‘We don’t have a democracy’: why some Oregonians want to join Idaho
‘We don’t have a democracy’: why some Oregonians want to join Idaho
Proponents of the Greater Idaho movement have argued Democrats in Portland don’t understand their way of life
“We have a constitution that lays down the laws for us. As a republic, the individual is protected. So the minority can be protected. It’s not just majority rules.”
"We don't like that the majority that we don't agree with rules. We want a christofascist theocratic dictatorship where the minority we agree with rules.
They don't like democracy because they don't win.
That's the thing I've never understood about the "tyranny of the majority" folks, they're just arguing that we should do what fewer people think is the right thing to do and that seems objectively worse. If a majority of people disagree with you then you either work to change their minds or be introspective and see if you need to change yours. Sometimes you'll have to suck it up and deal with the fact that neither of those options will work but that's just the way it is. There is no alternative that works in the long term.
“Tyranny of the majority” was an ur-fascist Republican mantra even when I was a kid. These people were always anti-democratic.
Yes. I love the, "The US isn't a democracy, it's a Republic!" crowd. A Republic is a form of representatives democracy. The majority elects representatives who then vote on behalf of their constituents. They speak with such confidence but are completely wrong.
EDIT: The definition of a republic is, "a state in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives, and which has an elected or nominated president rather than a monarch." Ancient republics may have been different but we don't live in the ancient world. Not every country that calls itself a Republic is a Republic. The DPRK and Republic of Iran, for example, are a dictatorship and a theocratic autocracy. They are not republics.
The People are the citizens of the state not the white people, or the Christian people, or the Republican people, or the people you agree with. The People are all of the people. It is only a Republic if every single citizen has the right to vote and equal access to the ballot box. If you are trying to disenfranchise people who don't vote the way you want them to you're not a Republican, you're a RINO.
The People may only exercise supreme power if they freely and fairly elect their representatives. If you're trying to limit the number of polling stations in areas where people don't vote the way you want them to, or to stop counting of ballots before every ballot is counted, or to make it difficult to vote by mail, or early, or on Sunday you are not a Republican, you're a RINO.
In a Republic, every citizen has the right to vote, their votes all carry the same weight, and they have equal access to the ballot box. If you don't have those things not only are you not a democracy but you're not a republic either.
We don’t have a democracy, we are a constitutional republic
This is the new battle cry of American fascism.
The opening of the American Declaration of Independence literally states that the country is going to establish a government that derives “their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
I asked him what he meant by that distinction.
“We have a constitution that lays down the laws for us. As a republic, the individual is protected. So the minority can be protected. It’s not just majority rules.”
Agreed, so we let homosexual couples get married, pregnant women make their own health care decisions, treat transgendered people with respect, and take measures to prevent at-risk individuals from getting a deadly virus.
The opening of the American Declaration of Independence literally states that the country is going to establish a government that derives “their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
To play devil's advocate, you could argue that's why the Eastern Oregonian fascists should be allowed to join Idaho- because they don't consent to be governed by the state legislature.
(Of course, the real problem is that these assholes are increasingly rejecting the concept of government altogether.)
The US is both a constitutional Republic and a democracy . In fact, the democratic part is included in the constitution.
These people support the electoral college because it benefits them almost exclusively. They don't care about democracy.
The folks in Jackson and Josephine county, who want to join Idaho, are so anti-tax, they had to reduce police and fire services because they wouldn't vote for local funding bonds.
These folks are going to be DRAMATICALLY surprised to learn, as Idahoans, they now have a 6% sales tax.
These are people who can't follow simple health recommendations. Critical thinking isn't going on upstairs.
I wouldn’t say Jackson or Josephine county “want” to join Idaho. There has not really been political talk or any votes for such a thing. The counties that want to join Idaho are east of Jackson county and have much smaller population. Anecdotally, everyone I know in both counties are proud Oregonians and would never vote for such a thing, even if they do hate Portland. The anti-tax sentiment is a separate issue all together.
Idaho residents will see an increase in taxes due to supporting all the new public schools, services and infrastructure. The newly acquired Oregon county residents will now have to pay income taxes. They will also bring a portion of the Oregon state debt that Idaho will now have to pay because Idaho's constitution won't allow state debt. Meanwhile the new smaller Oregon won't have near as many welfare counties to support and will be able to lower the remaining residents taxes.
