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[-] grue@lemmy.world 18 points 1 day ago

I *don't* get the love-on for North Carolina and Pennsylvania, I guess.

Not sure about Pennsylvania, but I think North Carolina is rated so favorably because conservatives like it because it's part of the South, and liberals like it because it sucks less than most of the rest of the South due to the Research Triangle. (Georgia gets a similar boost because of Atlanta, but lesser because it gets extra hate from conservatives because of civil rights / Black culture.)

Montana does better than the rest of the midwest because it's romaticised.

So, folks, are we just gonna gloss over this guy calling Montana "Midwest?"

[-] untorquer@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

Midwest, at least culturally, can spread from the slopes of the Rockies to the slopes of Appalachia.

I am of the strong opinion that Aurora is Midwest and Denver is west.

[-] CanadaPlus@futurology.today 2 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

Yeah, that's what I thought. Although I did know there's a great deal of controversy over how far east if goes, and people laugh at New Yorkers for thinking of Cleveland as basically the same as Kansas.

In Canada, the Prairies go from the Rockies to the Shield region where things get stony and boggy. And extend north until it's too forested for the descriptor to apply, maybe a quarter of the way to the Arctic coast on average (so it's mostly taiga nd tundra with just a little bit of farmable area).

[-] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Is it not? What would you call it? It doesn't even end at the Canadian border, really, although we start calling it "prairies" to be distinct.

Source: Live here, have seen that border.

[-] grue@lemmy.world 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

In the US, the "Midwest" means the area from Ohio to the Dakotas (and with a southern limit along the Ohio river and southern border of Missouri and Kansas).

Montana is full-blown "West" (or sometimes "Mountain West" or a member of the "Mountain States," if you want to distinguish it from the "West Coast" or "Pacific Northwest.")

[-] sem 3 points 1 day ago

If you can grow wheat there, it's the prairie. Therefore the Midwest. Just how the eastern parts of Colorado are the furthest west parts of the mid west. Unless you want to exclude the prairie states entirely from the mid west, which i wouldn't do.

[-] JustAnotherPodunk@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

That has never been the definition of the Midwest. If you want to go by the census definition, you are wrong.

If you approach if from a cultural or demographic standpoint, you are still wrong.

I would argue that the Midwest ends at the banks of the Mississippi river and maybe carries halfway into the western states. Past that it is a whole nother place.

Montana is mountain west or west. Always has been.

[-] CanadaPlus@futurology.today 1 points 19 hours ago

Is West what the census calls it, too?

[-] JustAnotherPodunk@lemmy.world 2 points 15 hours ago
[-] CanadaPlus@futurology.today 1 points 12 hours ago

Hmm, Texas and Oklahoma in the South also feels funny.

Well, those are descriptive of the geography, I'll give them that.

[-] JustAnotherPodunk@lemmy.world 1 points 10 hours ago

I'll honestly agree with that. Oklahoma's northern borders literally exist because of the north south break from the civil war.

And... Well Texas is Texas and does Texas things. Can't explain it.

If you look at population centers and distribution, and extrapolate past those to the full state line, it does make more sense. The more west you go, the more empty it gets. Most of Texas, people wise, is south and east in the state. Oklahoma is just a vestigial burial ground for our past sins. Gotta put it somewhere.

[-] sem 1 points 21 hours ago

How many people do you know from the great plains states?

I have family from Kansas and Colorado, who worked the wheat harvests going from north Texas through to the Dakotas and eastern Montana. Eastern Colorado and western Kansas are not very different at all. I don't see why you would want to say a cultural definition is incorrect when it's people's self identity.

[-] JustAnotherPodunk@lemmy.world 1 points 15 hours ago

"How many people do you know from the great plains states?"

All of them. It's where I live. It's where I have lived the majority of my life. But I'm also well traveled and can assure you, there are cultural differences between the regions you are conflating.

Once again, you are wrong. Thank you.

[-] sem 1 points 14 hours ago

Where do you live? Because my family considers themselves midwestern. I'm sorry you feel that way about it.

[-] grue@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

¯\_ (ツ)_/¯ Take it up with the U.S. Census Bureau. It's their definition, not mine.

[-] sem 2 points 21 hours ago

The census bureau did not invent the term, nor are they in charge of it.

[-] JustAnotherPodunk@lemmy.world 1 points 10 hours ago

Lemmy user sem didn't invent the term, nor are they in charge of it either. But the census bureau has way more precidence than you have ever managed. Take the loss and move on bud.

[-] ryrybang@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago

I've never seen or heard Montana called Midwest. It's more Rockies or Northwest. Eastern half could be considered Great Plains-ish.

[-] CanadaPlus@futurology.today 2 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

I can say for sure none of it's very Northwestern; even eastern Washington is more like Idaho than the coast.

Rockies is fair, for the part that they actually run through, which seems to be more like a third of the area and inevitably less populated. I guess that's the part they like to advertise, though, and clearly it has worked.

this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2025
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