say it again: Folks in rural western Oregon are very different from the unhinged Lefty freaks in Portland and Salem! And naturally, these people don’t want to be associated with those unhinged Lefty freaks in Portland and Salem. And that is why they want to join Idaho, which is far more sane.
The people in eastern Oregon are generally patriotic and sane, and they’re tired of being subjected to the misrule of the far-Left kleptocrats in Salem, who care about them only as a cash cow to fund their socialist pipe dreams. Accordingly, some have formed the Greater Idaho movement, which actually hopes to detach Oregon’s rural eastern counties from the state and attach them to Idaho. This movement, as fanciful as it seems, is gathering steam, and that has Democrats enraged. Whatever else it may be, their rage is revealing.
So Lefties are angry that these people want to escape and flee. Heard this before?: Think Cuba, East Germany, and the USSR… ALL states that tried (with guns) to prevent people from leaving! THAT is actually a defining characteristic of Leftism itself. Ask anyone who had to live behind the Iron Curtain!
And having once been forced to drink from that bitter cup of Leftism, they are not eager to again stain their lips…
… it underscores the historical fact that Leftists can only maintain their rule by force. People who have never lived in a socialist state often long to live in one (just look at Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez), but those who have actually suffered under socialist rule know better.
This isn’t new, I wrote about it in my paper on state secession, but these state secession movements are getting stronger. Eastern California, Oregon, and Washington, southern Illinois, upstate New York, etc. They want to get away from the woke metro areas before they’re dragged down.
And THAT is why pseudo-socialist states like Oregon are bound and determined to never let them leave, if they possibly can. No, these states can’t just say, “You go your way and I’ll go mine.” Their philosophical bedrock is force, not moral agency!