My Opinion of Arizona
Do you like white nationalists and weird ass looking rats that can gore you?
So I’ve talked a little bit about my experiences in Arizona. The TL;DR of my experiences — nope, no fun, bad times.
But setting the outright weird and mindnumbingly boring elements of my experiences in Arizona aside, is Arizona a good state to live in?
Well, the answer to that question depends on a lot of factors.
I’ve lived for long periods of time in three states total now; California, Oregon, and Arizona. My childhood was spent in Southern California, my late teens to mid twenties in Oregon, and fifteen months in semi rural Arizona. And I can confidently say that, despite the fact all these states are technically in West USA, each is very different culturally. It’s actually as though I have lived in different countries, to tell you the truth.
Arizona has traditionally been a red as a tomato state, producing the likes of John Mccain. However, that’s changed, due to the enormous demographics shifts as a product of the California refugee crisis. A mass exodus of Californian natives to Arizona actually made the state go Blue during the last election.
So you’re not super alone if you’re on the left end of the spectrum politically. But expect people to roll their eyes if you tell them you’re from California. And a lot of it depends on where you wind up.
Tucson and Phoenix, the largest cities in the state, have a lot of uppity university kids. I didn’t move there, though. I lived somewhere around Benson, ninety minutes south of Tucson. A place that was squarely for Trump. There couldn’t have been any less diversity where I was. An Asian fusion restaurant was the most foreign thing around, and my old landlord called it ‘Oriental’.
Arizona is very well known for being kind of a white supremacist shithole. To put it into perspective, there’s a load of militias that like to hang around the border with sniper rifles.
