It's always been with us, since independence. One of the most important and difficult debates during the drafting of our Constitution was whether representatio

It's always been with us, since independence. One of the most important and difficult debates during the drafting of our Constitution was whether representation in the national government should be equal for all states, or proportional based on their populations. The makeup of our Congress (one house where every state is equal, one where they're proportionally represented), and the manner of electing the President are compromises introduced in the 1780s to assuage fears from smaller states that larger, more populous states would be able to tyrannize them. There are also historical roots here in slavery: many southern states actually had large populations, but only when slaves were counted as part of the population. So those states wanted slaves to count at least partially, even though slaves were of course not allowed to vote (which is how we get the infamous compromise where a slave was counted as 3/5 of a person for proportional-representation purposes). And the economies of the northern and southern states diverged very early on; northern states' economies were based more on trade and manufacture, southern states on agriculture and resource extraction (supported by slave labor until slavery was abolished, then by things which emulated slavery as closely as was legal, like exploitative sharecropping and debt slavery). This naturally leads to a divide and a conflict of lifestyles and values, wherein there are basically two countries existing within the same set of borders. One of those countries has always had a larger (free) population and always been more urban, dense and globally connected. The other has always had a smaller (free) population and always been more rural, sparse and isolationist. The southern and now midwestern rural/sparse/isolationist faction has also consistently used the compromises of the 1780s to their advantage, since they are represented and wield power in the national government disproportionate to their percentage of the population, and can at times effectively reverse the original fear and tyrannize the majority northern and coastal urban/dense/globalist faction. But so long as the Constitution of the United States continues to be based on those two-hundred-year-old compromises, this tension will continue to exist.