Contrary to forecasts of Aztlan-style separatism, immigrant dispersion across states and the pull of mainstream consumer culture have produced a more individualized, de-tribalized public rather than coherent ethnic subnations. The result is cultural flattening and political weirdness rather than formal breakaway zones.
— It challenges a core assumption in demographic politics by shifting attention from territorial fragmentation to social fragmentation.
Aris Roussinos
2025.09.12
70% relevant
The article argues the U.S. is too atomized for civil war and that online bloodlust is vicarious performance by people unlikely to fight, echoing the existing frame that contemporary America trends toward individualized, de‑tribalized behavior rather than cohesive blocs leading to breakaway conflict.
Mike Solana
2025.08.21
62% relevant
The 'goonpocalypse' frame suggests tech is deepening individual atomization rather than creating coherent rival tribes, extending this lens to AI‑mediated intimacy and sex.
Aporia
2025.08.15
100% relevant
The essay rejects Huntington-style 'Quebec in the Southwest' predictions and notes immigrants are now 'everywhere,' including 'Hispanics and Indians in rural Arkansas.'
Yascha Mounk
2025.08.14
50% relevant
Describing the internet’s effect as producing 'neurotic homebodies' fits a broader pattern of social atomization—less in-person play and weaker offline networks—rather than organized sectarian fragmentation.
Scott Alexander
2025.08.12
60% relevant
The comments describe nonterritorial micro‑communities (boffer combat groups, FIRE cohorts buying a block in Colorado, Burning Man-style meetups) that suggest dispersed, individualized affiliations rather than coherent ethnic subnations, refining the atomization lens.
Robin Hanson
2025.08.04
60% relevant
The claim that hundreds of thousands of peasant cultures merged into a single monoculture complements the observation that dispersion and modern media flatten distinct group identities into a deracinated mass culture.
2025.08.04
55% relevant
The article invokes the Quebec song 'Dégénérations' to trace the shift from large farm families to isolated urban living—the very pattern the atomization thesis highlights—then argues the authentic American response has been reinvention rather than retreat.
Razib Khan
2025.08.01
68% relevant
Millman says top‑down cultural dynamics have collapsed and that fan/stans and bottom‑up drives now shape arts consumption; he doubts the future of tent‑pole films as audiences split into subcultures—an instance of atomization rather than coherent tribal blocs.