How many electoral college votes shift to Idaho along with the meth and Jesus counties? Because that's always the reason these movements are really funded.
One. It's basically all of the counties in Oregon's second district.
Seems like a worthy trade, let’s do it.
They yearn for the "good 'ol days" of when Oregon Territory was a whites-only ethnostate.
This again? Hate to tell these rednecks but plenty of States have the urban/rural dichotomy. They ain't special.
The greater Idaho movement is a meme and is just conservatives trying to cheat democracy further. There's no real depth or nuance to it.
Idaho?
Prediction: Literally everything they are complaining about, will be an instance where they're unhappy about the will of the majority of Oregonians
Brb
Edit: Yeah pretty much
Crook county voted for Donald Trump, a Republican governor, against decriminalising drugs and against restrictions on gun ownership. The state went the other way every time.
Fuckin' democracy
They want to get rid of agriculture
you need to drive an electric car
Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that my government would say, ‘You can’t go to church.’”
IDK, man. I do kind of get it; I think the underlying complaint is probably more just that no one likes feeling like everyone in their community looks at it one way, and there's a force from outside preventing them from doing it that way when they mostly want to (like drug legalization, or having to wear masks or closing churches during Covid). That part honestly does make some sense to me.
I'd be curious how much is some real agriculture or legislative issue where they actually were being overridden, and how much is culture-war bullshit that doesn't impact their daily lives in any way except when they see it on the propaganda-news that's trying to get them all riled up. But I had more sympathy reading about it than I thought I would.
Crook County
Nominative determinism strikes again.
All of these come down to, "we want the right to keep fucking everyone else with externalities while enjoying the benefits of outsourcing those costs," which, no sympathy. Grow up, people.
Boy would they be shocked with the tollroad that would be built on the Cascades charging a toll on all their farm trucks to get to port.
LET THEM JOIN IDAHO!!!
CASCADIA NOW!!!
Honestly, yah.
See how much they want it when they have to start paying tariffs to ship their potatoes into the US.
Or trying to find a doctor.
? That's not how tariffs work. the purchaser pays it.
Democracy works well when people have similar general goals and just disagree about how to accomplish them. It doesn't work well when people have opposing goals. Thus I have a lot of sympathy for these people even though I disagree with their politics. Why should they have to follow the rules set by culturally dissimilar coastal cities far away rather than the rules set by much more similar and much closer Idaho?
If I could remake the US government from scratch, I think I might create something like the self-governing cities of medieval Europe. The Democratic/Republican divide is largely an urban/rural one, and this way both the urban and the rural areas would have the local governments and the representatives that the majority wanted. Real-world state lines do a poor job of demarcating regions where most of the people have similar values. A better system is possible, but in practice there's too much inertia to make such large changes.
What happens to queer people who happen to be born in rural areas, in your model?
The same thing that already happens to most of them now, I suppose: their basic rights are protected by the Constitution but if they want to live in a community that welcomes them then they might need to move. In the specific situation this article is about, the queer people in eastern Oregon would have to deal with the same issues that the queer people in Idaho already deal with.
In general, I sympathize with the desire to rescue people from the customs of their community, but I don't think that doing so by imposing our customs on their community is a good idea except in the most extreme cases. It violates the golden rule: I wouldn't want outsiders imposing their customs on me, even if someone in my community was being mistreated according to the customs of those outsiders. It also doesn't seem to work very well in practice. It has failed in extreme cases like the US occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, and I fear that it is currently failing in the USA.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Under a large tent at the Crook county fairgrounds in Prineville, Oregon, six people stand in a neat line, each clutching the gun in their holster.
The presidency of Donald Trump and the Covid pandemic have heightened divisions – with different groups starkly diverging on how they think the state should move forward.
Moving the state lines is a tall order, given that both Oregon and Idaho legislatures would have to agree, along with the respective governors, and then for Congress to approve the matter.
He and his wife lived in Portland, Oregon’s largest city, for 20 years before moving east because on “almost every issue”, abortion, LGBTQ+, guns, drugs, McCaw was opposed to the progressive measures enacted by state legislators.
Outside the courthouse one Sunday, I chatted with Priscilla Smith, chair of the county’s Democrats, who was leading a small rally against the Greater Idaho movement.
Mike McCarter, the president of the Greater Idaho movement, was leading a prayer at the start of a question-and-answer session hosted by McCaw at the Crook county library in Prineville.
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