How many different countries do you think are there in the US?

It's no secret that the USA is a really big place with many culturally distinct regions. For example, the San Francisco Bay area is diametrically opposite to someplace like Mississippi, as far as political and cultural demographics are concerned. But there are other culturally distinct areas besides these two. Another such area would be Utah, which is essentially Mormon country. That's three. There are a few more I have in mind, but I want to see if other people also have the same in mind. How many different 'countries' do you think there are in the US?

 

By 'country', I'm referring to geographically connected, culturally distinct regions. I know that the US is just one big country. But it seems to me like it has such a divergent population that one wonders why people don't require passports to travel to different parts of the US. Yes, I'm aware of various secessionist movements and whatnot, but I support none of them (not even Calexit).

 

This book was written in the 80's but I still hear it mentioned on TV

https://www.amazon.com/Nine-Nations-North-America/dp/0380578859

and while looking that up I found this, which discusses this topic and world regionalism in general

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebat.../nine-nations-of-north-america-30-years-later

Requiring passports for internal travel is a really repressive thing. One of Stalin's favorites, I'm told . It's also death on your economy. One of America's main advantages is that we are such a big country, (4th largest there is) and so very well tied together, first by canals, then railways and finally the Interstates; but always also by the fact that we tried hard to be one country instead of many, both in Government and Business, ( All the States have to be Republics and we are among the 1st countries to have a Uniform Commercial Code)

 

Thanks, I didn't even know that books were written about this already. I agree with you that requiring passports for internal travel would be the death of the economy. So would various secession movements.

 

I lived in El Paso and that's pretty much North Mexico, only the Mexicans there are more respectful than the Mexicans in So California. When I lived there, the common understanding was that El Paso wasn't really part of Texas at all and there's a degree of accuracy to that thought. Also, in El Paso an outsider must be bilingual or they will struggle unless they already had employment lined up. I know other parts of the country have bilingual areas, but with El Paso we're talking about a huge city with over 800,000 people.

 

I've lived in New England, New York, Illinois, and Texas. They essentially share the same, basic, American culture, which is 90% of who they are. But then there's a small (10%) regional differences which I enjoy. That's four countries.