This was good and could be extended into a book. Having grown up in North Texas, this was the culture: light, positive, and rather bland—what else would you expect from people who mostly live indoors? Even topography reinforces this. It’s hot and featureless.
And yes, it’s conservative, but mostly RINO conservative. Culture is not a priority. Suburban sprawl continues forever.
I think the infusion of immigrant communities is our main source of distinctiveness. Mainly Latino, but now we have several Asian enclaves. They will try mightily to resist sunbelt-ification, but by the second or third generation, they’re all talking, thinking, and acting the same way. In some ways this is good, but in other ways it’s a little sad.
I wish there was a greater concern for bigger ideas and cultivating a distinct sense of identity and history, but if it comes at the cost and becoming stupid Marxists, I’ll take Sunbeltism every time.
It's been suggested to me before to write a book on the "New South." It's a possibility. Your North Texas suburb sounds the exact same as the place I grew up in Tennessee.
I just can't get over the feeling that anybody who spent their formative winters where I grew up in East Tennessee would have thought to call it part of the Sunbelt but I guess you're talking culture and not weather here.
It’s a blessing and a curse. In the Sunbelt, the People are inured against woke and Marxism because they are too focused on panem et circensis—but this is mostly an artifact of getting dumber, more ignorant, less literate, and more sedentary. Abstract ideas, including sublimated, ressentiment-driven moral crusades like wokeness, simply don’t appeal to these audiences much, because their inner lives and worldviews are too foggy to really grasp them. It’s Nietzsche’s last man as a culture, with the silver lining that it’s too lethargic for revolutionary leftism. Win some/lose some—at least the work ethic seems mostly there, so this human material may be usable in service of a grand project (space colonization?)
When I first got into politics, this was basically my hope for America. Broadly patriotic and not woke. Now that I’ve learned a lot, I think there will come a time where Sunbeltism will have to defend itself against woke. Some resentful weirdos will ultimately try to complain that it’s patriarchal or white supremacist
All these people will take the vax, state their pronouns, obey the coming "climate emergency" rules and march into their mass graves - because that's what normal people do.
I 100% believe that if there's going to be a significant IRL reactionary cultural movement in the United States, it's going to come from the Northeast or the Pacific Coast, and will likely draw its membership from those who were the most libtarded during Peak Woke. In Albion's Seed terms, the Puritan and Quaker personalities are perfectly suited to the moralism, elitism, and intellectualism that will animate it. The Cavaliers, as always, just want to have fun.
Is the bulk of sunbelt not a bit of a mix of the different Albion's Seed nations (as well as colonial Spanish, Latinos, and small influxes of other Europeans) due to it being settled comparatively late?
This article is mainly talking about Anglo-American folkways and a majority of that is Planter (with Borderer in the West). Spanish colonial culture was very Planter-like as well.
Yeah I'm a core sunbelter. When my college friends all started graduating and moving to other parts of the country, we couldn't believe how old and worn out other places were. We were used to new housing developments and strip malls. Even the riverwalk areas in many Sunbelt cities are new. People like to work hard then play hard. We have Total Frat Move to thanks for Sunbeltism.
Many elements of this culture exist in the American mountain west where I grew up, though it is *much* colder in the winter. Far less humid though, which enables a wider range of tolerable outdoor activities in peak summer, so some positive tradeoffs. Football and country music, but also somewhat distinctive Mormon characteristics, though this has given way a bit to bog standard Middle Americanism. These bigger towns/cities in Idaho and Utah and such are interesting because they would almost certainly look like the Midwest dying rust belt towns, except they are actually growing due to high out-of-state immigration and Mormons being a bit better at keeping the birth rates up. A sort of alternative history midwest where the great decline never happened and instead just saw steady population growth. There are a huge amount of California transplants post-covid, and in my hometown of Idaho Falls (which was founded originally as "Eagle Rock" by ex-confederate soldiers following the civil war).
