On the other hand, I really like the idea of splitting apart the country in a way that frees most of us from a large enough number of the people who are holding us back. I don't think that's possible to do in a fine-grained way. It only makes sense if done for some large contiguous regions. And the states in the southeast who actually did try to break away a few generations ago seems like an obvious way forward with that.
Here is another look at some of the natural regions within the country: [1]
I'm also aware that changing the voting systems we use holds a lot of promise for some of the same underlying problems we're talking about, and am completely open to that as an alternative to, or in addition to, my suggestion to break up the country. But that too seems very difficult politically.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/17/opinion/sunday/a-new-map-...