I no longer live in Ohio, but I was raised in a mixed urban-rural area of the northeast part of the state in a unbelievably and ridiculously strict Christian, conservative, misogynist, and racist family.

While most of my views have changed dramatically and so most of my early friendships have, at best, flagged, I still have a few less extremist friends on social media from that world. Friends whose life circumstances precluded them from fitting into that world -

Divorced parents that offered a less than stellar upbringing, “mistakes” made as an adult, undeniably abusive husbands that ended in “still ungodly” divorces, being a woman with a pixie cut, or worse, and opinion - you know, the big sins.

Anyways, the point of these tweets is over the last few days I have been just wearied and frustrated by what these old friends have posted on, of course, Facebook. Uncritiqued misinformation. Calls for opening the country. Assertions that stay-at-home orders are unconstitutional.

Conspiracy theories connecting Dr. Fauci to some deep state theory that involves the Clintons. A “think piece” asserting that Covid19 exists because of the failings of communism while it completely disregards that blatant and horrifying failings of capitalism and the US system.

I’ve always know that Ohio was a strange mixed bag of a state, although it’s lost a lot of its capacity to be a swing state as people like my husband and me leave to find jobs and education. Unfortunately, my anecdotal experience is that the millennials most likely to stay -

Are also the ones most likely to be unable to dissect what they’ve been told to find the truth.

I love Ohio. My husband and I have talked many times over our decade away about moving back. The grass is so green. The cost of living is low. Cedar Point and Ohio State and Skyline Chili. Ope and lemme squeeze by ya and people who genuinely care about their communities.

But I am also afraid that maybe Ohio means we get set in our ways, we start to accept the status quo, we become a family with a home and stability and gradually I morph back into that person I was raised to be, that person that I refuse to be again.

Anyways, this thread went a little off the rails. But I feel like there’s an important point somewhere in the mess that is native Ohioans and their gullibility to fascism and the language of sacrifice and religio-social systems of control under the guise of liberty.