BY JESSE GOTTSCHALK

In print | Published February 5, 2009

For those of you unfamiliar with the Old Dominion, here’s a quick glimpse into some of the things you hear regularly in Virginia politics.

A voice growls over a grainy photograph: “Met Tom Perriello yet? A New York lawyer who’s moved back to Virginia to run for Congress, but his liberal policies are still from New York.” The words “New York Lawyer” appear in ominous red letters across the screen. Never mind that Tom had lived most of his life in Virginia, with only a couple years in New York, mostly as a base for overseas humanitarian work.

Or how about this one: Senior John McCain-surrogate Nancy Pfotenhauer, in an interview on MSNBC, praises the people in “real Virginia,” as opposed to the “Democrats…[who] have just moved into northern Virginia.”

That same week, a state delegate endorses an incumbent congressman by saying, “This is real Virginia, right where we are. And Virgil represents real America, and real Virginia.”

George Allen famously lost his Senate seat in 2006 when he singled out S.R. Sidharth, one of the only non-white attendees at an event, as “Macaca, or whatever his name is,” and welcomed him “to America, and the real world of Virginia.”

Let’s clear a few things up about my state. Virginia is not a “purple state,” nor is it a red state. When on one driving trip you see a Prius with an anti-war sticker, next to another sticker that says “Get your laws off my gun,” followed by a pickup with a confederate flag, right next to an Obama ’08 sticker, it’s time to throw away the paint-by-numbers kit and add a little more depth to the way we think of these things.

But I’m less interested here in how the outside world sees us, and more concerned about how people view their own communities and society. It would be nice to think the above quotes are just cases of elites trying to gin up local pride, but the reality is that plenty of people I’ve talked to believe in the whole “real Virginia/fake Virginia” thing. Certainly it’s not all Virginians, and it’s probably not even most. But it’s enough.

Here’s the problem.

It’s one thing for people to take pride in their communities and their country. And it’s not surprising that our communities and countries shape our perspectives about the world outside. But it’s a big problem when we begin to see “outside” people as “others.” And it’s a much bigger problem in a federal democracy — or a globalized world — when even the people we see as “outsiders” can be just as affected as we are by the political choices we make.

Let’s go back to Virginia. Forget arguing with the pundits — let’s assume they’re right. Northern Virginia and southern Virginia are absolute monoliths, with all the conservatives in the south and the liberals in the north. People in southern Virginia have all lived there for centuries, while the people in NOVA are all recent transplants from the north. People in southern Virginia take pride in being “Virginians,” while the new arrivals from up north feel no loyalty to their new homes.

Even if we accept these (obviously dubious) assumptions, our political system is premised on the ideal that every person and every vote is equal, and that our political discourse should factor in the interests and opinions of all citizens. But the “Real Virginia” argument doesn’t advance anyone’s interests, nor does it provide an argument against anybody else’s. It’s a way of delegitimizing people, of turning them into “others.” Earnest disagreements on policies or differences in values turn into disrespect and fears that people are trying to “impose their views” unjustly.

This is not just a Virginia problem. As a Swarthmore freshman, I was invited to the Facebook group “Coastal States of America,” a group promoting the secession of certain northeastern and Pacific western states — together with a few Midwestern states — which just happened to match the states John Kerry won in 2004. It was obviously a joke, but the sentiment was the same as that of Pfotenhauer and Senator Allen: the people in the “Red States” essentially belong to a different country from me; why should I let their political beliefs control the policies that affect me?

Just as people draw a line around what is and what isn’t “real Virginia,” so too do people do this with America. Many people adopt a mindset of “this is America” — where “this” is typically wherever the speaker resides. People in big cities are probably more likely to identify America as diverse, busy and consumerist — traits that happen to be particularly prominent in cities. Likewise, a person living in a small town in, say, rural Virginia, may be more likely to identify factors like close-knit communities and a greater focus on tradition as “American.” This becomes a problem when contrasts appear: “My community is America. This other community’s values are in conflict with mine; they are un-American.”

This is a problem of replacing a failure of respect for ideas with a failure of respect for people. And it is one of the biggest problems with political discourse in this country. In the dawning Age of Obama, it’s become a cliché to criticize a “politics of difference,” but the truth is that political contests driven by identifying other Americans as outsiders and enemies are more the rule than the exception.

Think back to 2008. One presidential campaign makes its motto “Country First” and implies that, because their rival has different ideological preferences, he is not as pro-America as their candidate is. The chief strategist of a different campaign pens an internal memo stating, “I cannot imagine America electing a president during a time of war who is not at his center fundamentally American.”

America is its people — all of them. America may be “a center-right country,” as many annoying pundits like to say, but it is also “center-left” and “far-left” and “far-right” in 300 million different degrees. With so many people and ideologies, there are really only two ways to build the majorities you need to get your preferences turned into policies. You can accept the differences where they are unalterable, seek common ground where it exists and hope to reach out in any way you can. Or you can bemoan the “others,” the infiltrators, and hope that enough like-minded patriots will join your cause of beating back these outsiders.

The latter strategy has worked many times and will be around for a long time. But remember for a minute that this is what both of the presidential campaigns just mentioned attempted to do. The target of their attacks is now in the Oval Office.

Jesse is a senior. He can be reached at jgottsc1@swarthmore.edu

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