Every election cycle, we hear the same refrain: “How can people vote for that?” Whether it’s your uncle at Thanksgiving dinner or your coworker at the water cooler, it seems like half the country has lost its mind. But what if I told you that your political opponents aren’t crazy—they’re just drawing from completely different lived experiences that shape their fundamental assumptions about what government can and should do?
After diving into the history of how American government programs evolved over the past century, I’ve realized something important: our political differences aren’t just abstract ideological disagreements. They’re rooted in real, practical experiences that make perfect sense given people’s contexts. Understanding this might be the key to actually talking to each other again instead of past each other.
How We Got Here: The Birth of Modern Government
To understand today’s political divisions, we need to understand just how dramatically America changed in the 20th century. Before the 1930s, the relationship between citizens and government was fundamentally different from what we know today.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, America operated under what historians call the “laissez-faire” era. Both major political parties generally agreed that government should stay out of economic affairs. The big partisan fights weren’t about welfare programs or healthcare—they were about tariffs, currency policy, and infrastructure funding. When people fell on hard times, they relied on family, churches, ethnic organizations, and mutual aid societies. The federal government’s role was minimal: post offices, some transportation projects, and veterans’ pensions for Civil War soldiers.
This system worked reasonably well when America had 5 million people living mostly on farms and in small communities where everyone knew each other. But by 1930, the country had 123 million people living in an increasingly urban, industrial economy. Traditional support systems were breaking down with urbanization and mobility. When economic disruptions hit, they now affected millions simultaneously rather than isolated communities.
Then came the Great Depression. By 1933, nearly 25% of the workforce was unemployed—that’s about 13 million people with no jobs and no income. Private charity and local government simply lacked the resources to handle mass unemployment on this scale. Banks were failing, factories were closing, and families were losing their homes and farms to foreclosure.
This crisis shattered faith in the old system and opened the door to accepting a much larger federal role that would have been unthinkable just decades earlier.
FDR’s Revolution: Creating the Modern Safety Net
Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democrat, fundamentally transformed the relationship between Americans and their government through his New Deal programs. What’s remarkable is how successful he was in getting Congress to go along with this revolution.
During his famous “First Hundred Days” in 1933, Congress passed virtually everything FDR asked for with minimal debate. The economic crisis was so severe that there was broad bipartisan support for dramatic action. Roosevelt was helped enormously by having large Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress for most of his presidency.
The programs FDR implemented weren’t just emergency measures—they created permanent institutions that still define American life today:
- Social Security (1935): Created old-age pensions funded by worker and employer contributions. Despite initial Republican opposition calling it “socialism,” it passed the House 372-33 and the Senate 77-6.
- Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC): Insured bank deposits to restore confidence in banks.
- Works Progress Administration (WPA): Employed millions in public works projects.
- Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC): Put young men to work on conservation projects.
- Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA): Brought electricity and economic development to rural areas.
What’s fascinating is that many of these programs that faced partisan opposition initially are now considered politically untouchable. Social Security became known as the “third rail” of American politics—touch it and your political career dies.
The Pattern: From Controversy to Consensus
This pattern of initial partisan opposition followed by broad acceptance repeated throughout the 20th century. Medicare, passed in 1965, faced fierce Republican opposition and was denounced by the American Medical Association as “socialized medicine.” Ronald Reagan famously warned it would end American freedom. Now it’s extremely popular across party lines.
The Environmental Protection Agency, created by Republican Richard Nixon in 1970, later faced conservative opposition as regulatory overreach but is now broadly supported in principle. The Americans with Disabilities Act faced business opposition over compliance costs but is now widely seen as a moral imperative.
Even presidential term limits follow this pattern. The 22nd Amendment, limiting presidents to two terms, was a direct response to FDR’s four elections. Passed by Congress in 1947 and ratified in 1951, it faced opposition from those who thought voters should decide, but is now universally accepted.
The pattern often seems to be: initial partisan opposition → gradual acceptance → political untouchability as people experience the benefits.
The America You Grew Up In Shapes the America You Want
This history explains why different generations vote and feel so differently about government. Each generation’s political worldview was shaped by their lived experience with government programs.
Consider two Americans born just decades apart. Sarah’s grandmother lived through the Great Depression, when a quarter of the workforce was unemployed and private charity simply couldn’t handle the scale of human suffering. Social Security literally kept her family from destitution. The GI Bill sent Sarah’s father to college. Medicare paid for her mother’s cancer treatment. For Sarah, government isn’t some abstract entity—it’s the reason her family survived and thrived.
Now meet Tom, whose great-grandfather built a successful farm through sheer determination and community cooperation. His family weathered economic downturns through hard work, church support, and neighbors helping neighbors. When federal agricultural programs came along, they seemed to hurt as much as help—favoring large operations over family farms, creating bureaucratic headaches, and undermining the self-reliance that had always worked. For Tom, government isn’t a savior—it’s often an obstacle to the solutions that actually work.
