Spending time with my grandma always tends to lead to at least two or three political debates, most of them about “those gays”, refugees, or some crazy conspiracy only half-wits on QAnon could muster.  

Not that I don’t love my grandma, but she definitely follows a trend of middle Americans, who buy into FOX News or whatever Facebook nonsense they see on their home page. The same kind of middle Americans who may have been sighted doing something a little silly on January 6th of last year for a certain orange-skinned old man, though my grandma would most likely be much too busy, since she has her horses to take care of. 

Because of my dear grandmother, I will always know about how the Central Intelligence Agency, renowned for “[stopping] communism in Western Europe in the 1940’s and ‘50’s” according to Major General Oleg Kalugin, former head of KGB counterintelligence, solving (wink) the missile crisis in Cuba, and, of course, assassinating John Fitzgerald Kennedy, President of the United States of America from 1961 to 1963 for wanting to go back to the gold standard.  

Missouri, which ranks as number 17 in the competition for most conservative state as of 2020, is the state my family calls home, which also happens to be grouped in with Kansas, Nebraska, Illinois, Ohio, Iowa, and many other states in a region called the “Midwest”, or middle America. The states to the south and west even manage to score lower, getting closer and closer to #1. Growing up within the city limits of Kansas City, which is very progressive, and, like most big cities in Midwest or southern states, stands out from the rest of the more isolated and rural areas. Of course, my grandma lives in a smaller town with a population of 10,406 people.  

Now, I’m not saying that just because someone lives in a small town in the Midwest, they are automatically racist, and the town my grandma lives in is a wonderful place, where I’ve made a lot good memories throughout my childhood, but it’s hard to ignore the MAGA hats, “Trump 2024” signs, and “Let’s Go Brandon!” flags in peoples’ yards. 

Obviously, just from knowing how I look and where I was raised, as well as my education, I will probably never experience as many of the negative aspects of rural Missouri, or any other state, really, but I’m sure many other people have completely different experiences than me. I’ve overheard and even been subjected to lots of old people conversations talking about just how terrible Mexican immigrants are (which is always followed with the classic “I’m not racist, I have Mexican friends”).  

However, almost all of these kinds of people that I’ve met just happen to be old baby boomers who will, thank Gosh, become more or less obsolete with time. Recently as I’ve traversed around the small-town squares, I’ve seen more and more progressive sights, like a pride flag somewhere or a hipster-looking rustic coffee shop, which lets me know that society is healing.