That’s all very well for relatively small market niches. But companies in industries that benefit greatly from economies of scale (such as shipping or airlines) can’t stay in business by catering to a small, fanatically partisan fan base. They need to appeal as broadly as possible. Publicly slighting millions of NRA members, and the many more millions who feel some tribal kinship with them, is unlikely to be good for any such business.

Nor is it likely to be good for the country. For what happens to an increasingly demographically sorted America when we no longer share even our basic commercial culture? If we can’t even fly on the same airlines or drive the same rental cars, why should New York bankers and Silicon Valley engineers pay taxes that disproportionately flow to rural red states? Why should the sons and daughters of those rural areas disproportionately staff the military that defends them? And how are these two completely separate peoples to jointly decide on the running of one vast country?