral college to mitigate the lopsided leftward tilt due to their respective metropoli.
**It’s that like here in Illinois. Illinois is a pretty rural state, and everyone in the state who is outside Chicago hates Chicago.**
I was raised on a Mercer county IL farm, and as an adult, until the age of 47, farmed there. Though I changed careers to drive semi, I continued to live in the same rural setting.
My truck driving from 02 to 08 often had me going to ‘the Windy’. It was always surreal to come home to the wide open spaces of south central Mercer county and turn off the engine, after a day that may have taken the big rig all the way to downtown Chicago, battling traffic in and back out. Two entirely different worlds. I thanked God many times that I didn’t live there.