The Longview News-Journal‘s Frank Pool seeks to analyze a map of partisan prejudice in America recently published in The Atlantic, specifically as it relates to the apparent low polarization of Mason County, Texas compared to neighboring counties. A visit to Mason gave Pool the sense of, “a community where people disagree but get past that in dealing with each other.”

James and Deborah Fallows as well as David Brooks, he references, have seen the same phenomenon at work outside big cities.