How long can divisions flourish, can polarization mount, until the center can no longer hold and things fall apart? Perhaps we’ll have an answer before too long.
Few current or former Republicans have paid as steep a price as David French for adopting a Never Trump stance. I recognize that critics could respond that his positioning as a “good” conservative in liberal eyes has opened up professional opportunities for French, including a New York Times gig, but he and his family became popular targets of online abuse by MAGA supporters, including some genuinely heinous stuff (not to mention this screed). He also found himself wandering through the ideological wilderness, leaving a Republican Party that had been central to his identity for most of his life.
The upside of that de-partisan-ization process is that French has gained an outside-looking-in perspective on both major parties, gaining insights into how both sides delude themselves, twisting available facts to reinforce their own privileged narratives, while relentlessly attacking the other for its hypocrisy, corruption, and myopia. In Divided We Fall, he takes this growing polarization to one logical extreme–the end of the United States as we know it, due to a secessionist movement that could form on either the left or the right.
Of greatest interest to me was French’s diagnosis of the primary drivers of polarization. He focused on three main factors. First, he spotlighted Bill Bishop’s findings in The Big Sort, in which Bishop highlights the ideological self-segregating taking place in this country, as liberals and conservatives move into partisan enclaves. In a follow-up article after the 2016 election, Bishop summarized one of the major trends, involving “landslide counties”: “As a way of showing this trend, we counted the percentage of voters who lived in counties where the presidential election was decided by 20 percentage points or more. In 1976, about 26 percent of the population lived in one of these landslide counties. That percentage has grown steadily since. In 1992, 37.7 percent lived in a landslide county. In ’96, 42 percent. In 2004, 48.3 percent. In 2012, 50.6 percent. Then, this year, 60.4 of voters lived in a county where an extraordinarily close election was decided by 20 percentage points or more.” The Center for Politics took this further in 2022, noting that 22% of the nation’s counties in the 2020 presidential election hit “super-landslide” levels, with more than 80% of the county population voting for Biden or Trump.
So, that’s the first factor–we’re dividing ourselves geographically. The second factor explores why that is alarming. Building off of research by Cass Sunstein, French explains that when people find themselves in an ideologically homogeneous group, there’s a tendency towards greater polarization. In other words, people with shared views tend to push each other towards more and more extreme versions of those views. Sunstein spotlights a few examples of this: “people who are opposed to the minimum wage are likely, after talking to each other, to be still more opposed; people who tend to support gun control are likely, after discussion, to support gun control with considerable enthusiasm; people who believe that global warming is a serious problem are likely, after discussion, to insist on severe measures to prevent global warming.” Perhaps that doesn’t sound entirely bad; some problems should be met with urgency. However, moderation, restraint, and a deliberative process can all be lost in the sprint towards ideological purity, and this can result in policy proposals and dogmatic stances that ultimately do more harm than good.
This is compounded, then, by the trend towards negative partisanship that has defined this country’s politics over the past two decades. I first encountered this idea in Ezra Klein’s Why We’re Polarized, and French also sees it as a subject of great concern. And with good reason–it sticks in my mind as one of the most alarming problems we face as a country. There was a time when Democrats were motivated first and foremost by enacting liberal policies and Republicans were similarly driven to promote conservative values. That would qualify as positive partisanship–being motivated to create something in line with your core beliefs. Today, though, negative partisanship prevails, and it was best exemplified in one Trump sign that I saw in Glendo, Wyoming: Trump 2024 – Make Liberals Cry Again. A core group of MAGA Republicans is motivated by sticking it to liberals; a substantial portion of Democrats are driven by a fear of Republicans, viewing their potential return to the White House as an existential threat to the country. The priority is to stop or spite the other.
What future is there when you’re already geographically divided, and in the distance created by that sorting, a demonizing process is exacerbated that only reinforces the perception that the other is an alien, bedeviling threat?
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The walk from Caldwell won’t show up on the trip highlight reel. Most of the 34 miles was on pavement, with perhaps half of it falling on highways. Scorched cornfields were interspersed with large plots of onions, with the latter in peak harvest. All day long, truck after truck of onions went rolling past, with yellow and red peels flying into my face, coating the roadside, and fluttering through the sky.
And yet, there were enough towns along the walk to give it that delightful Camino feel. The Arizona iced tea jug was strapped to the pack, empty and out of sight, and my shoulders reveled in the lightened load, with minimal food and water required to make it from one spot to the next. I reached the center of Caldwell before dawn, grabbing a coffee and seasoned potatoes at Wendy’s (the best fast food potato option), and then checked out the pioneer cabins that were relocated to Memorial Park, along with some classic train engines. Later, in Greenleaf, I enjoyed learning about the town’s Quaker roots in the early 1900s, and I particularly appreciated this tidbit offered in the city’s story of its official origins: “Due to the fierce spirit of independence and close-knit culture of the community, incorporation as a city was not a priority. The City of Greenleaf incorporated in 1973 in response to the potential need for a community sewer system.” Truly, my desire for independence ends when flushing doesn’t work anymore.
