“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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

LET THEM JOIN IDAHO!!!

CASCADIA NOW!!!

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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