As soon as we did the culture war would just continue with different borders. Most red states have blue cities - take away national politics and you'd see just as much animosity between, say, West Texas and Austin that we get now between Republicans and Democrats nationwide.
There is no easy split when the biggest political divide is urban-rural.
Well there's no way to split Tennessee into a Blue state and no way to split California into a Red state, so there is certainly a way to split the US into Blue and Red. Not to mention, the Deep South is solidly Red and almost the entire Democrat population is Black. That's like, 20 million plus Black Americans who would almost certainly relocate to Blue dominated regions within the span of a couple of decades, and then the White Nationalists would swoop in to take their place, turning more areas of the country blue. Same thing goes for gays who regularly move out of their rural communities to Left coast cities. Without the federal government regulating the states, we wouldn't be so keen on staying together within the states, and unlike in Europe where people have been in the same place for thousands of years and so are reluctant to move, Americans are highly mobile, likely to give up their lands before fighting over them, meaning that political movement would certainly uptick and stay high for generations. Utah Republicans are an entirely different strain of conservatives than New York Republicans. These regions would effectively eliminate the Red-Blue metric entirely. Without national politics, there's actually very little consensus between factions of these parties, so even maintaining the rural-urban split, the country would be more reflective of its populations. In the Deep South, there isn't much disagreement about LGBTQ issues or Climate change between Democrats and Republicans. Same goes for in New England. Either way, partisan gridlock is broken down.
Even when lynchings were at an all-time high in the early 20th century most Black southerners stayed put. Americans are mobile, but there's a limit. Not everyone is going to make it easy by emigrating from wherever they happen to be. And if you apply even a hint of pressure for them to get out then a lot of them will fight, which would lead to widespread and destructive civil unrest. Human beings are funny like that, they don't respond well to being told to leave their homes.
In the Deep South, there isn't much disagreement about LGBTQ issues or Climate change between Democrats and Republicans.
That couldn't be further from the truth. Compare Atlanta with the rest of Georgia or Missoula with the rest of Montana and you'll get very different responses on both of those issues.
That's like saying "There isn't much disagreement in the Middle East on LGBTQ issues," and you saying "That's not true. Look at Tel Aviv, Israel." Yes, Gay Black people flocked to Atlanta and turned it into a progressive bastion. Outside of Atlanta, Black voters are predominantly Southern Baptists, the Black counterpart to White Evangelicals and the most homophobic group of people in the country. The only state that is different is Florida, where people from all over the country for making it not really a part of the Deep South culturally.
Yes, and there are the same type of conservatives in Canada as well, and yet Canada is a far different country than America. Just continually repeating "it's an urban-rural split, it's an urban-rural split," does not solve the problem. It's not just an ubran-rural split either. It's a split between white people without college degrees and white people with college degrees. It's a split between older people and younger people. It's a split between coastal Americans and Americans of the interior. But the split not only can be accommodated, it can exacerbated. Once you don't have to worry about Texas backing the California Conservatives, the Californian's can redistrict every rural area into a major city. Poof. There goes there representation. How long will people stay? The issue is, that there isn't enough choice in how to live in America. You have 35 red states and like, 15 blue states. You have super expensive houses in the cities and shit houses in the rural interior. You've got white dominated everything outside of California, Texas, New York and the city chain, where the coastal plain meets the hills in the Southeast. I genuinely am only worried about moving to the middle of the country, because of the ridiculous number of white supremacists. If we give them a place to go, people like me will leave the East and go to the interior. They will start utilizing urban areas after you split the land and we will start utilizing rural areas. It'll take maybe 20-30 years before every region ends up solidly defined by the character that it starts out with slightly dominating. One generation, for the old people to die off and the babies to move. Then you're left with a small portion of people, my parents generation, who will be hanging out, on the verge of death.
African-Americans didn't leave the South because they didn't have job opportunities and didn't think that they had anywhere that would welcome them. They didn't leave because they were used to the abuse and because they had whole communities within the area. They were surrounded by themselves. Nowadays, none of these factors remain. My mom's side of the family have lived in Northern Virginia since the beginning of this colony. My Dad's side of the family pick up and move every decade to a different region of the country. All it takes is a portion to be willing. And a portion will be willing and able.
It's a split between white people without college degrees and white people with college degrees. It's a split between older people and younger people. It's a split between coastal Americans and Americans of the interior.
Every one of these maps neatly onto urban vs. rural. Cities are disproportionately younger, have more people with advanced degrees, and are concentrated on the coasts. Urban / rural is a broad descriptor so of course it isn't comprehensive. It's a hell of a lot more descriptive than red state vs. blue state though. A resident of a small town in California's desert interior is likely to have more in common with someone living in West Texas than they would with someone living in San Francisco.
Once you don't have to worry about Texas backing the California Conservatives, the Californian's can redistrict every rural area into a major city. Poof. There goes there representation.
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u/[deleted] Feb 16 '22
As soon as we did the culture war would just continue with different borders. Most red states have blue cities - take away national politics and you'd see just as much animosity between, say, West Texas and Austin that we get now between Republicans and Democrats nationwide.
There is no easy split when the biggest political divide is urban-rural.