In the preface to Texas vs. California, Kenneth Miller indicates that he finished his manuscript in May 2020. That makes it unusually prescient for an academic book. For at that time, three key events lay ahead: the summer in which some 220 American cities were looted and burned following the death of George Floyd (leading to the worst urban crime wave since the 1960s, which continues to this day), the full effect of the coronavirus lockdown and mask mandate, and the outcome of the 2020 election.
The three together have accelerated a new Great Migration from Blue to Red America. Almost 20 years ago, journalist Bill Bishop coined the term “Big Sort” to describe how Americans were self-segregating—by culture, religion, and even media consumption, especially news. Bishop’s “sort” was mostly intraregional and granular, more a matter of where you lived within a given metro area or state than in which metro or state. But in more recent years, as America has become even more polarized, the sort has become more regional and state-to-state.