I also see A LOT of "Dinergothism" whenever I go back home, including among many of my friends who I grew up with. It creates a strange sort of disjointed identity where I am not a sunbelter even though sunbelt Barstool Sports Americanism was popular all around me, but I am not quite a northeast urban puritan yuppie cosmopolitan either. Aesthetically I am more San Francisco/West Coast, but their politics are awful and the people of the sunbelt are certainly far nicer even if I don't share all of the aesthetic preferences.
I lived in the Boise area for eight years and I am very much in agreement with you. When people describe Idaho as part of the PNW I think MAYBE geographically but culturally no chance.
Well, there is no American culture, anymore. Ask a millennial what they're nostalgic for, and they'll give you a list of cereals and tv shows. America is an economic zone, solely.
I moved to Florida from Virginia, which I moved to from Maryland and further north still.
Virginia used to be a darling of the culture you talking about. Up until Obama is was the incredibly successful conservative suburb of DC. It remains the richest counties in the country, more than even Silicon Valley.
It's a hellscape. It doesn't take long after democrats are 51% of the vote to make thing sink fast.
My worry about the Sunbelt is that is sustained by older whites voting 2/3rd GOP. But fast forward the demographics of current young people a generation and I feel it will go the way of Virginia.
Not many better option, so I hear, and I like "the here and now." But I wonder if your culture can sustain.
The rest of the South has the same built-in Achilles heel that Virginia did: a 20-30% demographic that votes 95% blue.
Keep expanding the government/NGO payrolls, flooding in Latinos, sprinkle in some Indian enclaves and Haitian slave factory towns - and you've got the recipe to flip the region (which means the nation).
“Men are men and women are women here. Sunbelters stand for the Anthem and think America is the greatest country on Earth.”
They are, everywhere (regardless of how hard people will try to convince you otherwise). You should, along with removing your hat (hand over heart optional though). It is (at least by metrics of progress and prosperity).
A great piece of writing that certainly hits home 3 years into living in “the jewel of the New South”, Nashville, TN. I do wonder if there’s something in the appeal of Sunbeltism connected to people just being dead-ass-tired of the culture wars that politicians single handily seem to benefit from. A bland culture where people make good money, or at least feel they have a chance to make good money is a whole hell of a lot more broadly appealing than self loathing nihilism.
Sounds to me like this is just typical "American" culture. In my travels, Americans (and everyone outside the USA imagines Americans as white people) are typically tall, healthy-looking, and look like they spend time outside. Their personality is generally optimistic, friendly, and casual. They also have an "edge" in that even though they are generally civilized, they have listened to the most obscene rap and watched the most violent movies, did some drugs, and all the while masturbating to the most disgusting porn.
By age 20, they have encountered more degeneracy than any Chinese, Indian, or Arab will see before 40. But most of them don't turn into twisted weirdos - Americans have a way of compartmentalizing the world; of breaking associations which most foreigners depend on for survival.
I think a lot of this, for better or worse, is the result of the left whittling away at “white culture” for much of its political incorrectness (i.e Confederate flags, “casual racism” for lack of a more accurate term, evangelicalism, and anything more aggressively conservative and individualistic) and us (the South) being corporatized into something more accessible to most of the country and you’re left with something that is more accessible but also more bland but easy to integrate into. All you have to do now is like beer, football, and biscuits and you’re in whereas 25 years ago or even 5 years ago it was a different environment.
