The Split Personality of the ‘Anti-Polis’

The urban/rural divide is at the heart of the political divide

[Map created by Magog the Ogre via Wikimedia, Nov. 29,2016]

This familiar map of the 2016 American election, broken down by red (representing Republican) and blue (representing Democrat) counties—rather than by states—shows a stark division of citizens in a rural/urban pattern that has become typical of most Western democracies.

Much about urbanization is explained by the attraction of better jobs, services and the glitter of wealth. However, there is another powerful, less visible attraction. Namely, the fact that life in the “big city” provides immediate access to a hedonistic privacy, offering relief from the traditional moral restraints and obligations imposed by civil life in rural settings.

The Rural/Urban Divide

The rural/urban divide became especially visible in America over the previous election cycle, and an Atlantic Monthly article from 2012, “Red State, Blue City: How the Urban-Rural Divide is Splitting America,” remarked that “virtually every major city (100,000 plus population) in the United States of America has a different outlook from the less populous areas that are closest to it. The difference is no longer where people live, it’s about how people live.”