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Comment by dougmwne | Hacker News Reader

I think a lot of this is just because the USA is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to the USA:)

Plus, this is a country made up of a little piece of every other country in the world. "American identity" is an ex post facto rationalization. Not to mention that politically we often operate like 50 small-to-medium sized countries. And there's less of a push to homogenize the country since one of our political parties fights against federalization.

All that adds up to a country with a whole lot of variation. Describing what Americans are like is pretty useless. We're like everything.

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I used to think mind-boggling big was a bunch of hyperbole until I drove from Georgia to Washington State. I’ve flown across the US a few times and it seemed big but not mind-boggling big. I can’t imagine how much bigger the US would be on horseback or on foot, and I’m ok with that.

Russia is bigger in terms of area, just two times smaller in terms of population, but 10 times more uniform, at least. You wouldn't be able to tell apart two typical provincial Russian towns from the opposite sides of the country.

So, no, just the size itself doesn't seem like a complete explanation for this.

U.S. divisions at this point run largely rural versus urban. Russia has the same thing - folks in Moscow live completely different lives than those in a backwoods provincial town.

If anything, Russia and the U.S. are pretty similar in terms of regional and cultural tensions.

>U.S. divisions at this point run largely rural versus urban.

I think you're trying to point out actual points of cultural tension, which I'd argue are largely superficial and mostly political. But I think OP was trying to say that the US is culturally diverse based on geography. And I think OP is right, the culture of Atlanta is very different than the culture of NYC which is very different than the culture of San Francisco or LA.

Similarly the culture of Montana or Wyoming is very different than the culture of the rural south.

I grew up in what most people would consider the rural south (a small town in Kentucky), and even the difference between various regions in the south are pretty stark... Just take for example this article; Kentucky, know for their bourbon, and I grew up in a dry county (couldn't sell alcohol at all). Prohibition laws stuck around decades after federal prohibition ended for largely religious reasons.

> folks in Moscow live completely different lives than those in a backwoods provincial town

Not really. I live in Moscow, and financially I have a very different life from someone in a small town. But in terms of the culture and people around, the difference is not that big.

Here's a random youtube vlog about a small russian town: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOwW5wdIt_w It's on the opposite edge of the country, and yet, I would only be able to tell it apart from Moscow's residential neighbourhoods by how tall the buildings, built from the same panels, in the same design series, are.

The vast majority of Russia is taiga and tundra, no? Like Canada, the land is vast but the population clusters heavily to one side. https://i.redd.it/v9rdedhje4i31.png

Whereas the U.S. has two heavily populated coasts and much of its land is arable, at temperate latitudes (at least with irrigation—setting aside water issues).

The gulf coast may have a higher population than the west coast depending where the line is. So three heavily populated coasts. Supposedly something like 2/3 of the population lives in the 100 mile border zone.

While size isn't a complete explanation, its important to consider the population distribution as well. Russia may be geographically larger but the population is much more concentrated than it is in the US.

This is both true and not.

Yes, overall diversity is smaller, it's all white and mostly Russian population, skewed to West, but also some very different minorities (and climate). Russian North and Caucasus are very different.

And two typical provincial towns in Russia can have more difference than two typical provincial towns in US. Both in population, demography, education, urbanization level.

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