Honestly, this trend has been going on for 30 years now. Garth Brooks and the appeal of generic country in the 90s was a strong indicator. I honestly think we would've gotten to this point a lot sooner were it not for the fact that this cultural phenomenon was tied to Dubya, who was deeply unpopular with a lot of people now embracing sunbeltism (or would've been unpopular with them if they were alive at the time). I recognized its appeal over 20 years ago, despite vehemently disliking, and still disliking, Bush and his war. To this point, many such sunbelters who support Trump very much don't like Dubya, even if his campaign was exploiting such imagery 20 years ago. I think if the opponent to Bush and neoconservatism who emerged in the late 2000s had been more sunbelt presenting (Jon Edwards, for example) you would've seen the already apparent cultural momentum behind this phenomenon accelerate much sooner. Carrie Underwood was there before Taylor Swift or subsequently Ella Langley (Swift having discarded the sunbelt badge, perhaps not seeing its potential or because she actually is truly ideological, although it hasn't seemed to hurt her brand). Moreover, Underwood's voice and music was probably better than either of the other two.
But Edwards (who would've been a perfect left wing standard bearer for this mode of presentation) lost and Obama won. I think Obama froze American culture into a negroid centric mould that it would've likely outgrown much sooner, despite himself looking and acting in a way very dissimilar to his magical brethren. Trump winning, largely in reaction to Obama (in much the same way that Obama won largely in reaction to Dubya) represented the final crystallization of a cultural force that had already been heating and evaporating for a generation at that point. Woke politics, girl boss non sunbelt pop, TDS, 42 genders, and dressing like rainbow vomit all seem like part of a last desperate roadblock against this force, in much the same way that the button down culture of the 50s was a sort of cultural built in anticipation of the hippie flood which was coming. These rainbow reactionaries seem to have finally lost steam (a little), leaving the sunbelt Americans to come into their summer bloom and take full advantage of a cultural framework that has been spontaneously, quietly, but nonetheless forcefully assembling since back in the 90s. It started with Garth Brooks being a national act, gained legs through the shared experience of 9/11, rode out Dubya, Obama, became linked to Trump, resisted woke and has now emerged as the de facto white identity of the country. The Hegelian dialectic in real time. History in a Ford F-series eating zaxby's chicken fingerz in some country outfitter stretch denims listening to Ella Langley or some such.
There's a lot of perspicacity in what you wrote. What Scott Greer is calling "sunbeltism" is nothing new. This kind of autotuned Kid Rock rap/country culture of football and beer, and college kids on permanent spring break, has existed since at least the late '90s. I have always hated it. To me, it looks like nothing more or less than the postwar American Century in its last, degenerate throes. Like Fitzgerald's lost generation, it's a lot of fizz and noise that's destined to fade into nothingness.
Not necessarily from the transplants, but there was once (perhaps still is) a lot of homegrown sunbeltism in California (think Bakersfield, Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, Dwight Yoakam etc.)
I wonder if outside of the South this is just more of a Midwestern and Midwestern transplant to the East thing. Up here in New England I don't really see much if any of this "Sunbelt Southern" culture on display. Country music is widely mocked among the youth and doesn't seem nearly as popular as it was here in the 90s and 2000s, when it seemed like every other person was a Brad Paisley or Toby Keith fan. I don't know anyone who could name a college football team, and these days I seem to see a lot of kids in soccer jerseys, to the extent any of them care about professional sports at all. You can however (and have been able to for decades) occasionally see someone driving around in an old beat up pickup truck with a Confederate flag tied to it or flying one on a pole in their yard who will be ready to tell you all about how they are a "rebel" and their latest four-wheeling ride. Maybe all the ones here interested in the Sun Belt culture already moved to Florida.
This was good and could be extended into a book. Having grown up in North Texas, this was the culture: light, positive, and rather bland—what else would you expect from people who mostly live indoors? Even topography reinforces this. It’s hot and featureless.
And yes, it’s conservative, but mostly RINO conservative. Culture is not a priority. Suburban sprawl continues forever.
I think the infusion of immigrant communities is our main source of distinctiveness. Mainly Latino, but now we have several Asian enclaves. They will try mightily to resist sunbelt-ification, but by the second or third generation, they’re all talking, thinking, and acting the same way. In some ways this is good, but in other ways it’s a little sad.
I wish there was a greater concern for bigger ideas and cultivating a distinct sense of identity and history, but if it comes at the cost and becoming stupid Marxists, I’ll take Sunbeltism every time.
