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I would wager that if you sat down people from small, deep-red towns in California, New England, and Texas, they’d agree on much more than they disagreed. And I

I would wager that if you sat down people from small, deep-red towns in California, New England, and Texas, they’d agree on much more than they disagreed. And I’d bet you’d get similar results with city dwellers from each region. There are variations on, for instance, how likely people are to strike up a conversation with strangers in an elevator, but to me these are the more superficial differences.

quesera 3y ago
To use your example: I think you'd be correct for the superficial beginning of the conversation. But this is no different than saying "Metallica fans from ...", or "NASCAR fans from ...". Politics is no longer about what people think. It's a nationalized polemic sport. There are two teams, and an irrelevant number of pretenders. But if you ever got past the "what you think you think" and into the "why you think the things you think", or "how do you live that expresses the way you think" ... the variations would start to come out.
- emodendroket 3y ago
  Like what? I mean what do you think the variations are really going to be? People orient their entire value systems around their political affiliation.
  - quesera 3y ago
    People don't even understand their political affiliation. Viewing humans through that lens is reductive. I think we've figured out our disagreement here!
    - emodendroket 3y ago
      Viewing humans through a lens of regional characteristics is also reductive so, so long as you still think that's worthwhile, it's more a question of which reductive categorizations you think are meaningful.
      - quesera 3y ago
        I don't really understand your point. I'm arguing the case against dismissing regional variations. I don't mean to suggest that regions are the last stop on the differentiation train.
        emodendroket 3y ago
        I could easily take a plausible position that people within the same town have so much difference between them that trying to lump regional characteristics together is meaningless. Since you don’t, apparently you’re OK with some reduction.
        quesera 3y ago
        Of course. People are people, but Bob is Bob. There's more variation on the street I live on today, than between MA and CA taken as a whole. I'm not sure what I "don't" in your comment above, but clearly my intent is not clear, so I'll restate: (Parts of) MA and CA have a lot of similarities. Some of the places physically between them are very different. You may disagree. If so, you are surely measuring by a different metric than I am, or have not seen the places I've seen. But that's all I intended to say.
        emodendroket 3y ago
        It doesn't really seem like you've understood what I've said either, then: I'm saying is that there are essentially two American cultures, the urban one and the non-urban one, and these two parallel national cultures have almost entirely subsumed what were formerly much more varied regional ones. Anyway, you're being glib about how much I must not know about the various other states since CA and MA are "so similar" as if Los Angeles is just like Bakersfield or a California farm town, so it's no less facile.

quesera 3y ago

To use your example: I think you'd be correct for the superficial beginning of the conversation. But this is no different than saying "Metallica fans from ...", or "NASCAR fans from ...". Politics is no longer about what people think. It's a nationalized polemic sport. There are two teams, and an irrelevant number of pretenders. But if you ever got past the "what you think you think" and into the "why you think the things you think", or "how do you live that expresses the way you think" ... the variations would start to come out.

emodendroket 3y ago
Like what? I mean what do you think the variations are really going to be? People orient their entire value systems around their political affiliation.
- quesera 3y ago
  People don't even understand their political affiliation. Viewing humans through that lens is reductive. I think we've figured out our disagreement here!
  - emodendroket 3y ago
    Viewing humans through a lens of regional characteristics is also reductive so, so long as you still think that's worthwhile, it's more a question of which reductive categorizations you think are meaningful.
    - quesera 3y ago
      I don't really understand your point. I'm arguing the case against dismissing regional variations. I don't mean to suggest that regions are the last stop on the differentiation train.
      - emodendroket 3y ago
        I could easily take a plausible position that people within the same town have so much difference between them that trying to lump regional characteristics together is meaningless. Since you don’t, apparently you’re OK with some reduction.
        quesera 3y ago
        Of course. People are people, but Bob is Bob. There's more variation on the street I live on today, than between MA and CA taken as a whole. I'm not sure what I "don't" in your comment above, but clearly my intent is not clear, so I'll restate: (Parts of) MA and CA have a lot of similarities. Some of the places physically between them are very different. You may disagree. If so, you are surely measuring by a different metric than I am, or have not seen the places I've seen. But that's all I intended to say.
        emodendroket 3y ago
        It doesn't really seem like you've understood what I've said either, then: I'm saying is that there are essentially two American cultures, the urban one and the non-urban one, and these two parallel national cultures have almost entirely subsumed what were formerly much more varied regional ones. Anyway, you're being glib about how much I must not know about the various other states since CA and MA are "so similar" as if Los Angeles is just like Bakersfield or a California farm town, so it's no less facile.