Frankfort, the capital of KY, feels like a city from 1950. Anachronistic and a bit awkward considering Lexington and Louisville are generally well regarded, enjoyable cities. KY is lacking a lot of modern feel, the houses are not old, most is stick build or manufactured. Lots of open area with grass and trees. The Ohio river valley is naturally beautiful, but marred by the way people choose to live there. Every time I go to KY I feel like Ive gone back in time 70 years.

As far as your prejudice goes, youve got to get off the internet, friend. The people there have never been anything but friendly and welcoming. Not in the weird “southern hospitality” way but as regular people you run into every day.

I moved to Kentucky from out west seven years ago. I think a lot of the problems that plague Kentucky are the same problems that plague many other American states: inequality, limited economic opportunities for many, poor education, urban and rural divide, etc.

I would say that many Kentuckians don't value education enough. It just doesn't seem to be a big priority and I think that's a cultural thing. And it's not just that they don't put a high enough priority on education, it's as though many Kentuckians seem to view being uneducated and ignorant as some kind of virtue and they wear their ignorance like a badge of honor.

I think it might be a consequence of living under very strong class divisions for a very long time. For most of history education has been available exclusively to the upper classes, with limited or no access to the working classes or the poor. I think such class divisions have been common throughout Kentucky's history. That's probably why right wing libertarians are so common here. If you keep telling people that they are of a lower class that is less deserving of things like a quality education, eventually they'll come to believe it.

But I don't think any of this is unique or exclusive to Kentucky. This is common in many US states, especially those with a relatively large rural population.

I generally judge a place by the kind of politicians that they elect.

So does the rest of the world.

Bernie Sanders is a senator from Vermont, so Maine had nothing to do with electing him. Kentucky also elected Andy Beshear as governor, who, on the scale of American politicians, seems alright.

I've also never been to Kentucky.

You're painting with broad brushes, and it's causing you to miss out on a lot of the world. For the sake of argument, let's say you're right, and every single person who voted for Trump is evil. 704,043 people in Kentucky voted for Harris. 1,337,494 voted for Trump. The total population of Kentucky is about 4.6 million. That means that a minimum of 700k people, and more realistically millions of people in Kentucky don't share the viewpoint that you're painting Kentucky with.

If you go to the cities like Lexington or Louisville, you'll find areas that are actually quite left wing. Also- the governor of Kentucky, Andy Beshear, is a pro-union anti-trump Democrat, who supports funding public schools, expanded Medicaid, and believes healthcare is a human right. He's also vetoed multiple bills in order to protect trans Americans. Yet in Kentucky he has a 65% approval rating.

Im sure this dichotomy is confusing. And yeah... People are complex and flawed. They vote against their own interests, they fall for propaganda, they ignore the plights of others when they shouldn't. But hopefully you can also look for the good in people. When you dismissed a whole state worth of people because of an election decided by only slightly more than a quarter of it's population, you're limiting yourself.

I may be wrong, but your perspective makes me think you're young. Try to travel and meet people, listen and learn about their experiences and perspective. (I know traveling is expensive, so this is and always will be a best-effort endeavor). You'll learn about the wide spectrum of human perspectives. People will have these awful and hateful opinions mixed in with truly humble kind and caring ones. They'll be walking hypocrites, selfish and yet impossibly kind. But you'll also see that people are significantly more nuanced and less hateful than the media portrays.

I've never been to Kentucky, or Maine. I wouldn't mind visiting either, but I don't think I would want to stay.

Maine seems like the clear winner, but that's mostly because I read Stephen King and New England sounds like a nice temperate place to live.

My only real view of Kentucky was through Justified, a show about a federal agent who must return to his home town (or county?) of Harlan to fight drug lords... and stuff. Great show. Mostly because of Timothy Olyphant (the agent) and Walton Goggins (the main drug lord). And, not to spoil the ending, but they dug coal together (literally the last line of the series is "we dug coal together"). So it's a coal mining area.

As for KFC, I remember that being a big deal a long time ago. I don't know if "they" invented KFC, but "they" prevented anyone from using Kentucky in their name, so what was once known as "Kentucky Fried Chicken" became known simply as "KFC". It wasn't just the initials, they were forced to take "Kentucky" out of their name. That changed recently, and you might have seen "Kentucky Fried Chicken" recently, but a lot of them are still just KFC. Also, did you know that KFC is a Japanese tradition... on Christmas? Japan is not a predominantly Christian nation, so Christmas is not the big deal there that it is in the west; however, enough Christian missionaries have visited Japan that Christianity does have a foothold there, and I do believe Christmas is a national holiday there. (Not sure on the details of that.) On Christmas, a lot of Japanese people like to go eat salty American chicken... I guess. Another fun fact, Japan also has Burger King and Pizza Hut, and they both do stuff that would never fly in the west.