It's been suggested to me before to write a book on the "New South." It's a possibility. Your North Texas suburb sounds the exact same as the place I grew up in Tennessee.
I think of the term “New South” as taken. Bill Clinton, Ted Turner, “the city too busy to hate” etc.
Calling this “Sunbeltism” as a broader cultural category is well done.
The 90s Braves IN the city of Atlanta is The New South. The Braves moving to Cobb County in the 2010s is Sunbeltism.
Great way of putting it
Man, I can’t think of a better way to describe it.
I just can't get over the feeling that anybody who spent their formative winters where I grew up in East Tennessee would have thought to call it part of the Sunbelt but I guess you're talking culture and not weather here.
It’s a blessing and a curse. In the Sunbelt, the People are inured against woke and Marxism because they are too focused on panem et circensis—but this is mostly an artifact of getting dumber, more ignorant, less literate, and more sedentary. Abstract ideas, including sublimated, ressentiment-driven moral crusades like wokeness, simply don’t appeal to these audiences much, because their inner lives and worldviews are too foggy to really grasp them. It’s Nietzsche’s last man as a culture, with the silver lining that it’s too lethargic for revolutionary leftism. Win some/lose some—at least the work ethic seems mostly there, so this human material may be usable in service of a grand project (space colonization?)
"diversity, but infusion makes it distinct" oh man. This is just civic nationalism and Bush era years with Toby Keith. Things will never change.
When I first got into politics, this was basically my hope for America. Broadly patriotic and not woke. Now that I’ve learned a lot, I think there will come a time where Sunbeltism will have to defend itself against woke. Some resentful weirdos will ultimately try to complain that it’s patriarchal or white supremacist
Correct.
All these people will take the vax, state their pronouns, obey the coming "climate emergency" rules and march into their mass graves - because that's what normal people do.
In other words, petit-bourgeois hell. Sad.
Thought it was just me.
I 100% believe that if there's going to be a significant IRL reactionary cultural movement in the United States, it's going to come from the Northeast or the Pacific Coast, and will likely draw its membership from those who were the most libtarded during Peak Woke. In Albion's Seed terms, the Puritan and Quaker personalities are perfectly suited to the moralism, elitism, and intellectualism that will animate it. The Cavaliers, as always, just want to have fun.
Is the bulk of sunbelt not a bit of a mix of the different Albion's Seed nations (as well as colonial Spanish, Latinos, and small influxes of other Europeans) due to it being settled comparatively late?
This article is mainly talking about Anglo-American folkways and a majority of that is Planter (with Borderer in the West). Spanish colonial culture was very Planter-like as well.
It will be something like Dr. Jacobi ranting in his trailer ala 'Twin Peaks: The Return'.
Yeah I'm a core sunbelter. When my college friends all started graduating and moving to other parts of the country, we couldn't believe how old and worn out other places were. We were used to new housing developments and strip malls. Even the riverwalk areas in many Sunbelt cities are new. People like to work hard then play hard. We have Total Frat Move to thanks for Sunbeltism.
Many elements of this culture exist in the American mountain west where I grew up, though it is *much* colder in the winter. Far less humid though, which enables a wider range of tolerable outdoor activities in peak summer, so some positive tradeoffs. Football and country music, but also somewhat distinctive Mormon characteristics, though this has given way a bit to bog standard Middle Americanism. These bigger towns/cities in Idaho and Utah and such are interesting because they would almost certainly look like the Midwest dying rust belt towns, except they are actually growing due to high out-of-state immigration and Mormons being a bit better at keeping the birth rates up. A sort of alternative history midwest where the great decline never happened and instead just saw steady population growth. There are a huge amount of California transplants post-covid, and in my hometown of Idaho Falls (which was founded originally as "Eagle Rock" by ex-confederate soldiers following the civil war).
