Isolationism

City High rumor has it that a few years ago, a Young Republicans club failed after only one student showed up to the first meeting. While this story may well be apocryphal, sometimes it does, indeed, seem as though City High has a smaller conservative sect than it has any other group of people.

“Iowa City is a major Democratic city,” Jaimie Dykes ‘19, who identifies as a conservative, said. “I find [it] at times hard because the vast majority of my peers and even my teachers are all telling me I have to think one way, otherwise I’m some terrible person, which I’m not.”

Talk of political polarization is nothing new in this day and age. A study done by Ron Johnston, David Manley, and Kelvyn Jones in “Annals of American Association of Geographers” shows that between 1992 and 2012, polarization between Republicans and Democrats increased by 29 percent across census regions and 12 percent across states. Political polarization has increased within states as well. In-state polarization increased significantly in 58 percent of states over this same period. The current presidency is not the cause of this ever-increasing divide between Americans, for it is a process that started decades ago.

But now, what was initially a recognized but relatively inconsequential problem has become a nationwide concern. Political polarization and incivility in discourse are on the tip of everyone’s tongue when it comes to problems in today’s society. “Working across the aisle” and “bipartisanship” are common assets for candidates to claim in the midterm elections, as close to home as parts of Johnson County: the Iowa City Press-Citizen recently quoted state House candidate Jodi Clemens, whose constituency if elected would include a portion of Johnson as well as Cedar County, as saying that our society has “to let people in…[w]e may disagree on this other issue, but if we work together on that one, we can find some common ground.”

Despite this push across the aisle, many Americans have perceived recent congressional proceedings, like Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings, as extremely partisan. “What we witnessed yesterday from the Republican Judiciary Committee members was a degree of invective, blind rage and brute partisanship that threatens not only the Senate and the Supreme Court — it threatens the basic faith in fairness and justice that binds this country together,” former Vice President Joe Biden wrote in a statement concerning the hearings. Kavanaugh himself cited “pent-up anger about President Drumpf” as a motivation for Democrats to oppose his confirmation.

But the recent uber-partisan behavior of Congress and the increasing distaste average Americans have for ideologies different from their own would not easily be seen by voter registration statistics. “In 1976 more than 70 percent of the counties in partisan registration states had 10 percent or fewer independents. By 2004 the situation had reversed: more than 70 percent of the counties had 10 percent or more independent registrants,” found a study by the Hoover Institution. In that same time frame, registrants of independents increased by 6 percent nation-wide. This leads us to conclude that these divides are a change in the culture of the United States. What can’t be seen on paper can be seen, heard, and felt through the daily life of living in this country.

“I feel like I am in the minority of people at City who have moderate conservative views. It feels hard to talk to some people with other views because I feel like they just try to keep talking over me while just trying to have a conversation about politics,” Mark McLaughlin ‘20 said. “I also feel like I am judged really hard by liberal people at City about my views.”