IMO the idea of red states and blue states doesn't make a lot of sense. Remove the state boundaries and the real defining characteristic for red/blue is urban/rural. It need not be any more complicated than that.
I live in this district. Supposedly, I have more in common with folks 50 miles away in Kingwood than I do with the folks two streets over. It's BS and leads to Crenshaw getting elected (who I didn't like but at least respected at the beginning of his term, but really kinda do hate now).
There is a bit more than just the usual gerrymandering at play here, though. Notice where the southern tip of the district is. The med center is deliberately split between (almost) every congressional district in Houston. That means that it gets multiple representatives in congress from multiple parties and remains well-funded. That's actually not a bad strategy, but it unfortunately gives the Republican state legislature a justification to hide behind for their blatant gerrymandering.
It's also why the current configuration isn't likely to change dramatically. Both parties want to ensure that the TX Medical Center has lots of representation in congress. As a result, Houston's core will always be divided among multiple districts. Republicans control the state legislature, so they make the districts have big "blobs" from outside the city, but if it were drawn by the democrats, it would still have this weird tendency to have narrow "arms" reaching towards the med center.
You nailed it. The difference between cultures in rural, suburban, and urban is mainly due to environmental stimulus. When your only opportunity for food at ~9pm in a rural/suburban environment is fast food — that changes the way you view your day, becoming a defacto framework that permeates everything.
They think in terms of independence and consequence (sound red?) - work late and still want decent sleep? Well you have to eat McDonalds or make a turkey sandwhich, there is no luxury, no option of a small family restaurant sharing their homeland cuisine.
This makes for a peculiar set of people - people that are mad good at creativity within limitations, but are constantly defined by their lack of exposure to experiences and post-modern cultural poverty.
>When your only opportunity for food at ~9pm in a rural/suburban environment is fast food — that changes the way you view your day, becoming a defacto framework that permeates everything.
I pretty strongly disagree with this. Most people make meals at home which aren't necessarily "just a turkey sandwich." I don't even live in a particularly rural area (about 40 miles west of Boston) and I don't really have great meal options at 5pm much less 9pm. There are a few good pizza places, a Five Guys, some chain steak places, etc. but other than the odd pizza takeout I don't really eat out.
If I lived in a city? I'd probably go out or get takeout more regularly but I'd still cook most days.
I debated fully fleshing out this topic and decided to stick to a high level until someone replied - so thank you for the critique.
The turkey sandwhich was meant to be a place holder for the general idea. Roughly, if you want to work long and hard to get ahead, usually food prep time is the easiest thing to cut to get a return on time invested in long term value. There are still super humans that have mastered meal prep (this may be you) but for the people I know, it’s hard to do all of these things well with limited options - which forces this consequence mindset.
Nothing particularly super about me. I haven't regularly commuted for a long time and almost certainly never will again. But even when I went into an office regularly, I mostly left at 5-6pm. Never felt it was useful to put in more hours than that. (Travel, well, not these days, but you know what I mean is a different matter.)
That said, when I was commuting, I did have a lot of meals I could throw together quickly (or had made ahead)--probably faster than going out for takeout to be honest.
Each state is unique and changing in time. Look at CO for example. Focus on the Family, the USAF Academy and many military bases are all in CO. 20 years ago, it was a solid Rep. base. But over time, things have shifted so that weed first became legal there.
That's ignoring the major issue that all western states have: water rights. All the pish-posh of politics today has nothing on the fights over water in western states. In CO that pits the mountains against the ranchers, in CA that pits north against south; there is no red/blue when it comes to the real (and sometimes deadly) fight over water.
Indeed, and I'd read many articles over the past few years pointing that out. Being a bit of a nerd, though, it was brought home to me most vividly by an NYT article in September, which uses aerial image analysis - roughly speaking grey v green, but with the most interesting bits in between:
In TX it is more complicated. The cities and farms were blue until all those folks from out-of-state moved into new suburbs and retired to exurbs. The suburbs have controlled TX for about 30 years.
What's left of real rural folk doesn't matter except in the local statehouse.
I mean at the voter level. How it gets expressed in power is certainly an artifact of our political system. For better or worse, our system is tilted towards rural power.
It’s a shocking almost perfect correlation, and it’s intensifying. The suburbs are starting to turn blue, especially around large cities, leaving the Republican Party an almost pure rural party.
0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas%27s_2nd_congressional_di...