POLITICAL INDIVIDUALISTS ARE HOLDING THE COUNTRY TOGETHER.

AuthorTuccille, J.D.
PositionLIFESTYLE - Column

IT WAS SHORTLY after Donald Trump took office that the father of one of my son's taekwondo classmates approached me in our small, reliably Republican Arizona town to chat about the new White House resident.

"I'm actually a Democrat," he whispered conspiratorially. "I don't talk much about that here."

Soon thereafter, another friend confided that the leftier-than-thou neighbors in her Chicago suburb also had her watching what she said.

"I'm surrounded by liberals and progressives until I drive a few miles west or south," she told me.

Both feel besieged but were comfortable turning to me because I don't share in our age's deep tribal divisions along political and cultural lines. The two leading factions of American politics can't stop fighting each other. But if anybody can keep the peace, it may be those of us who can't abide joining either camp.

"There are stark differences between Democrats and Republicans," political scientists Marc Hetherington and Jonathan Weiler of the University of North Carolina write in their book, Prius or Pickup? "What they like to eat, what shows they want to watch, where they choose to live" are all at odds, because worldview, culture, and lifestyle have come to align in recent years with partisan affiliation. Republicans and Democrats no longer just vote differently--they live differently, see the world differently, and emphasize different values.

And that means when Americans move to rural towns like mine--which offer houses on more property and access to the outdoors--they also tend to surround themselves with people who share their Republican politics. When they move to my friend's suburb, they find themselves among fellow Democrats who share their taste for ethnic food and walkable neighborhoods. Increasingly, the two groups don't even run into each other, since their varying job choices and divergent leisure activities help to keep them separated.

Many people even seek out businesses and professionals based on partisan affiliation. In 2018, market research firm Branded Research reported that 61 percent of surveyed mental health therapy patients insisted that it is "very" or "somewhat" important that their therapist share their political views.

That immersion in samethink reinforces itself. "When cultural tastes in turn have a reciprocal effect on personal networks, such divisions are likely...

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