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The main divide doesn't seem to be between states, but between urban and rural. If you look at a the map by county, I think it gives a decent picture: https://w

The main divide doesn't seem to be between states, but between urban and rural. If you look at a the map by county, I think it gives a decent picture: https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/graphics/2020/11/10/election-maps-2020-america-county-results-more-voters/6226197002/ https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/graphics/2020/11/10/electi... This is one from 2016 and is red-blue binary. It is perhaps the most illustrative: https://blueshift.io/election-2016-county-map.html https://blueshift.io/election-2016-county-map.html This makes peaceful resolution very difficult, as we're dealing with two groups who largely live apart from one another, with different geography, culture, and social mores. I think it's important to emphasize, there are a lot of people who genuinely believe that systemic voting irregularities influenced our last election, to the point of having changed the outcome, and don't view Joe Biden as having been legitimately elected. Furthermore, they believe that the courts, especially the Supreme Court, refused to even hear their case, and that Congress would in no way give their grievances with the process an open debate, before accepting results they viewed as fraudulent. This puts them into a position of desperation. The videos of people being arrested at the airport do not help: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxwJ5HXSzuA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxwJ5HXSzuA Given the geography. I expect to see red-hats (Trump people) going into the cities where the blue-hats (centrists) and the black-hats (Antifa/BLM) live, and then retreating into the rural areas, where supportive sheriffs are more likely to run interference against other law-enforcement agencies. To some extent, this is what we already saw at the Capitol Building, as well in places like Kenosha where people like Kyle Rittenhouse came from out-of town (albeit within reasonable driving distance) to the city where violence was occurring. EDIT: better link EDIT 2: The phrase "I've thought a lot about this" suggests that one has thought more of themselves thinking about the issue, than about the issue itself. As such It has been removed.

