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Where would be the patriotic place for Amazon to put its enormous new office complex?

The company announced yesterday that it was looking beyond Seattle to build a second headquarters. Ultimately, HQ2, as Amazon calls the project, will house up to 50,000 workers and stretch over more office space than the Pentagon. Amazon welcomed proposals from cities and said it wanted a metro area with at least 1 million people that employees would find appealing.

As I read about the project, I realized that I already had a rooting interest. I hope Amazon has enough sense of corporate citizenship — and patriotism — to choose a place that helps the country.

The United States is terribly polarized between its biggest cities and everywhere else. Large metropolitan areas on the coasts, like Seattle, San Francisco, Boston, New York and Washington, are thriving economically. The rest of the country isn’t doing nearly so well. This gap aggravates all kinds of problems, including inequality and political polarization.