Conversation

I never thought of it this way before but red/blue America being approximately an urban+coastal vs suburban+interior spatial thing is a continent scale Schelling sort. The classic version is hyperlocal scale.
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The classic is race as the sorting variable, which is very visible, but red/blue requires cultural symbols to work. Leave the pickups-and-flags areas for the volvos-and-sushi areas. And you have to move much farther not just next neighborhood over.
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Truly interesting areas, typically ones in the Sunbelt undergoing rapid growth, have much closer flag-to-sushi distance. Echoes early patterns of N Am settlement, which have been massively reframed in past 30 years or so by historians. Fascinating. Cf Weber's The Mexican Frontier
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If there were to be another US civil war, and neither side happened to have government (or gun’mint, as the case may be) uniforms, it’d be a war of REI vs. Cabella’s.