Why is the Map Blue, Daddy?

A few days ago, I posted a (poor) copy of the famous Red and Blue Map of America. If you looked hard, you saw that this one was by counties and not by states. In most states, a one vote majority of votes is enough to make the entire state red or blue. But note how small the actual blue areas are even though the whole state went Democrat. Well, if we broke it down to precincts, an even smaller area would be blue. What those blue areas do have is population density -- high population density. It is an area where Liberal concepts not only may actually work, but where they may actually be necessary. But that does not translate to them being the correct answer for the rest of the country. Public transportation, for one, works exceedingly well in many of those blue counties (at least the ones where it was designed to fit traffic rather than political patterns). Look at any Red County and try to imagine replacing personal transportation with public.

There is a diversity between the needs and the product of Red and Blue areas. Those things that we actually need for life come from the Red areas -- Food. Energy. Water. Building materials. Fresh Air. All Sine qua non.

Then what is the product of the Blue Area? The parts of our world we use for entertainment and diversion. Television. Video games. Middle men. Big law firms and class action suits. Huge banks that hostile take over local banks. Large Hospitals. Ghettos. Welfare babies. Plots for Law and Order and episodes of Bad Boys. Truthfully, aside from the large specialty hospitals, there is nothing we can't live without and little we would not be better off without. No, the salsa with New York City on the label is not grown in New York City despite the ad.

In short, the people who are dependent of the efforts of others for their survival want to make sure the others must play their part in assuring not just in that survival, but in their prospering.

Ironically, their population density makes them the most effective targets for attacks with weapons of mass destruction; so when our enemies do finally attack this country, the blue areas will be their targets of choice despite their pacifism. And on a related note, despite their politically pacifist nature, the blue area homicide rate is far higher than the red areas. So I guess while they won't fight for personal freedom or economic freedom (open sale of oil); they will fight for being dissed or to wear a red bandanna.

And I still think they have Red and Blue reversed. Red has long been self-associated with communism and socialism. The color association on the election result map can be nothing but a deliberate manipulation on the part of USA Today and CNN at the time of the 2000 elections).