Do not despair. You don't have to leave. You don't have to move to Canada. You may feel out of place in the United States today. ... But you're not. George W. Bush only got 51% of the national vote. And you don't really live out there somewhere in 'the nation,' do you? You live in the city. A big city. ... Cities vote Democratic. Cities are the economic engines that power this country. Cities are diverse, dynamic, and progressive. Don't think of yourself as a citizen of the United States. You are a citizen of the urban archipelago. The United Cities of America.

Liberals, progressives, and Democrats do not live in a country that stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Canada to Mexico. We live on a chain of islands. We are citizens of the Urban Archipelago, the United Cities of America. We live on islands of sanity, liberalism, and compassion–New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Seattle, St. Louis, Minneapolis, San Francisco, and on and on. And we live on islands in red states too–a fact obscured by that state-by-state map. Denver and Boulder are our islands in Colorado; Austin is our island in Texas; Las Vegas is our island in Nevada; Miami and Fort Lauderdale are our islands in Florida. Citizens of the Urban Archipelago reject heartland “values” like xenophobia, sexism, racism, and homophobia, as well as the more intolerant strains of Christianity that have taken root in this country. And we are the real Americans. They–rural, red-state voters, the denizens of the exurbs–are not real Americans. They are rubes, fools, and hate-mongers.

yeah, you’re really fucking progressive: promoting segregation between those stagnant, regressive, unwashed rural folk and we progressive, diverse, and dynamic city folk, who are — for the record — clearly superior. it’s awfully convenient, also, how all those non-city dwellers all think EXACTLY THE SAME.

how perfectly tolerant and progressive of you.