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As a transplanted Southerner with Confederate ancestry, I hear the word "secessionist," and it stirs up some obvious parallels. It's the same old Industrial vs Agrarian rift. Look at what happened to the state of Virginia during the Civil War: It split up precisely into what could be mined (industry) and what could be farmed (agriculture), not along some axis of longitude like the rest of the country. As long as we city dwellers continue to imagine that wood comes from the lumber store and meat and milk and vegetables are made at the grocery store, there will always be this kind of rift.

posted 5 years ago
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