My city is an echo chamber. Ithaca, NY is quite liberal, although once you drive 20 minutes in any direction, rural upstate New York is as conservative as Alaba

My city is an echo chamber. Ithaca, NY is quite liberal, although once you drive 20 minutes in any direction, rural upstate New York is as conservative as Alabama. And yet our district's representative is a Tea Party schmuck - who pays absolutely no attention at all to "the extreme Ithaca liberals" - because of gerrymandering. So given that, it's not unreasonable to think that the people I meet and befriend in this city also share liberal views, even while entire communities around Ithaca have completely different beliefs. Sometimes it scares me how politicized everything is becoming. Just the perception of being "the wrong kind" of voter could deter liberals from moving to the south to get away from cold winters, while conservatives would imagine themselves having trouble fitting in in (liberal) economic powerhouses like San Francisco. I just want the mechanisms of society to function efficiently, and for people to be able to disagree with each other's political opinions without souring everything else.