I also see A LOT of "Dinergothism" whenever I go back home, including among many of my friends who I grew up with. It creates a strange sort of disjointed identity where I am not a sunbelter even though sunbelt Barstool Sports Americanism was popular all around me, but I am not quite a northeast urban puritan yuppie cosmopolitan either. Aesthetically I am more San Francisco/West Coast, but their politics are awful and the people of the sunbelt are certainly far nicer even if I don't share all of the aesthetic preferences.
I lived in the Boise area for eight years and I am very much in agreement with you. When people describe Idaho as part of the PNW I think MAYBE geographically but culturally no chance.
Sounds a lot like Millenials are becoming the boomers of the lat 70s into 80s. Flat pleasant culture, money focused.
Well, there is no American culture, anymore. Ask a millennial what they're nostalgic for, and they'll give you a list of cereals and tv shows. America is an economic zone, solely.
Same same as boomers.
I moved to Florida from Virginia, which I moved to from Maryland and further north still.
Virginia used to be a darling of the culture you talking about. Up until Obama is was the incredibly successful conservative suburb of DC. It remains the richest counties in the country, more than even Silicon Valley.
It's a hellscape. It doesn't take long after democrats are 51% of the vote to make thing sink fast.
My worry about the Sunbelt is that is sustained by older whites voting 2/3rd GOP. But fast forward the demographics of current young people a generation and I feel it will go the way of Virginia.
Not many better option, so I hear, and I like "the here and now." But I wonder if your culture can sustain.
The rest of the South has the same built-in Achilles heel that Virginia did: a 20-30% demographic that votes 95% blue.
Keep expanding the government/NGO payrolls, flooding in Latinos, sprinkle in some Indian enclaves and Haitian slave factory towns - and you've got the recipe to flip the region (which means the nation).
Great column. Thanks
“Men are men and women are women here. Sunbelters stand for the Anthem and think America is the greatest country on Earth.”
They are, everywhere (regardless of how hard people will try to convince you otherwise). You should, along with removing your hat (hand over heart optional though). It is (at least by metrics of progress and prosperity).
A great piece of writing that certainly hits home 3 years into living in “the jewel of the New South”, Nashville, TN. I do wonder if there’s something in the appeal of Sunbeltism connected to people just being dead-ass-tired of the culture wars that politicians single handily seem to benefit from. A bland culture where people make good money, or at least feel they have a chance to make good money is a whole hell of a lot more broadly appealing than self loathing nihilism.
Thank you!
Sadly, pretty much everything you have written here is true and as a Southerner who traces his heritage to 1607 Jamestown, I absolutely hate it.
Sounds to me like this is just typical "American" culture. In my travels, Americans (and everyone outside the USA imagines Americans as white people) are typically tall, healthy-looking, and look like they spend time outside. Their personality is generally optimistic, friendly, and casual. They also have an "edge" in that even though they are generally civilized, they have listened to the most obscene rap and watched the most violent movies, did some drugs, and all the while masturbating to the most disgusting porn.
By age 20, they have encountered more degeneracy than any Chinese, Indian, or Arab will see before 40. But most of them don't turn into twisted weirdos - Americans have a way of compartmentalizing the world; of breaking associations which most foreigners depend on for survival.
I think a lot of this, for better or worse, is the result of the left whittling away at “white culture” for much of its political incorrectness (i.e Confederate flags, “casual racism” for lack of a more accurate term, evangelicalism, and anything more aggressively conservative and individualistic) and us (the South) being corporatized into something more accessible to most of the country and you’re left with something that is more accessible but also more bland but easy to integrate into. All you have to do now is like beer, football, and biscuits and you’re in whereas 25 years ago or even 5 years ago it was a different environment.
Don't worry, your nation will follow it, and whatever replaces you will resemble a mixture of Mumbai and Mexico City.
