"the big sort" Americans are fleeing to places where political views match their own

[Hortensis]

20. A once-friend our son grew up with before their ways parted

fled California last year to Florida, tRump's area, with his partner on retirement. Fled "the people's republic of California," driven out by rampant liberalism even though they lived in a red-dominated eastern California area.

We don't talk, but I've checked on him on his FB page a few times. He's become religious, and in his views you can see confusion and real distress along with his anger at a world that obviously doesn't make sense. Of course the pieces wouldn't fit and the dots be connectable to someone who's apparently marinated for years in RW Kool-Aid. He's a good guy who cares. He wants to be good and live in a good world, but has become incapable of recognizing much of the good that exists.

He and his partner quickly got a few friends in FL and bought a very pretty place backing to a pond in a pretty subdivision. But FL's nothing like the safe, enveloping enclave of conservative values he imagined and was so eager to escape CA to, and I'm afraid he's doomed to continue to be genuinely unhappy.

We've been seeing the sorting out for decades. Can't count how many people told us they were leaving Southern California for small cities and towns for various reasons, but they all came down to that they're seeking places with people who share their general ideology and values.

Conservatives in general feel best where levels of conformity are relatively high, most people are like them, and are sanctuaries from the overload of constant changes and differences of a big international world.

Unfortunately for us, so many people love the vitality they flee that we can't afford to do our own sort into a great blue city for our last big move.