In the book Rural Versus Urban: The Growing Divide That Threatens Democracy (Sept 2025) Mettler and Brown argue that today’s U.S. political polarization is increasingly organized around place — a hardened rural-versus-urban identity divide — rather than simply "red states vs. blue states" or "coastal elites vs. flyover country." In their account, American sense of political conflict has come to feel like a fight between us and them based on where people live, and this rural - urban sorting now cuts across essentially every region and state.

Interesting! 🤔 Who could have possibly seen that coming? Maybe we could form a committee, have a lot of meetings, write a whitepaper or two, get some real solid podcasts going (everyone must know what Ezra Klein's opinion is on this), and get the think tanks to think even more hardererer?

Oh yeah! I almost forgot! We already started working on this nine months ago and we're underway in three rural counties already. My bad, y'all. https://rgmii.org