littlestymaar 6y ago
> The main divide doesn't seem to be between states, but between urban and rural. […] This makes peaceful resolution very difficult, as we're dealing with two groups who largely live apart from one another, with different geography, culture, and social mores. Randall Munroe did a twitter thread[0] on the election map he did for xkcd 2399[1] and he actually discusses about the bias in common election maps: in fact there is no such geographic split. Or, as he puts it: > There are more Trump voters in California than Texas, more Biden voters in Texas than NY, more Trump voters in NY than Ohio, more Biden voters in Ohio than Massachusetts, more Trump voters in Massachusetts than Mississippi, and more Biden voters in Mississippi than Vermont. [0]: https://twitter.com/xkcd/status/1339341149488746498 https://twitter.com/xkcd/status/1339341149488746498 [1]: https://xkcd.com/2399/ https://xkcd.com/2399/
- Gollapalli 6y ago
  I'm sorry, I really don't see how that map is particularly contradictory to my point. Swap "rural" for "exurban" or merely "less urban," if you wish, and take a look at the map you linked. Most of the time, The red dots surround the clusters of blue dots, and never vice versa. The clusters of blue dots are large cities, or "highly urban" areas, and the clusters of red dots surrounding them are outlying "less urban" areas.
  - littlestymaar 6y ago
    > Location within each state are approximate Don't take the map literally, the key ideas are in the Twitter thread. The main point of his thread, is that maps aren't good at saying where voters are and are fundamentally biased (“You can be a Biden voter in a Trump household in a Biden precinct in a Trump county in a Biden district in a Trump state in a Biden country. Then what color is your land? Dirt-colored, I guess! Not only does land not vote, it doesn’t even have a preference.”). He made his map as a counterpoint to nationwide maps, but he could have made the same map at the state, or even the district level: there are trumps voter in the middle of San Francisco and Bidden voters in the middle of nowhere in rural California. In fact, there are more Trump voters in LA alone than in 80% of the red areas in nationwide maps.
darepublic 6y ago
We need leadership that takes all this into account and moves toward a fair reconciliation. But I'm not optimistic
- api 6y ago
  It seems like neither side actually wants that.
  - Pfhreak 6y ago
    Or all sides do, but differ on their definitions of fair.
  - darepublic 6y ago
    Ya certain actors on both sides don't want it. But the political parties are playing into that. Which makes sense, but doesn't bode well imo
toyg 6y ago
I reckon electoral maps are fundamentally useless when most districts are gerrymandered to the wazoo. They also do not reflect movements that are fundamentally leninist in organization, where a small cohesive nucleus of activists defines the agenda and directs action. Without a Fox News stoking and directing anger, there is no "red rage", and Fox people are urban people. Without someone running 4chan, there is no Anon/QAnon, and the likes of 4chan are run by urban geeks. Trump always defined himself as a proud NewYorker. And so on and so forth. What is true is that nowadays people can live in socially-isolated bubbles that do not communicate with other bubbles. This is not a function of geographical location, though, but hyper-personalized media consumption. It happened already in the 70s on the left, for example, where people who only read "alternative" media could not understand how their points of view where not as hegemonic as they thought. Now it's just spread to everyone thanks to the web: at some point you'll gravitate to a media bubble and probably stay there forever.
- Gollapalli 6y ago
  >I reckon electoral maps are fundamentally useless when most districts are gerrymandered to the wazoo. Littlestymear linked a map in another reply to my comment that seems to break it down purely by population in clusters of 250,000: https://xkcd.com/2399/ https://xkcd.com/2399/ That map still suggests that clusters of blue in highly urban areas are surrounded by clusters of red in "less urban" areas, and never the opposite. Rural, or less urban environments have different cultures than highly urban environments, and this is readily observable. >They also do not reflect movements that are fundamentally leninist in organization, where a small cohesive nucleus of activists defines the agenda and directs action. I'm afraid I'm not sure what you mean by this. Please be more explicit. >Without a Fox News stoking and directing anger, there is no "red rage", and Fox people are urban people. This is a misconception. One blames the media for the information purveyed rather than the sorts of people amenable to Fox's viewpoint in their news. If there was prima facie no distinction between those who adore Pres. Trump, and those who despise him, prior to their exposure to Fox News, then this might be a tenable position, but given that there are two different demographics, both of which have access to Fox News and yet react distinctly differently to it, tells us that there are other factors at play. >What is true is that nowadays people can live in socially-isolated bubbles that do not communicate with other bubbles. This is not a function of geographical location, though, but hyper-personalized media consumption. And yet geography seems to be at play in which media bubble you end up in, as do a number of other factors. Perhaps the media bubbles are as much a function of existing divisions as the exacerbated divisions are of the bubbles?
api 6y ago
I think the real fault line may be the same as the civil war, but it's no longer segregated by a large scale geographic border. The conflict is between the agrarian vision of America and the industrial/cosmopolitan vision of America. Agrarian: traditional, religious, rigid social roles, rigid hierarchies determined by gender/race/etc., suspicion of change, and fiscally conservative with a suspicion of debt or loose monetary policy. Industrial/cosmopolitan: fluid, either non-religious or liberal religion, fluid social roles, hierarchies only as-needed (e.g. corporate hierarchies that are opt-out), welcoming to rapid change, and fiscally liberal with a pragmatic attitude toward things like monetary policy and debt. The wrinkle in this model is that the top of the hierarchy of "red America" seems to be located in urban centers. Trump is from New York. Most 4chan /pol users are in cities. The people operating Fox News and other further-right news sources almost all live in cities. So it's sort of like you have this minority of urban America either sympathizing with or puppeteering a rural revolt against modernity. Of course I wonder if the civil war was different. Banks, governments, and major property owners in urban areas profited a lot more from slavery than poor and middle class farmers and skilled laborers in the South. Quite a lot of the profit from slavery ended up in New York, Boston, DC, and even London. Maybe part of the answer to this is for rural Americans to turn off Fox News and OAN and the /pol orbit and all the rest of that "ruralist propaganda from urbanites" and figure out what they really think and articulate it themselves. What emerges may well be something toward which urban "elites" could be more sympathetic.
- ed25519FUUU 6y ago
  It’s interesting to me you left out class in your comparison of red and blue.
  - api 6y ago
    I didn't mention class because it doesn't break cleanly along class lines. Look at the capitol stormers... several were CEOs of medium sized companies or middle to upper middle class skilled workers. It wasn't a bunch of poor folks.

littlestymaar 6y ago

> The main divide doesn't seem to be between states, but between urban and rural. […] This makes peaceful resolution very difficult, as we're dealing with two groups who largely live apart from one another, with different geography, culture, and social mores. Randall Munroe did a twitter thread[0] on the election map he did for xkcd 2399[1] and he actually discusses about the bias in common election maps: in fact there is no such geographic split. Or, as he puts it: > There are more Trump voters in California than Texas, more Biden voters in Texas than NY, more Trump voters in NY than Ohio, more Biden voters in Ohio than Massachusetts, more Trump voters in Massachusetts than Mississippi, and more Biden voters in Mississippi than Vermont. [0]: https://twitter.com/xkcd/status/1339341149488746498 https://twitter.com/xkcd/status/1339341149488746498 [1]: https://xkcd.com/2399/ https://xkcd.com/2399/

Gollapalli 6y ago
I'm sorry, I really don't see how that map is particularly contradictory to my point. Swap "rural" for "exurban" or merely "less urban," if you wish, and take a look at the map you linked. Most of the time, The red dots surround the clusters of blue dots, and never vice versa. The clusters of blue dots are large cities, or "highly urban" areas, and the clusters of red dots surrounding them are outlying "less urban" areas.
- littlestymaar 6y ago
  > Location within each state are approximate Don't take the map literally, the key ideas are in the Twitter thread. The main point of his thread, is that maps aren't good at saying where voters are and are fundamentally biased (“You can be a Biden voter in a Trump household in a Biden precinct in a Trump county in a Biden district in a Trump state in a Biden country. Then what color is your land? Dirt-colored, I guess! Not only does land not vote, it doesn’t even have a preference.”). He made his map as a counterpoint to nationwide maps, but he could have made the same map at the state, or even the district level: there are trumps voter in the middle of San Francisco and Bidden voters in the middle of nowhere in rural California. In fact, there are more Trump voters in LA alone than in 80% of the red areas in nationwide maps.

