In fact, he sounds like a lot of Russian vloggers before there was that one thing that pushed them over the edge and sent them out of Russia, most say for good.

It's easy to get discouraged when you're surrounded by people who believe in utter crap and have never questioned it. It's horrific when they realize you don't believe in that utter crap, they tend to close ranks pretty quickly, even if they've found out quite by accident (like having mail from the Democratic Party delivered to them by mistake). Believing in utter crap seems to require consensus, and people outside that consensus get shunned.

Can red states recover? Some of them can and will. Others, like most of Dixie, are doomed to wallow in ignorance, spite, and fear, that's how their ruling class has kept control, pretty much since the turn of the last century.