Most blue-state migrants don’t move because red states are perfect. They move because the systems they left behind stopped working for ordinary life.

But when no one asks why those systems broke down, many people bring the same assumptions with them— sometimes even pushing for policies in their new communities that look a lot like the ones they escaped.

Migration is rational. Silence about causation is not. Until people are willing to connect lived outcomes to governance choices, the cycle will repeat—just in a different zip code.