CMV: An extremely bloody urban vs. rural civil war in the United States is unavoidable in the foreseeable future, due to the unprecedented partisan divide and polarization that has created two different cultures that are completely incompatible with one another.

More and more people on both sides of the aisle are realizing that the political divide in the US is not "red states" vs. "blue states", but rather rural areas vs. urban cores. Even in the reddest of red states, the cities are extremely liberal-leaning (such as Austin, Texas). And in even in the bluest of blue states (such as Oregon where I live), the rural areas are extremely conservative-leaning.

Virtually every single political issue in the US can be boiled down to the urban/rural divide. Whether it be gun control, infrastructure, immigration, or whatever the hot-button social issue is, in the end it is nothing more than what the cities want vs. what the rural ares want. We can even see this just recently with the Paris climate agreement. Trump, who represents rural America, pulled out of the agreement. However, several dozen mayors from various cities want to still move forward with it.

The last 8 years in American politics, specifically the reactions of the right when Obama was elected, and now of the left when Trump was elected, have exposed the hideous and painful truth: we have become extremely partisan, and we are very likely about to go to war over it. Why is this? I believe there have been three major reasons that have created this ultra-partisan urban vs. rural America that will eventually erupt into a civil war:

1. Americans have made a deliberate and concerted effort to move to and live in communities of like-minded individuals.

This phenomenon has been covered by many political analysts, especially in Bill Bishop's book The Big Sort. As described on his website:

This is the untold story of why America is so culturally and politically divided. America may be more diverse than ever coast to coast, but the places where we live are becoming increasingly crowded with people who live, think, and vote like we do. This social transformation didn't happen by accident. We've built a country where we can all choose the neighborhood and church and news show — most compatible with our lifestyle and beliefs. And we are living with the consequences of this way-of-life segregation. Our country has become so polarized, so ideologically inbred, that people don't know and can't understand those who live just a few miles away. The reason for this situation, and the dire implications for our country, is the subject of this ground-breaking work.

Keep in mind, this book was written in 2004, and it has only gotten worse now that the internet has greatly exacerbated this phenomenon.

Geographic sorting also explains why politics have become more partisan than they ever have been. As FiveThirtyEight describes:

Voters tend to cluster near other people who share their cultural and political values, and the parties’ coalitions have become far more geographically isolated in recent decades. In the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon election, 52 percent of the nation’s voters lived in states decided by 5 percentage points or less. In the 2012 Obama-Romney race, just 17 percent of all voters lived in such states.

As a corollary, there are far fewer truly competitive congressional districts. Just 90 of 435 House districts had a Cook Political Report Partisan Voter Index score, an attempt to measure the partisan lean of an area independent of the candidates on the ballot, between D+5 and R+5, down 45 percent from 164 in 1998.

Sure, gerrymandering has played a role in the House, but sorting is the dominant factor: In the impossible-to-gerrymander Senate, the number of seats with a score between D+5 and R+5 has declined from 52 in 1998 to 28 today.

When people sort themselves to live with like-minded individuals, it creates extremely safe districts and states. In turn, this encourages voters to support politicians who are as radical as possible, which means more partisanship.

2. Trust of the federal government has reached all-time lows.

This study from the Pew Research Center shows that from 1958 to 2015, the trust in the federal government has reached all-time lows. There was a big spike upwards in trust when 9/11 happened, but it quickly cratered back down. You could make the argument that trust in the federal government never truly recovered after the Watergate scandal.

Among the parties, it's even worse. Only 13% of Republicans trusted Obama when he was in office, a record low for any party with any administration in the modern era. I'd hate to see what the number will be for Democrats with Trump. Most likely it will be in the low single digits.

3. Trust of individuals has reached all-time lows.

This is probably the most damning statistic. When looked at over a multi-decade stretch, trust among others in the US has reached all-time lows.

When trust of individuals reaches the all-time lows it has been, it becomes extremely easy to demonize someone and view them as inhuman. Someone you believe that doesn't just hate your values and culture, but is making a concerted effort to try to brutally suppress your cultural and political beliefs. We can see this with conservatives and gun control, and liberals with abortion, for example.

There doesn't seem to exist any ways in the current political system to deescalate the increasing partisanship. Everything works as a positive feedback loop in some way, where partisanship results in more partisanship from the other side, which in turn means the other side gets more partisan, and so on. Is it really out of the question to think that the escalation will get so bad that it will culminate with millions of casualties? What happens when rural areas decide to stop sending food to the cities? Or when cities refuse to send tax dollars to rural areas?

The reason I am posting this to CMV is because I want to see how it is possible to stave off an incoming civil war. I do not want to see tens of millions of Americans dead on the streets in my lifetime. Unfortunately, what I've seen from living in both rural and urban environments, and how they absolutely despise each other, makes me believe otherwise.

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