Redistricting is supposed to be a once-a-decade housekeeping chore-a dull, civic, map-drawing duty that is supposed to keep representation fair as populations shift. But let’s not kid ourselves: For decades in this country, redistricting hasn’t been about fairness. It’s about power. It’s about whatever party happens to be holding the pen when it carves up communities like a Thanksgiving ham.
And I’ll be straight with you – I’ve always hated it. I’ve always believed that voters should choose their politicians, not the other way around. Gerrymandering, no matter who does it, is ugly business. It’s manipulation dressed up as legality: it takes neighborhoods and counties, whole regions, and slices them into political jigsaw puzzles that make absolutely no sense to the people who live there.
But here’s what really gets my blood boiling:
When one party plays a fair game and the other plays to win at all costs, the side playing fair gets steamrolled. For years, Democrats have drawn maps with surgical precision, weaponizing redistricting like it’s an Olympic sport. They draw districts that look like spilled spaghetti — just to tilt the board in their favor.
And now?
They’ve pushed people like me-people who hate this game-right into the same trench. I despise the whole process, but I’m not naïve enough to pretend you can show up to a knife fight with a handshake and a copy of the Constitution. When one team cheats the rules until the rules barely mean anything, the other team either adapts or evaporates.
It’s infuriating.
And it’s exactly where we are.
I never wanted to be an advocate for counter-gerrymandering.
I never wanted to say, “Fine — if this is how the game is played, then hand us the pen.”
But here I am, because what choice is left? When your opponent keeps lighting the house on fire, eventually you stop preaching about smoke detectors and start grabbing a hose.
This isn’t politics anymore; this is survival.
And that’s the tragedy of all this: the very people who forced the escalation now get to pretend they’re the victims when the other side finally refuses to sit quietly in the corner. I don’t LIKE this new reality, but I’d be a fool to ignore it. I still oppose gerrymandering on principle – deeply. But Democrats have turned it into an arms race, and pretending otherwise is just self-inflicted defeat.
So yeah, I’ll say it:
I hate that I’ve been turned into one of them, in essence. I hate the fact that the moral high ground doesn’t mean anything when the game is rigged. But until the process is truly fair for everyone, fighting fire with fire is the only thing standing between representation and obliteration. Fix the system and I’ll happily put the hose down.
Until then? Pass me the map.