darepublic 6y ago

We need leadership that takes all this into account and moves toward a fair reconciliation. But I'm not optimistic

api 6y ago
It seems like neither side actually wants that.
- Pfhreak 6y ago
  Or all sides do, but differ on their definitions of fair.
- darepublic 6y ago
  Ya certain actors on both sides don't want it. But the political parties are playing into that. Which makes sense, but doesn't bode well imo

toyg 6y ago

I reckon electoral maps are fundamentally useless when most districts are gerrymandered to the wazoo. They also do not reflect movements that are fundamentally leninist in organization, where a small cohesive nucleus of activists defines the agenda and directs action. Without a Fox News stoking and directing anger, there is no "red rage", and Fox people are urban people. Without someone running 4chan, there is no Anon/QAnon, and the likes of 4chan are run by urban geeks. Trump always defined himself as a proud NewYorker. And so on and so forth. What is true is that nowadays people can live in socially-isolated bubbles that do not communicate with other bubbles. This is not a function of geographical location, though, but hyper-personalized media consumption. It happened already in the 70s on the left, for example, where people who only read "alternative" media could not understand how their points of view where not as hegemonic as they thought. Now it's just spread to everyone thanks to the web: at some point you'll gravitate to a media bubble and probably stay there forever.

Gollapalli 6y ago
>I reckon electoral maps are fundamentally useless when most districts are gerrymandered to the wazoo. Littlestymear linked a map in another reply to my comment that seems to break it down purely by population in clusters of 250,000: https://xkcd.com/2399/ https://xkcd.com/2399/ That map still suggests that clusters of blue in highly urban areas are surrounded by clusters of red in "less urban" areas, and never the opposite. Rural, or less urban environments have different cultures than highly urban environments, and this is readily observable. >They also do not reflect movements that are fundamentally leninist in organization, where a small cohesive nucleus of activists defines the agenda and directs action. I'm afraid I'm not sure what you mean by this. Please be more explicit. >Without a Fox News stoking and directing anger, there is no "red rage", and Fox people are urban people. This is a misconception. One blames the media for the information purveyed rather than the sorts of people amenable to Fox's viewpoint in their news. If there was prima facie no distinction between those who adore Pres. Trump, and those who despise him, prior to their exposure to Fox News, then this might be a tenable position, but given that there are two different demographics, both of which have access to Fox News and yet react distinctly differently to it, tells us that there are other factors at play. >What is true is that nowadays people can live in socially-isolated bubbles that do not communicate with other bubbles. This is not a function of geographical location, though, but hyper-personalized media consumption. And yet geography seems to be at play in which media bubble you end up in, as do a number of other factors. Perhaps the media bubbles are as much a function of existing divisions as the exacerbated divisions are of the bubbles?

api 6y ago

I think the real fault line may be the same as the civil war, but it's no longer segregated by a large scale geographic border. The conflict is between the agrarian vision of America and the industrial/cosmopolitan vision of America. Agrarian: traditional, religious, rigid social roles, rigid hierarchies determined by gender/race/etc., suspicion of change, and fiscally conservative with a suspicion of debt or loose monetary policy. Industrial/cosmopolitan: fluid, either non-religious or liberal religion, fluid social roles, hierarchies only as-needed (e.g. corporate hierarchies that are opt-out), welcoming to rapid change, and fiscally liberal with a pragmatic attitude toward things like monetary policy and debt. The wrinkle in this model is that the top of the hierarchy of "red America" seems to be located in urban centers. Trump is from New York. Most 4chan /pol users are in cities. The people operating Fox News and other further-right news sources almost all live in cities. So it's sort of like you have this minority of urban America either sympathizing with or puppeteering a rural revolt against modernity. Of course I wonder if the civil war was different. Banks, governments, and major property owners in urban areas profited a lot more from slavery than poor and middle class farmers and skilled laborers in the South. Quite a lot of the profit from slavery ended up in New York, Boston, DC, and even London. Maybe part of the answer to this is for rural Americans to turn off Fox News and OAN and the /pol orbit and all the rest of that "ruralist propaganda from urbanites" and figure out what they really think and articulate it themselves. What emerges may well be something toward which urban "elites" could be more sympathetic.

ed25519FUUU 6y ago
It’s interesting to me you left out class in your comparison of red and blue.
- api 6y ago
  I didn't mention class because it doesn't break cleanly along class lines. Look at the capitol stormers... several were CEOs of medium sized companies or middle to upper middle class skilled workers. It wasn't a bunch of poor folks.