By now, I’m sure we’re all familiar with this image:

It’s been burned into our national consciousness, not just as a simple graph indicating which candidate won the majority of which state’s voters, but as a symbol of the Great Cultural Divide in American politics. And yes, capitalization is required.

As the media has been drilling into our heads, we are a nation at war. In the spirit of laziness, we have divided the country into two - and only two - camps, which are conveniently divided into different regions. The south and west consist of backwoods conservatives, voting stupidly against their own financial good, terrified of anything new or different, convinced that violence is the answer to every problem, and devoted to their brand of hateful fundamentalism. The east and northern fringes - alongside a little blue island on the western shore - belong to stuck-up, latte-drinking liberals, convinced of their own superiority over everyone else, determined to turn the country socialist, taxing everyone to death so they can give handouts to lazy welfare moms, and constantly bitching about prejudice while they blame white people for all the world’s problems. Hell, we’re even divided on what to call soft drinks:

This obvious clash in values is starting to make people on both sides wish the South really would rise again. And all over the Internet, advocates of splitting off into two countries are proposing various ways in which to do it.

Below, you will see the two new nations of West Western Europe and Dipshitistan. This particular set-up solves the problem of blue states being divided on either side of the continent by buying a land bridge from Canada (”for no more than a dozen jugs of firewater, a handful of beads, and various trinkets”) to connect the two.

Below, you will see a more complicated solution. Rather than splitting red and blue states up into two different countries, this particular author advocates splitting up the different regions of blue states. This spares us the need to build a landbridge, thereby saving our neightor to the north millions of Canadian dollars in firewater and beads.

A third map proposes that the blue states merely be absorbed into Canada, leaving the red states to be re-named the United States of Texas. This map is notable for its recognition that only the coast of California is particularly liberal.

The last and probably the most popular map is also the simplest and probably the least offensive. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the United States of Canada and Jesusland:

But is it really that simple? (Any and all rational thinkers reading this blog post should be saying, “Duh! Of course not, moron!”) Sure, red states got a majority of votes for Bush and blue states a majority for Kerry, but looking at a state as a great swath of red or blue is forgetting the fact that the race was incredibly close in every state. How would you feel about splitting up the country if you took a look at this map?

Any Bush supporters (such as Sean Hannity, who took one look at a similar map and declared the whole of the United States “Bush Country”) should stop cheering wildly at all the red and humble themselves with a glance at this map:

There is no clear political majority in this country. More importantly, there is no clear liberal or conservative hangout. (Except, it seems, for Massachusetts. Holy fuck, that’s blue.) If you take a look at how people really voted in each area - rather than adopting a winner-takes-all strategy - you begin to see that we’re not so red and blue, after all. The United States is a nation of varying shades of purple.

How does the nation look now? Is this a good sign for gay rights in America, or am I reading too much into the whole “purple” thing?

There’s a valuable lesson to be learned in these maps. And that lesson is: there’s nowhere to hide from the evildoers. Stuck-up latte-drinkers and gun-toting gay-bashers are all around you! Don’t delude yourself with notions of seceding from the Union; just pick up your shotgun, brush up on your karate skills, and attack! Hey, it’s better than listening to opinions that differ from yours.