Victor Davis Hanson // National Review
Red- and blue-state America was already divided before the coronavirus epidemic hit. Globalization had enriched the East Coast and West Coast corridors but hollowed out much in between.
The traditional values of small towns and rural counties were increasingly at odds with postmodern lifestyles in the cities.
There were, of course, traditionalists in blue states. And lots of progressives live in red states. But people increasingly self-segregate to where they feel at home and where politics, jobs, and culture reflect their tastes.
The ensuing left/right, liberal/conservative, Democrat/Republican divide not only intensified in the 21st century, it also took on a dangerous geographical separatism.
The coasts vs. the interior reflects two Americas — often in a manner similar to the old Mason–Dixon line that geographically split the U.S. for roughly a century.
Liberals scoff at the deplorables and irredeemables for embracing an ossified, unchanging 18th-century Constitution. The red-staters supposedly cling to their weird, dangerous habits such as owning guns and opposing abortion, while adhering to paleolithic ideas of small government, secure borders, and don’t-tread-on-me individualism.
Discussion (3)
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As a life long resident of cow country in the American west with failed sojourns into policing in LA and academia at a large university, VDH’s essay was more optimistic than what I believe is the reality confronting this once great nation. Blue staters, are by and large, no longer our countrymen with a difference of opinion as in pre-1980s decades. They have become domestic enemies and all that that implies. When tyranny becomes law. Rebellion becomes duty.
Blue states expect handouts from Democrats running up the national credit card for fat union salaries and pensions that overwhelmingly donate union money to the party; "progressive" community organizations and the "progressive" cause of the month.
The left has become many things. The leftist ideology of today is what many of us when we took the oath of office as military officers, swore to protect the country from: “I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic...”