The animosity between Illinois's largest city and its smaller towns is almost as old as the state itself. I say "almost," of course, because Chicago, incorporated in 1837, is 19 years younger than Illinois, which is set to begin a yearlong celebration of its bicentennial on December 3. Downstaters have always thought of Chicago as a black hole of street violence and political corruption, sucking up tax dollars generated by honest, hard-working farmers. Chicagoans have always thought of downstate—when they've thought of it at all—as an irrelevant agricultural appendage full of Baptists and gun owners who'd just love to turn Illinois into North Kentucky.

For most of Illinois's history, the two spheres have been evenly matched in influence, with downstate contributing some of Illinois's most important political figures, from Abraham Lincoln to Adlai Stevenson. Downstate was also the forcing ground of internationally known industries: Moline gave us John Deere, Peoria gave us Caterpillar, and Decatur gave us Staley, which in 1920 hired George Halas to coach a company football team he would move to Chicago the following year and rename the Bears.

More recently, though, the misunderstandings and alienation between Chicago and downstate have been ramped up by two particularly 21st-century phenomena: globalization and political polarization. As the big global city in the northeastern corner of the state sucks jobs and college graduates out of the rest of Illinois, downstate is becoming older, less educated, less prosperous, more reactionary, and more Republican. Politically, downstate is in complete opposition to the Chicago area, especially on such culturally charged matters as gun rights, LGBT rights, and abortion. But it lacks the votes to bend the state to its will on any of those issues. This was never more evident than in 2010, when Governor Pat Quinn defeated state senator Bill Brady, a social conservative from Bloomington, despite carrying only four of the state's 102 counties—and could've won by carrying only Cook County.

"Illinois needs an electoral college," a Republican friend from Decatur groused after that election.