i was trying to explain to someone that the huge influx of west coast conservative transplants are not only flipping historically blue areas red, but also impacting the few places in this state where you can actually get a decent education, specifically Oak Ridge. you know, my usual soap boxes.

and then they said something flippant like "well damn, if that place is the best the state had to offer before, it must really be bad now." and i just.

how. HOW do you know enough to realize Oak Ridge is part of Appalachia (and so voice extremely tired and boring stereotypes) but not enough to realize it was the headquarters of The Manhattan Project?? they are still doing uranium clean-up to this day for christ's sake. there are tons of opportunities for scientists in that town as is, not to mention the percentage of people still living there descended from the original scientists that founded* the town. you think a bunch of PhD having motherfuckers are gonna send their kids to a shitty school if they don't have to? i am so tired. people learn just enough about this area to make hack jokes, and then nothing else.

*Oak Ridge exists bc the U.S. government seized land from the rural unincorporated farming communities in the area, literally making some folks homeless overnight. so "founded" is a reach, even more so than it usually is in this colonized nightmare of a country. it is also yet another example of our government forcefully imposing segregation in areas of East Tennessee as punishment for opposing the Confederacy during thr Civil War, which continues to this day btw. i don't even know that half the bureaucrats who engage in that shit are fully conscious of its roots at this point, but i don't care i still hate them :)