"It's got a curse on it!!" "What, Provo?"

I was disturbed and not all that surprised to find out that I previously lived in and still work in the most conservative city (over 100,000) in the United States. Provo, Utah was ranked number one in a recent study on the political leanings of American cities. Detroit, oddly, is the most liberal. It surmises a direct correlation found by the study on African American population density and political leaning. Liberal cities have the highest number of black residents, and the conservative . . . well, this photo pretty much sums up Provo. Residents often speak of an invisible 'bubble' over the valley, curiously known as Happy Valley (those sky-high anti-depressant use numbers help, I'm sure). The Conservative sway is easily evident, as many Utahn's do exactly as they are expected to do and vote consistently for Republicans, making it the 'reddest' state in the Union.
The encapsulated lifestyle of this city, for social and geographical reasons, has kept it a haven for white, conservative Christians and maintains the school of thought from being easily altered by, say, unbiased information, reason, science and partisanship. There are still Democrats and Independents in Provo, they just rarely make themselves known, and together number about 14%.
At the center of this town is the Brigham Young University, the most sober (and annoying) university in the country, and the third most conservative, above two military academies and the College of the Ozarks. The 'zoobies' follow an indoctrinating religion, social life, and educational forum where they must follow an Honor Code (unless they're really good at sports) and often go only for the purpose of finding a proper spouse.
After living in this valley for nearly two decades, I have seen every shade and color of hypocrisy, cheating, dishonesty, pride, horrendous judgement and every other form of social disease and neurosis there is, all from the good citizens of this Righteous Valley. Why am I still here? I ask myself that every once in a while. I still have my family here and several good, die-for-them friends. And honestly, there are a lot of smokin' hot babes in the UC. Too bad most of them are relious or religious hypocrites.