Parma offered the most significant Oregon Trail site of the day, with the replica of Fort Boise in the town park. To be clear, this isn’t the original Fort Boise, built near the confluence of the Snake and Boise Rivers in 1834, nor is this the second Fort Boise built in Boise in 1863. Instead, the replica, which is not historically accurate, was developed in 1982. In terms of authenticity, we’re entering the “it’s only a model” zone. But the shady grass surrounding it is real enough, and that sufficed on this warm late-September afternoon.
Pioneers on the Oregon Trail would have crossed the Snake River from Fort Boise. Early travelers found the ford to be difficult and unforgiving; Marcus and Narcissa Whitman abandoned their wagon and took a canoe across. In time, a ferry was established. Today, though, travelers just head a little further north to cross the bridge into Nyssa. Adrenaline suddenly surged through me when I turned left off of the backroad I had followed northward, rejoining the highway for the crossing. At last! Three months to the day after I flew out of Portland, I would return to Oregon, the last state of the journey. I couldn’t wait to see that sign, announcing my arrival.
Well, as it turns out, I could wait. And wait. I’m still waiting. There is no Welcome to Oregon sign. I walked the length of Nyssa, looking for any sign with the word Oregon, and aside from a pair of tiny ODOT markers, I came up empty.
The conspiracy part of my brain kicked in. Nyssa sits in Malheur County, and Malheur is one of 13 counties in Oregon that have endorsed the idea of breaking away to join Greater Idaho. The gist of the movement’s argument is that, “The purpose of having state lines is to allow this variance. The Oregon/Idaho line was established 163 years ago and is now outdated. It makes no sense in its current location because it doesn’t match the location of the cultural divide in Oregon.” I can understand the frustration of folks in Eastern and Southern Oregon. The Willamette Valley, despite only comprising 5.5% of all the land in Oregon, includes 70% of the population, which largely skews liberal. While they have representatives in the state legislature, they have little power. This is one of the reasons stunts like walkouts have become a feature of the state’s political experience.
So is the lack of Oregon-related signage in Nyssa deliberate? Or am I just being extra whiny and entitled about not getting my photo opp? Maybe both?
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I felt pretty silly about all of that speculation when I arrived in Ontario the following morning and found Oregon everywhere–in the skate park, in large murals, and on signs around the town. I wasn’t immediately open to acknowledging that, however. Instead, I was groggy and salty. The Nyssa police department had kindly directed me towards the River Park the night before as the best spot to camp overnight. On this Saturday night, though, the fishing was non-stop, including people loading and unloading boats well into the evening. And then, at 3am, the sprinklers fired to life. By the time I scrambled out of the bivy and shifted everything out of range, all of my gear was soggy. I tried to fall back asleep, but it was to no avail, so by 4am I hit the road. With just 12 miles standing between Ontario–my day’s destination–and me, I completed the walk before rosy-fingered dawn finished her work.
Of course, as I stumbled through the dark on backroads heading northward to Ontario, one shooting star after another plummeting ahead of me, as an orange, crescent moon barely broke the horizon to my right, I raged against the police for not warning me about the nocturnal baptism. After coffee, I calmed down. Instead of holding it against Nyssa, I thought back to McCammon, Idaho’s town hall, and their anticipation of the sprinkler schedule, and their proactive efforts to shift this around on my behalf. In hindsight, that was a pretty remarkable level of devotion to a stranger. I’m sure that Nyssa’s police have never considered the sprinkler schedule at River Park. I can’t blame them for a miserable morning.
The lesson in all of that, though, is how damn easy it is to demonize communities and people, or to see the worst in a non-action.
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The central premise of Greater Idaho is that we would all benefit if we could live in culturally homogeneous states, where the government represents the singular beliefs of the populace. That’s impossible, of course. Even in Idaho, think back to the dairy farmers who were aghast at Trump’s immigration discourse. But also–and this is the more important point–I don’t think it would lead to a better world. If single-party dominance was highly effective, we could look at a city like Portland, or a state like Wyoming, and we could determine with confidence which political ideology is most meritorious. Despite ever more ideologically “pure” regions, though, we haven’t created paradise yet. Far from it.
The reality is, the harmonious and productive coexistence of diverse perspectives is the path worth taking, the path most likely to curb our excesses, test the validity of our ideas, and generate viable and effective public policy. We’re better off together. It’s hard to see that, though, when we’re apart, and focusing all of our emotional energy on how screwed up the other side is.
