Louisiana is a lot like the Rust Belt in the sense that people have been able to graduate with a high school degree for generations and with the right connectio

Louisiana is a lot like the Rust Belt in the sense that people have been able to graduate with a high school degree for generations and with the right connections, land a life-long job at a chemical plant paying good money with better-than-average benefits, mostly due to pension plans being baked into their benefits because they work for multinational corporations. They have been conditioned to believe that education is not important while being constantly exposed to casual racism and are thus heavily conservative... the large Catholic population in the southern part of the state has certainly played a part in moving in that direction given the Democratic Party's stance on women's rights. They are also highly sensitive to any issue that negatively affects the petrochemical industry. Local politicians have tried to introduce other types of business to the region, but who wants to go to an area where the heat is oppressive, the education system sucks, and you're a hurricane away from not having power or clean water for a month? Most people in that state are like most people in other states with respect to banal "exceptionalism." They believe that their culture and way of life is greater than that of other areas even though the average citizen is poorly educated.