“One thing we have really found is a place to feel comfortable being ourselves,” Dean said. Americans are segregating by their politics at a rapid clip, helping fuel the greatest divide between the states in modern history.
One party controls the entire legislature in all but two states. In 28 states, the party in control has a supermajority in at least one legislative chamber — which means the majority party has so many lawmakers that they can override a governor’s veto. Not that that would be necessary in most cases, as only 10 states have governors of different parties than the one that controls the legislature
This can only end badly as conservatives seem to have no problem ruling over land in empty states.
This offhand comment that was quoted in the article is really unsettling:
This isn’t a conservative vs liberal policy thing, this is more insidious. This person’s worldview subconsciously classes “citizens” and “immigrants” as mutually exclusive groups. There’s “us, who were here before and belong here”, and “them, who came here from somewhere else and shouldn’t receive the benefits of our government”. It seems like it wasn’t long ago that the dominant left-vs-right conversations I observed were mostly discussions about economic and foreign policy where both sides had reasonable points and compromise was possible, but this isn’t that. This ideological divide built on religion, xenophobia, nationalism, etc. can’t end well.
It won’t. Sometimes it feels like some people have been reading certain dystopian science fiction and alternate history novels and stories as if they were a blueprint instead of a warning.
“Us vs. Them” has been standard-issue fascism for a long time.