Its nice here, I spent more than 30yrs in the big cities of tx......You can find an article to say just about what ever you want these days.....But make no mistake this was a true blue solid as a rock democratic state when I was a kid.....It changed when Obama said he get rid of the coal mines (a lot of our coal goes to making steel btw)....Then when the state turned against him people accused the state of being racist because he was black.........Well that went over like a lead balloon....
Globalization and the 'free trade agreements hit the state pretty hard to Ice the cake.....As far as religion goes, yes, there's a church on every corner..But you'd never hear a word out of anyone about it, no one discusses religion.....