2021 US map:
Nation of Tech, based in SV, branch in Austin
Acela Nation, based in NY-DC-Boston, branches in most univ towns
Reaction Nation, based in Florida
Hillbilly Elegy Nation, based in Midwest
Drought Nation, Colorado river basin
Globalist Church city-state, Seattle
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Replying to
The only thing these nations share is a military and a fiscal/monetary system. Otherwise they’re now more divergent as Europe. Even language isn’t as shared as it seems, despite mutual intelligibility. Acela-speak, Trump-speak, and Tech-speak are meta-English dialects.
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Got here via attempts to identify cities in the US that are neutral and couldn’t think of any.
Some conclusions surprised me. Like Seattle is not part of SV, just a big supplier. SV’s only true outpost is Austin (I haven’t been to Boulder since 2003 but I think it’s more Acela)
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I don’t think the fire zone constitutes a nation. They share a problem but not other interests.
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Replying to @vgr
The Land of Fire & Smoke (entire West Coast)
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Seattle, I’m convinced, is unique. It is shaped by fishing, shipping, Boeing, Microsoft, Starbucks, Amazon into something that really has strong globalist DNA but not a natural extension of SV despite the big overlap.
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PNW is more ideologically distinct as a region than people realize. It’s not part of a California superset really.
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And SoCal and NorCal are at least as far apart as Acela and Midwest.
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LA has more in common with Vegas and Phoenix than with SF.
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One reason “where to move” decisions are so hard is that moving within one of these nations feels easy, but across their boundaries is now horrendously hard.
I’ve lived in hillbilly, Acela, SV (Austin), Seattle, and drought nation. Only nations haven’t lived in is Reaction.
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The rise of Miami as a weird new candidate, I suspect, has a lot to do with the reactionary turn in SV coupled with a desire to forge an alliance between Anglo and Latino (Cuban-Venezuelan) reactionary strains.
Austin is how Acelans move to SV.
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Florida as a “swing state” is merely a historic confusion that’s been sorted out now.
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There are certainly pockets that are somewhat more neutral based on cultural borderlands position (low correlation to geographic geometry), but the mop-up is surprisingly complete.
Neutral zones are either sparsely populated, rich, or both. Utah, Idaho, Wyoming for eg.
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Red and Blue are uneasy and unstable coalitions across these nations.
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