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Politics : President Barack Obama -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (100361)	8/30/2011 1:14:39 PM
From: ILCUL8R	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 149317

tejek, To some degree the sorting out of people has been occurring. Witness the book The Big Sort : Why the Clustering of Like-Minded American is Tearing Us Apart by Bill Bishop Pulitzer Prize–finalist Bishop offers a one-idea grab bag with a thesis more provocative than its elaboration. Bishop contends that as Americans have moved over the past three decades, they have clustered in communities of sameness, among people with similar ways of life, beliefs, and in the end, politics. There are endless variations of this clustering—what Bishop dubs the Big Sort—as like-minded Americans self-segregate in states, cities—even neighborhoods. Consequences of the Big Sort are dire: balkanized communities whose inhabitants find other Americans to be culturally incomprehensible; a growing intolerance for political differences that has made national consensus impossible; and politics so polarized that Congress is stymied and elections are no longer just contests over policies, but bitter choices between ways of life. Young people who can and desire to are moving to parts of the country where they find social compatibility, and do so before starting careers and families. At the other end of the age scale many retirees who have social mobility cluster in communities of like-minded individuals. It is mostly those in the middle, like me, who are too invested in the part of the country where I have job, real estate investments, friends and associates. It is difficult for me to relocate but I am getting more and more angry when too many around me no longer share my views and values. For example, if I could, I would move to Seattle or Portland and for sure would avoid So. Carolina, Georgia, and other SE parts of the country, to say nothing of Texas. I am one of those caught in the middle abandoned by his political parties that have moved so far to the right or left that there no longer is a middle ground of compromise with which our political institutions can effectively govern. And things will only get worse to the point that wholesale relocation may be the only way to find peace of mind thus splitting our country apart. Someday I am going to write a book entitled Failure to Extrapolate lamenting the refusal of people to look beyond the end their noses and to contemplate the dangers of polarization.

To: tejek who wrote (100361)	8/30/2011 11:24:31 PM
From: John Vosilla	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 149317

So is every blue area going to be a high cost, high tax area mixed in with ghetto/barrio if this keeps up? I am sure you realize many counties in more urban Houston, Dallas and Austin are already blue while most of the rural parts are as red as you'll l find anywhere which was a shock to my purple existence in Florida. I also think many more than you might realize might not have right wing type views but want to live in safe, lower cost, low tax areas as they age and you aren't going to find that anywhere near San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, DC or NYC..