Land is Cheap Where People Are Stupid...

(Disclosure:  There is no scientific evidence to back this up, nor is this an assertion that everyone who lives in the areas mentioned "stupid."  Obviously, this is satire.  Figure it out, people.)

Just before I moved to Los Angeles, I flew my boyfriend out to Tennessee to make the cross country drive with me.  When he landed at Tri-Cities Airport in what amounted to an oversized crop duster, he was shocked at the nearly palatial McMansions that sat on ridiculously large plots of undeveloped land.

Born and raised in California, he was unused to seeing such vast areas of land without some sort of covering, be that houses or crops.  Imagine his surprise when he realized that these plots of land could be purchased for prices that stopped at six digits.

To me, this was no surprise.

I have moved forty-two times in my life, and what I've learned over the course of those travels is that land is cheap in areas where the people are stupid.

It's not even that they haven't graduated high school, can't read, or have no functional brain power - it's that they continue to votes in ways that work against their own interests for one reason or another.  This reason is usually based on "morals" or "religious conviction."

There are many reasons why the American South has not fully recovered from the Civil War, economically speaking, but the underlying cause of all these symptoms is that people in the South are less densely populated.  This creates a whole range of problems: without dense populations, it's difficult to create centralized business ventures; without adequate public transportation, travel is prohibitive; medical resources and providers are more spread out, creating access issues.  The list goes on.

But, above all is the fact that these are areas where the people by and large continue to vote against their own self-interests.  And again, this goes back to the lack of population density.

Poverty and religion go hand in hand.  In areas of the world where poverty is high, educational success is low, and wages are low, religion serves a very valuable purpose - it provides hope.  The hope that there is a reward at the end of the road for all of your troubles is almost necessary for survival.  To live without hope and faith makes life more difficult because it forces people to confront the fact that they are ultimately in control of their destinies, and that no one and nothing is waiting for them when they die to give them the good life.

Heaven is a terrible tease - it promises that if you live a good, Godlike life, free of worldly vices, you will be rewarded.

It is easy, therefore, to see how people who rely on religion for comfort can be so easily manipulated.  If they are willing to believe that, politicians must say, they'll believe anything.

And so, we come to their legislative initiatives:

So-called "Personhood Amendments" are a prime example of how a social issue seems to be more important to conservative legislators than issues that might actually improve the lives of their constituents.

For people keeping track, the number of abortions performed in the United States has actually dropped since the Roe v. Wade decision.  Yes, that's right...the number of abortions has dropped.  Steadily.  Almost 9% in a single decade (the 2000s).

Now, this fact doesn't get out there.  Instead, we're fed a false narrative by manipulative Conservatives (is there any other kind, really?) who would have us believe that woman are flocking to abortion clinics in droves.  Veritable hordes of women are swarming abortion clinics to have their poor decision removed from them by means of life threatening butchery at the hands of evil, godless barbarians hellbent on destroying any potential life that could grow up to be a fine, upstanding Christian!!!

But, no.  Abortions have dropped to 1976 levels of 1.2 million per year.

So, the truth is that, despite living in a country that's waging a "War on Religion" (another stupid belief), the number of abortions has dropped.

*sighs*

The sad thing is that such a minute problem becomes a giant issue because people are stupid and easily manipulated.  When Conservatives get on stage and talk about "American Exceptionalism," they're talking about a nation that ranks 20th in the Education Index.  20th.  We're not exceptional.  In fact, most of Europe is exceptional.  Hell, comparatively, we're not even literate.

And here, again, we have the reality that people in America are stupid and easily manipulated.  Only in America could going to a top-notch university be considered "Elitism."

Only in America can someone like Sarah Palin become a political superstar when in any other educated country in the world, she would be laughed out of the room.  It truly is a testament to American stupidity that we idolize Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Sharon Angle, Jan Brewer, and Rick Perry.  If these are the "best and brightest," our future is looking bleak.

Here's a hint, America: being able to read, write, perform basic math, and understand science does not make you an elitist - it makes you smart.  This is something for which we should strive, and when any politician tells you we should do away with the Department of Education, you should pelt them with rotting cabbage.

So, to end this rant, I will go back to where I started.  Land is cheap where people are stupid.  If you want to own a lot of land with a giant house far larger than anything you actually need, just move to a place where people are easily manipulated politically, and you're very likely to find the cheapest land in all the land.

And the land will stay cheap...until they get smart.