Red State Blue State: Color-Coding History

It has always been mystifying to me about the whole Red State/Blue State thing, and it is irritating because the concept seems so counter-intuitive: red is a warm, liberal color; blue is cool and conservative, yet the media has been painting the map for years with Republicans in red and Democrats in blue.

But I realize now that it seemed wrong because I was thinking as an artist. This week I was studying the American Revolution, and I began to see red & blue through my historian glasses.

For the first time it made perfect sense.

The Blues were the Americans: struggling for freedom, working toward equality and justice; the Red coats were the too-powerful Tories: privileged, smug, and arrogantly trying to snuff out freedom of speech.

Even an artist knows how that came out.