Neither Sarah nor Tom is wrong. They’re both drawing rational conclusions from their family’s real experiences with government intervention.
Why We Keep Talking Past Each Other
These aren’t just individual family stories. Entire generations have fundamentally different political memories:
The New Deal Generation (born 1900-1930s) experienced government literally saving the country during the Depression and World War II. They saw programs like Social Security, the WPA, and the GI Bill work when nothing else could. This cohort has been reliably Democratic for decades because they learned that government can be a force for good during crises.
Baby Boomers (born 1940s-1960s) lived through both the successes of the Great Society and the failures of Vietnam and Watergate. They’re more split—some saw government programs like Medicare and civil rights legislation solve real problems, while others learned to see government as the source of problems through the disasters of Vietnam and political corruption.
Generation X and Millennials grew up during the “government is the problem” Reagan era but also experienced the 2008 financial crisis firsthand. Many saw private markets fail spectacularly while government intervention prevented total economic collapse. They’re more open to government solutions for challenges like climate change and inequality because they’ve seen what happens when markets fail.
None of these generational perspectives is inherently right or wrong—they’re all based on real historical experiences that shaped what people learned about how the world works.
The Geographic Reality of Political Memory
Geography adds another layer to this story. American political geography has completely flipped over the past century. In the 19th century, cities used to vote Republican (they were business-friendly) and rural areas voted Democratic. Now cities are Democratic strongholds and rural areas are Republican heartlands.
What changed? The expansion of federal programs and how different places experienced them. Urban areas with high population density saw successful government programs—massive infrastructure projects, social services, economic development initiatives that worked in dense, complex environments where individual solutions weren’t viable. You can’t grow your own food or rely solely on neighbors when you’re one of millions in a city.
Rural areas often experienced these same programs differently. Federal programs sometimes felt ineffective, intrusive, or actively harmful to existing community systems that were already working. In places where individual and family solutions were more viable, where churches and community provided effective mutual aid, federal intervention sometimes disrupted rather than helped.
Different regions also have different historical experiences with federal power. The South has historical suspicion of federal authority due to the Civil War and federal enforcement of civil rights. The Northeast and West Coast have longer experience with successful federal programs. The Midwest has seen both government success (New Deal programs) and failure (industrial decline despite government efforts).
Neither urban nor rural experience is wrong. They’re just different responses to different lived realities.
Same Problems, Different Solutions—And That’s Actually Okay
Here’s the crucial insight: rural and urban Americans often face similar challenges but need completely different solutions, and that’s not a problem to be solved—it’s a feature of America’s diversity.
Take healthcare. In a dense urban area, a large hospital system with government coordination might make perfect sense—you need the scale and complexity to serve millions of people efficiently, and the density supports specialized services. In a rural area with 50 miles between towns, that same approach might be a disaster. What works is the small-town doctor who knows everyone, takes payments in cash or trade when insurance falls short, and doesn’t need a massive bureaucracy to function effectively.
Or consider internet access. Urban areas might benefit from municipal broadband programs that leverage density and competition among providers. Rural areas might need different approaches—maybe tax incentives for private companies to build infrastructure across sparsely populated areas, or community cooperatives that work with local values and existing institutions.
The problem isn’t that one approach is right and the other is wrong. The problem is when we try to force one-size-fits-all solutions on places with fundamentally different needs, resources, and existing systems that actually work.
Moving Forward: Government Isn’t One-Size-Fits-All
So where does this leave us? I think the history suggests we need to get more comfortable with the idea that different places might need different approaches—and that’s not a bug in our system, it’s a feature that reflects America’s diversity.
Instead of fighting over whether government is fundamentally good or bad, we might ask: What level of government intervention makes sense for this specific problem in this specific place? Sometimes that might mean more federal coordination and resources. Sometimes it might mean getting Washington out of the way and letting communities solve problems themselves using approaches that work in their context. Often it might mean some hybrid approach that respects both the need for collective action and the value of local knowledge and existing institutions.
The key insight from this historical journey is recognizing that your political opponents aren’t evil or stupid—they’re responding rationally to their lived experience and the needs of their communities. A farmer in rural Kansas and a teacher in urban Chicago both want safe, prosperous communities for their families. They just have different ideas about how to get there based on what’s actually worked in their lives and in their communities’ histories.
Understanding this doesn’t mean we have to agree on everything or abandon our principles. But it might help us understand why people we respect can look at the same problems and come to completely different conclusions about solutions. Their conclusions might actually make perfect sense given their experience and context.
Maybe our goal shouldn’t be to convince everyone to think exactly like us. Maybe it should be to understand each other well enough to craft solutions that actually work for the America we all share—one that’s always been diverse in geography, experience, and needs, and always will be.
That’s not political weakness or moral relativism. That’s political wisdom based on understanding how we actually got to where we are today.
What do you think? Have you noticed how your own experiences shape your political views? How about the people you disagree with—can you see where their perspectives might come from based on their family history and community context? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.