It's really a result of the US being so heterogeneous. One side's status quo is the other side's in-progress radical reinvention. The pendulum is always on the

It's really a result of the US being so heterogeneous. One side's status quo is the other side's in-progress radical reinvention. The pendulum is always on the move. You have to take the average position on a longer time scale to figure out where the country stands.