Delts, you're right in pointing out that there is a general lack of empathy or kindness toward people who are a product of LDS culture here. What's perhaps most interesting is that outside of the trolls (who are obvious and usually self-imploding), most are products of this culture and define themselves as being antithetical to it which often leads to "overdoing it" to set themselves apart. Rocky Anderson seems like a pretty ideal example of this.
Here's what I take comfort in as someone who grew up here, who is at peace with staying here, and who probably lives a lifestyle and has appetites more in line with most the people whining about how backward we are, what I take comfort in is that to people from the non-flyover county (i.e. coastal relevant america) we are all the same. We're the same as Denver, Phoenix, Madison, Kansas City, Oklahoma City, Albuquerque, Nashville, etc. All the insults people in these flyover metros hurl at us are basically assumed of all of us by costal America. And the fact is we're all in the same knife fight. We are all struggling to remain relevant and to have opportunity in the midst of a globalizing world where emerging Asian and Arab cities will compete with our cities who have already made it to a point where they can compete. Look at the assbackwards places that are emerging and getting culturally relevant goodies like the World Cup, the Summer Olympics. Who here honestly thinks St. Louis could ever get the World's Fair again if it was up against our current roster of international cities? Because if the World's Fair happened to be relevant like it used to be St. Louis would get it on the 7th of never.
So why do people live in Utah? How do we hold our own the in Middle America Thunder Dome of a globalizing world that redistributes administrative jobs via mergers and manufacturing via offshoring? Well, for one we manufacture more complicated things or more proprietary things and we also shrink the size of our operations and remain nimble. Bringing back administrative jobs is harder. We see jobs like that leave Utah in the form of American Stores being bought out and our tech companies being bought out. Denver is not immune either with the buyout of Qwest by Century Link. The very real struggle I see for us in the Mountain West that should make you question why an ambitious person would want to live here is, "are you willing to give up working higher up in your company to stay where you're at (insert Adobe, insert Century Link, insert Goldman, etc.)? Would most of us move away for a bigger advancement and more money? Probably yes.
So why haven't we moved away yet? Because we're painfully average people with skills lots of other people have and we're comfortable here.
And there's work to be done here with our skills.
And based on my viewing of the Mountain West threads, at least we're trying to make our places more livable and nice. And I think that's pretty cool. And think that's why we're all here on this forum. That, and because we like steel and cranes, cement, blueprints, etc.
I raise my glass to mediocrity
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