The Poverty Divide

I think this is one of the most illuminating maps I have seen in a long time.  It comes from a Centers for Disease Control publication, which you can find here.

I think the map speaks for itself.  Right now, the nation is in thrall to its least economically successful section- States filled with people who have, essentially, failed to thrive, and are now throwing fits of rage over their inability to compete in the modern world, and blaming everyone but themselves.  We are about to experience the result of allowing these people to order us to live according to their beliefs, while those beliefs are constantly failing in front of us.  Now the whole nation will be run by their crackpot economic theories and social hatreds, and where can anyone think that is going to get us?  We in the "blue" States will be required to continue to massively subsidize the Republican areas of the country, in order to prevent them from descending into chaos and violence.  And in the meantime we will be expected to show respect for their endless rants about how miserable our way of doing things is.  And there is absolutely no way to show them how badly they are damaging themselves by surrendering to every Republican con man that appears in front of them.

In fact, before I saw this map at its origin in the CDC publication linked to above, I found it used in a right wing rant that, in hundreds and hundreds of words, tried to make the pathetic case that somehow this proved that the Civil War was not about racism, but about the States' economic rights, the sickening rationalization that we have heard from Southerners for a century and a half now.  We are in thrall to the stupid, the ignorant, and the greedy and hate-filled, and I just don't see how we can escape, as long as they continue to be fed the endless lies that enable Republicans to win elections.