The Connectors - My latest "people research" from South Dakota

This past month, I visited western South Dakota, the only state not to have ordered pandemic shutdowns. Streets typically busy with summertime Mt. Rushmore tourists were now congested by heavier residential traffic as well. Local folks complained about all the Californians moving in, bidding up home prices, and causing property taxes to rise. 

Why would Californians move to relatively rural South Dakota? No state taxes. The beauty of the Black Hills and Badlands. Natural settings a stone's throw from a busy downtown. Two Walmarts!

Life is simpler there, locals are not. Undervaluing them is a mistake. One couple I spoke with bemoaned being Biden supporters in a MAGA ocean. The husband subscribes to Skeptical Inquirer, a magazine of science and reason. "We are headed right into the heart of authoritarianism," he warned. This was the exact pronouncement I had heard from experts in Washington, DC just weeks prior. 

He continued, "How did the Nazis conquer the moral compass of Germany? They did it slowly. Insidiously," he mused, "That’s what is happening here now." 

His insight, matching the experts in DC, comes from his own intellectual curiosity and proximity to people with diametrically opposed views – his extended family. "You stay in touch with them?" I asked.  

"Sure, he explained. "They are my family. I love them and I may be the only voice of reason they get to hear."  He and his wife are not going anywhere. They inherited their small house and find purpose in sheltering abandoned dogs. 

However difficult, they are staying in community with those whose views they dislike. They are two of the many Americans out there, quietly, desperately trying to hold together the fast unraveling threads of our democracy.