Conversation

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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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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I tend to think more in terms of an archipelago of the United Cities of America. Little Rock has more in common with Seattle than it has with the rest of Arkansas, relatively speaking, and this repeats itself fractal-like down to the county seat level.
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But hinterland is destiny enough that these spooky entanglements are weaker overall than geographic contiguity. Geography is reasserting itself, despite surface appearances.
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Not so sure about that. If you want proof that Trumpland exists within physical sight of Boston, for example, go to a Patriots game sometime.
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Oh there’s plenty of population mixing, but the political geography, I submit, is far more shaped by top-down power structures than people admit. A globalist in Little Rock and a trumpie in Boston are both hostile aliens who have to self-ghettoize to survive.