Okay
Honestly, this trend has been going on for 30 years now. Garth Brooks and the appeal of generic country in the 90s was a strong indicator. I honestly think we would've gotten to this point a lot sooner were it not for the fact that this cultural phenomenon was tied to Dubya, who was deeply unpopular with a lot of people now embracing sunbeltism (or would've been unpopular with them if they were alive at the time). I recognized its appeal over 20 years ago, despite vehemently disliking, and still disliking, Bush and his war. To this point, many such sunbelters who support Trump very much don't like Dubya, even if his campaign was exploiting such imagery 20 years ago. I think if the opponent to Bush and neoconservatism who emerged in the late 2000s had been more sunbelt presenting (Jon Edwards, for example) you would've seen the already apparent cultural momentum behind this phenomenon accelerate much sooner. Carrie Underwood was there before Taylor Swift or subsequently Ella Langley (Swift having discarded the sunbelt badge, perhaps not seeing its potential or because she actually is truly ideological, although it hasn't seemed to hurt her brand). Moreover, Underwood's voice and music was probably better than either of the other two.
But Edwards (who would've been a perfect left wing standard bearer for this mode of presentation) lost and Obama won. I think Obama froze American culture into a negroid centric mould that it would've likely outgrown much sooner, despite himself looking and acting in a way very dissimilar to his magical brethren. Trump winning, largely in reaction to Obama (in much the same way that Obama won largely in reaction to Dubya) represented the final crystallization of a cultural force that had already been heating and evaporating for a generation at that point. Woke politics, girl boss non sunbelt pop, TDS, 42 genders, and dressing like rainbow vomit all seem like part of a last desperate roadblock against this force, in much the same way that the button down culture of the 50s was a sort of cultural built in anticipation of the hippie flood which was coming. These rainbow reactionaries seem to have finally lost steam (a little), leaving the sunbelt Americans to come into their summer bloom and take full advantage of a cultural framework that has been spontaneously, quietly, but nonetheless forcefully assembling since back in the 90s. It started with Garth Brooks being a national act, gained legs through the shared experience of 9/11, rode out Dubya, Obama, became linked to Trump, resisted woke and has now emerged as the de facto white identity of the country. The Hegelian dialectic in real time. History in a Ford F-series eating zaxby's chicken fingerz in some country outfitter stretch denims listening to Ella Langley or some such.
There's a lot of perspicacity in what you wrote. What Scott Greer is calling "sunbeltism" is nothing new. This kind of autotuned Kid Rock rap/country culture of football and beer, and college kids on permanent spring break, has existed since at least the late '90s. I have always hated it. To me, it looks like nothing more or less than the postwar American Century in its last, degenerate throes. Like Fitzgerald's lost generation, it's a lot of fizz and noise that's destined to fade into nothingness.
I appreciate the compliment but I would say as an unwashed peasant, I've always kind of enjoyed it in a casual way.
Senbeltism also explains why Arizona takes californians and turns them into country loving megachurch attendees
Not necessarily from the transplants, but there was once (perhaps still is) a lot of homegrown sunbeltism in California (think Bakersfield, Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, Dwight Yoakam etc.)
I wonder if outside of the South this is just more of a Midwestern and Midwestern transplant to the East thing. Up here in New England I don't really see much if any of this "Sunbelt Southern" culture on display. Country music is widely mocked among the youth and doesn't seem nearly as popular as it was here in the 90s and 2000s, when it seemed like every other person was a Brad Paisley or Toby Keith fan. I don't know anyone who could name a college football team, and these days I seem to see a lot of kids in soccer jerseys, to the extent any of them care about professional sports at all. You can however (and have been able to for decades) occasionally see someone driving around in an old beat up pickup truck with a Confederate flag tied to it or flying one on a pole in their yard who will be ready to tell you all about how they are a "rebel" and their latest four-wheeling ride. Maybe all the ones here interested in the Sun Belt culture already moved to Florida.
New England has a very small population, so it doesnt matter if the Whites there reject the national white culture