For someone who claims to have lived in Atlanta, you should be able to answer this one.
Seriously, though. I love Atlanta. But OP's implication that MGT's district lacks a "culture" is exactly the sort of rhetoric that got her elected. That sort of talk makes people mad and justifiably so.
The notion that the people in that district did not have it in them to elect a right-wing conspiracy theorist prior to some sort of recent national culture war / media phenomenon is entirely mistaken.
edit: that's not to trivialize some of the other stuff that's going on nationally... I suspect the national culture warriors actually do explain why MGT's campaigns are funded as well as they are.
If you attack a group of people, they will consolidate ranks and fight back. And they will throw their weight behind leaders that they perceive as fighters. This is especially true of honor cultures like in the American south.
I’m reminded about the speech George W. Bush gave after 9/11: https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/20.... I think liberals don’t fully understand the genius of this speech. He wasn’t just moralizing to Americans to tell them not to take out their anger on Muslims. He was giving Muslim Americans an opportunity to reaffirm their Muslim identity while giving them a vocabulary to talk about the ones who did evil in the name of Islam.
Contrast this against the rhetoric the media in New York uses against people in the rural south anytime something bad happens there. They portray it as a confirmation of the bad things that New Yorkers already believed about southern culture.
I disagree with you less than might have been obvious, particularly because I've had relatives make the move north and experience some discrimination.
Source: I live in her district. And work for an outstanding software company that's headquartered there.
There's plenty of consolation to be found in that state right now, I would think. In the same election you guys voted in a black pastor and a Jewish journalist to the US Senate. I wish my father could have seen that.