I just got done reading that book by Colin Woodard and, fuck, it all makes perfect sense now. To those who hate Donald Trump, look at whom his rhetoric appeals to vs. those who it most certainly would not. He may hail and embody the ideals of "New Netherlands" (i.e. New York) yet because he refuses to "virtue signal" if ya know what I mean, he forges a direct line into the sentiments of "Greater Appalachia" and its begging and often begrudging ally, the "deep south". Do remember, we chose to fuck them over and join the union. We hated both choices, and we only picked the damned Yankeedom alliance of holy roller assholes because we knew full good and well who the slavelords were talking about when they mentioned "inferior" whites (i.e. ourselves, the whites who did not own nor desire to own slaves).
Seriously, there's so much hidden History in the book that you simply didn't get in K-12 unless your parents were so hardcore whatever nation you were born into that they'd even consider relevant. I'd make it part of the required curriculum much like "The Gulag Archipelago" is in Russia. We *need* this kind of history, so that even if we disagree, we can at least understand why we disagree. How a given people can value a collective over an individual vs. how a society with a baseline culture that values the individual above all can actually get along well enough with one that does not to the point where they can set it all aside and fight for a common cause like, say, the American Revolution. The slavelords, the puritans, the crazy insane frontiersmen that I'd certainly count myself among (seriously, instant FTL is a thing, I'm going to claim a homestead on Mars and grow crops so awesome you'll all be begging me to sell em' to ya), etc. All the old hatreds melted away so that all the very different and ultimately oppositional national interests set it all aside and declared that good could and would triumph over all human failures. I can dream that can happen again, can't I?