Thinking about the map as monocultures is disingenuous. They have cultural focuses in common (among other things), which does not make them the same culture. Notably, these regions do not vote the same. It's not a party alignment map.

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AlotOfReading 7 hours ago | parent [-]

What "cultural focuses" are shared between the ranchers of the far west (e.g. the Bundy family), the Mormons of the high desert, a dozen indigenous nations speaking entirely different language families, and the gold rush immigrants of the Yukon?

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Supermancho 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> ranchers of the far west (e.g. the Bundy family), the Mormons of the high desert

Culturally, they both share a concern over Gun control for one. Those specific groups happen to align politically on the issue, which is incidental.

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EasyMark 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That's like 90% of rural America though. I've lived in various rural areas and they were invariably majority very pro gun, at least in the south and western USA. Northeast is more of a hodge podge on 2nd amendment though, and you have to go deeper into rural areas for stronger support.

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AlotOfReading 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

And yet the Navajo Nation bordering both of them has fairly strict gun registries. Both of those are yet different than the situation in Alberta (more similar to TX), and YT more resembles Alaskan gun culture.

They're obviously not related by immigration group either. The Hopi descend from early first nations. The Navajo descend from the athabascan migrations. Yukon comes from Canadian and British gold rush populations. Alberta comes from various prairie settler efforts, including Ukrainian Canadians. The Mormons were their own settlement group in Mexico that went to war with many of the (now-) surrounding indigenous nations. Etc.

And this is just one "American nation". The same basic issue exists in all of them.

	▲	Supermancho 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> And yet the Navajo Nation bordering both of them has fairly strict gun registries. The fact there are political differences by region is not a defining factor, or the regions would look very different. The fact it is a cultural topic at all, looks to be one common factor. I feel like I'm talking in circles now. Regardless, I really don't understand this sort of hair splitting. My imagination isn't that expansive, yet I can understand how these regions might have been determined in many cases. Asking the authors might get answers to these kinds of questions.

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AnimalMuppet 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The Bundys are Mormons of the high desert. (OK, maybe not "high" entirely...)