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This is a great post.
I think a good way of summing up the social dynamics @SSCReader is talking about is that the Red and Blue tribes have different theories of American greatness. The Red Tribe believes that the secular source of American greatness is the natural resource wealth (including, possibly even especially, the agricultural land) of the American continent. (Reds often say, and the ones who say it appear to genuinely believe, that the true source of greatness is America's special relationship with Divine Providence, but the way providence works itself in practice is that God gave Americans a continent with huge natural resource wealth). The Blue Tribe believes that the source of American greatness is Yankee ingenuity and (for centrist and right-wing Blues) the capitalist institutions which maximise the economic value of it.
In many ways the cleanest ways this shows up is in the Europoor discourse. Most of the people mocking the Europoors are Red, and the mockery therefore focusses on the destructive stupidity of European (mostly German) energy policy, and includes a lot of factually dubious insinuations that Europeans are not going to be able to keep the lights on. But when a Blue like Noah Smith mocks the Europoors, he focusses on the failure of Europe to build a trillion dollar tech company.
This model is, for me, the best way of explaining Trumpian economic policy. Part of the reason why the Red Tribe loses in American politics is that the Blue theory of American greatness is mostly correct - it really is the case that as of 2025 the main source of American wealth and one of the main sources of American geopolitical leverage is software-driven innovation, and that the place where it happens is the Bluest place in America (coastal California and greater Seattle). Trump wants to change this by changing the economic rules, such that the Red theory becomes correct. At the level of vibes, the memes coming out of the White House in support of a new masculine, blue-collar vision of American prosperity don't show men working on assembly lines (understandable - there is a whiff of pink-collarness to assembly line work and non-union assembly line work really is pink-collar in most times and places) or even men doing traditional heavy industry (like WPA/Nazi/Soviet propaganda posters of manly men with hammers) - they show miners and farmers. At the level of policy, if the UK/EU/Japan trade deals actually happen roughly as announced, then the US will have higher tariffs on steel than on car parts and higher tariffs on car parts than on finished cars - the exact opposite of what you would do if you were encouraging US manufacturing. But the other side of the coin is that all three deals very explicitly promote US natural resource exports - as did the trade deals Trump did in his first term.
The corollary is that MAGA doesn't need to fix academic Blueness. If you believe that the source of American greatness is national resource wealth, then burning down the universities won't break America. And MAGA in the country want Trump to just burn Harvard down yesterday, not carry on faffing about trying to reform it.
This also explains why remote workers moving out to rural areas doesn't help - the people who rise to the top in that world are still doing so based on Yankee ingenuity, and so Blue will be higher status than Red. The sales of North Face jackets and demographics of National Park guests make clear that the Blues aren't actually anti-rural or anti-outdoor. A NYC banker doesn't stop being Blue because his wife keeps a horse at their upstate vacation home, and remote work is no different.
The obvious exception to this model is MAGA embrace of cryptocurrency. I think this is an exception which proves the rule - I am comfortable arguing that MAGA embrace of cryptocurrency is top-down in the way that MAGA embrace of coal mining is bottom-up. It also appeals to the Kulak_Revolt type of Red Triber who has given up and thinks watching the world burn is more practical than a return to a masculine blue-collar model of economic prosperity.
On the other hand, everything about rural physicians.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=haPcdobyINc?si=ncLFUNKgJeahFTyU&t=10
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