Comment by ljm
7 days ago
It would also help to have a population without a deep-seated beef going back to the civil war. You arguably have two separate 'America's split down that historical line that might not ever see eye-to-eye and, just like the US itself has installed dictators or favourable governments by funding disruption abroad, it is open to be exploited the same way.
It's not really split down the historical line of north and south. What you are actually seeing are urbanization rates, with more urbanization in the north east (this was true and a factor during the civil war too). You can look at the county level voting maps to see this exists in the north too. If you look at only state level maps, then you lose that precision. It's not a north vs south thing, it's and urban vs rural thing.
I think there might be something to it: if you look at the correlation between commitment to maga beliefs and affection for the confederate flag, my guess is it would be fairly high
You might be surprised how many confederate flags are flown in rural Union states. You'd probably have an even higher correlation with the Gadsen. Weak correlations are everywhere, we're looking for the strongest, which appears to be urban vs rural.
Albion's rotten seed was never unified as one. Seeing the civil war as some unique historical genesis of the split-- instead of a national shotgun-wedding of sorts is completely backwards.
It wasn't much of a shotgun wedding. Yes, it was a common enemy/cause during the revolution, but then took years of debate for the constitution and years more for the bill of rights. Over time, we've forced more and more homogeneous (federal) laws. The more laws you pass, the more likely people are affected in the outgroups under the splits you mentioned and it compounds. All the concerns about states rights and small states being less powerful are still concerns for some groups of people today. We've essentially been eroding the initial status quo that had been agreed upon.
Personally I think calling it a shotgun wedding is one of my best metaphors of the week and perfectly evokes what I was going for. Contemporaries from like Lincoln's 2nd inaugural of course would call it finer things, like a national baptism etc. but shotgun wedding captures the borderer element, too. I like it and stand by it.
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