Yes, the record laws have an influence on what the rest of us see. But all those other factors push it to a grand peak.

The fact that the old folks from this country congregate down south because they get cold when they get old left vast areas underfunded for anything but old folks. But that continuous surge of old folks totally pushes their demographics to old people forever. So you got the crazy sunburnt mullet crowd ( who act as cheap labor) combined with the old folks waiting for God crowd.

Then there's the total tourist/ carnival steal from the tourist outsider attitude. Every idiot that Disney attracts is a possibility to feed into the condo timeshare industry. Some moron almost guaranteed to come back and throw money into the region once a year.

Yes I know looking out from the fish tank that the bottom of the fish tank is a lot dirtier than the top of the fish tank. You looking on the outside the fish tank just says that fish tank is pretty goddamn filthy. I can't argue with it, I can just say my little piece of the fish tank looks very nice from here.

2 hours from here not so much. Depending where on your border you are, you could be less than 2 hours from Russia. At a very nice location that could disappear in one a****** fit of temper. I'd much rather be here.

Also, I just realized Florida population is about four times that of Finland. With a shitload of immigration from both south and north. Heavy immigrant poor population with very little political power. Heavy northerners trying to get out of the cold which have most of the money. Old folks with money drive policy. And we have a large country of choice to go towards or away from. I made damn sure I wasn't moving south ever. I don't care how cold I get, I won't live in Pennsyltucky and I won't live in Florida. So as far as I'm concerned, I'm happy to have an old folks/ crazy person migration target far away from me.

On the other other hand, you have the least amount of variation in your demographics than any other country I've ever noticed. It seems your political parties split the country five ways pretty evenly. You guys don't agree on much. Just that we suck for the moment. We really sucked under Trump. Did we suck during Obama?

Which based on our interaction I have to agree you're up on the top 10 that I've interacted with.

But again, I really don't consider this country a single entity. The vast majority of people who live here do not consider this country a single entity. We have the useful states and the flyover states. I agree that there are huge swaths of this country filled with morons. I'm sorry for that but I won't take responsibility for those morons.

I grew up with that attitude and it's been confirmed again and again as an adult. I'm sorry the rest of the world sees those people as representative of our country, but I get the point.

I watch the rest of the world follow this level of stupidity in a few countries and I'm blown away that people fall for it again and again, but then I realize that most people are stupid.

The Italians just did it again. The Brazilians are on their way. What the fuck is going on here?

I used to be in a purple region. My vote counted and half the people hated my guts. I got out of the purple region and went to a bit more blue. I can do that in a single country.

We are huge. We are pushing towards blue but the reds will be happy to slice our legs out from under us. They don't give a s*** about democracy. And based on what I've seen about people in general, I'm not sure I do either. Our Senate representation method is insane based on population counts. But that was the deal with the devil to get them to join initially. Every single state is an independent country from the state representative point of view.