I read a blog entry the other day that is possibly the best and most comprehensive liberal rant I've ever read... it's really long, and maybe goes a little over the top here and there, but if you're a left-leaning person reading it feels like beating Tucker Carlson senseless with a sponge bat. The rant's conclusion, though, is that the Democratic "blue states" should secede from the Republican "red states" and just leave them to wallow in their own misery. Sure, it sounds like just what the doctor ordered, but this is actually a huge problem for us.

Considering how much the mainstream media is playing the concept of "red state" American values versus "blue state" American values, I can definitely see how the idea of just getting a divorce seems like the natural conclusion for the totally frustrated. Hell, I've joked about it myself. But don't you see? It isn't "red states" that are the problem, it's the fact that we've been played into believing that there are "red states" that is the problem. And it isn't just average partisans who are stuck on the idea... the top thinkers in the Democratic party can't get enough of it either, and John Kerry's strategy was overwhelmingly based on the assumption.

The bottom line is that the very concept of a "red state" is just a bullshit frame, and we've gobbled it up hook, line, and sinker. The Bush administration, courtesy of Karl Rove, has been very successful because of their "divide and conquer" strategy, and this is the crux of it: a convenient color-coded label for "us" and "them" based entirely on a snapshot of who happened to win a given state. You'd never guess that in the 2004 election 42% of people in "latte-drinking" New York voted for Bush, and 45% of people in "Jesse Helms country" North Carolina voted for Kerry!

Take a good long look at this map:

This is what America actually looks like. Sure is a lot less intimidating than the "sea of red", isn't it? And harder to demonize...

And that's the point. I'm not denying that liberal and conservative thought are at a pretty serious impasse, and that a "culture war" seems to be in full swing... but to allow ourselves to be duped into writing-off a giant chunk of the 48% of the country that actually supports us only creates a self-fulfilling prophecy and plays right into our opponents' hands.