Lori Falce: National divorce? Marjorie Taylor Greene has it all wrong

Mar. 2—One of my favorite movies as a kid was "The Parent Trap."

Not the Lindsay Lohan one — although that was good, too. No, I was a fan of the old-school Hayley Mills version that came out when my mom was a kid. I found it doubly entertaining because my mother, like Mills' characters, is also a twin. In my mind, I could see my mother and my aunt getting into all the far-fetched mischief.

For those who have lived in a hole and missed the original, the three made-for-television sequels and the Lohan remake, here's the plot: Twin sisters were separated when their parents divorced and never told about the missing sibling. They meet unexpectedly at camp, switch places and plot to get their parents back together. Hilarity ensues.

I have been thinking about it a lot since Presidents Day when Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., tweeted, "We need a national divorce. We need to separate by red states and blue states and shrink the federal government."

Greene has since been roundly mocked by the left and either dismissed or castigated by many on the right.

"I think Abraham Lincoln dealt with that kind of insanity," Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, told the Salt Lake Tribune.

But Greene has leaned into the idea hard. Perhaps she's feeling the positives of her own divorce, which was finalized in December.

I will not mock her idea, although I don't agree with it. I can understand too well the desire to just retreat to our corners and deal only with like-minded people. On a very surface level, it seems as comforting as a bowl of chicken soup.

However, like the scheme of a couple of tweens at summer camp, it has obvious holes.

This isn't like Brexit, which was complicated enough; the United Kingdom was a member of the European Union for only a couple of decades. The United States is coming up on its 247th birthday in July.

The bonds that tie red states to blue states aren't stitches that can be undone at the seams. They are arteries and veins that give and take blood and oxygen from one place to another, keeping people alive regardless of party or ideology.

And no state is painted only in one shade or the other. A 2022 study from the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia said West Virginia is the reddest state; it has a Democratic senator in Joe Manchin. The bluest was Maryland — which had a Republican governor when the study was done.

How are we supposed to paint a line down the center of the country? We would have to paint that line through every state, every county, every town — and more than a few houses.

And how does that account for truly independent voters who might lean in one direction this year and another direction next? Pennsylvania is a swing state that has put Republicans and Democrats in the White House. Where does it go?

The problem is not that we need a national divorce. We need national marriage counseling.

We need to sit down and talk instead of shouting at each other about slights from years back or fights believed long resolved. We need to address today's problems on today's terms without dragging decades of baggage into it.

We need to remember that Republicans and Democrats have worked together constructively for years. They have voted across the aisle. They have co-sponsored legislation.

They have served in the cabinets side by side, the same way they serve in statehouses and county courthouses and school boards and town councils. They have died side by side in combat. Now they need to remember they are friends and neighbors, co-workers and family members.

The country doesn't need a divorce. It needs to be parent-­trapped.

Lori Falce is a Tribune-Review community engagement editor. You can contact Lori at lfalce@triblive.com.