My Unstoppable Journey to the Heart of a Divided America

A tornado warning in Kansas taught what mainstream politics couldn’t

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Waiting out a tornado warning in Kansas, I had never been more scared. But I also never had a better sense of America | photo of/by Cory Vinny

Driving east of Denver in my Subaru hatchback, I anticipated more than unswerving roads, endless wind farms, and a sea of Trump signs. Back home, people had shot down my road trip plans by saying, “Don’t bother going east — it’s boring as hell!” But I’d shoot back, “There must be something cool out there! Americans live out there!”

So, I went solo.

My Denver friends didn’t say it explicitly, but I knew many of them scorned the ‘red states’ to the east. If I caught them in more reflective moments, they might describe those areas as not sharing their same version of reality — or worse. Some might say their fellow Americans were crazy, immoral, or dangerous.

But my adventures weren’t about whether these places represented my progressive politics. The multiple ‘blue states’ I’ve lived in have never fully expressed my idiosyncratic views either! Whose state does?

One of the most bold missions in my life is to comprehend America fully. This may sound impossible and perhaps a bit mad. But I went on these trips to put myself in new settings, talk to new people, and see what might happen. It was about connecting with the humanity of each place.

To me, writing off large swaths of America represented an extreme lack of curiosity. And my curiosity was infinite.

At least, in these divided times, I felt it was my duty to try.

I started my trip in Kansas to see whether my hypothesis was correct. Did this conservative state have something incredible to offer? My instincts told me yes. I firmly believed that people were more intricate than their state’s politics would ever suggest.