It’s hard to imagine this not further straining other American institutions: Will big employers, with an eye toward the significant majority of Americans in favor of abortion rights, denounce anti-abortion laws? Will they offer a travel benefit for employees? Will this spur its own backlash? It’s not a pure hypothetical: Last year, in reacting to restrictive new voting laws in Texas, a bunch of national firms faced exactly that conundrum.
Step back a bit and it becomes clear that other factors that worked to shrink regional distinctions are also fading. Being limited to three national TV networks for entertainment serves to homogenize the country; having access to a billion social media accounts does the opposite. Getting clothes or groceries from a relatively small number of national chains knits together; having an infinite variety of consumer options does not.
For most of the past couple decades, Americans’ tendency to live and work among like-minded people has been a subject of interest and worry. Bill Bishop’s 2008 book “The Big Sort” — based on a series of articles that ran in 2004 — was an early chronicle of the trend. Americans, his reporting showed, are increasingly unlikely to live next to someone who votes, worships or thinks about major issues in a way that’s different from them. The rise of former President Donald Trump, with its exaggerated divide between rural and metropolitan voters, only accelerated matters.
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