We have a structural problem. Urban voters have less influence. https://ballotpedia.org/Population_represented_by_state_legislators It is extremely unlikely there will ever be a majority in the Senate that will change this structural problem. Rural America is a depressing, and weird, and it is in control of the Federal government.
With a majority in the Senate willing to do something, we could: - Add additional states or split states. In all fairness California should be at least 4. Texas, Florida, and New York at least 2. DC and Puerto Rico deserve states. - Add additional voting rights laws, declare holidays, etc. Prevent the sort of disenfrisement happening in Texas & elsewhere - Add additional seats in the house! Saw a really cute proposal saying we should have like 10,000 to match the same ratio of representatives to population we had when the country was founded. This doesn't need an amendment it could just happen. And then gerrymandering and bribery is basically impossible - Interstate compact for Popular Vote (could happen) - Pack the courts. Controversial but possible? none of this stuff is going to happen unless we really really make it happen. So I'm not holding my breath. But it isn't totally impossible
I mean honestly I agree. Feel like adding states is more politically feasible though. And once there's a more equitable split of senators we won't have to pander to the Midwest as much
Americans vastly overestimate how deep their divisions are. It's actually pretty normal for countries to have real, viable separatist movements within them, and the US is nowhere near that. Quebec almost left Canada in 1995, Scotland almost left the UK in 2014, Germany was split into two separate countries for almost half of the 20th century, Korea is still two separate countries today, Catalan may or may not be part of Spain anymore (it's been a while since I checked), and nobody is even really sure how many Chinas there are. If anything, what's remarkable about the United States is how united you are, despite being a large group of people spread out over an entire continent. The vast majority of Americans speak the same language, follow the same religion, and -- perhaps most importantly -- identify first and foremost as "Americans". The fact that some of you vote for the "Have you ever hated the poor?" party and some of you vote for the "Have you ever hated the poor, on weed?" party is far less significant than the terminally online crowd would have you believe.
Importantly, the divisions are cultural rather than geographical. With the examples you list there's an existing border to trace with a bright red line whereas in the United States our divisions basically reflect electoral gerrymandering. Arizona exists as a state largely because Barry Goldwater strove to create a conservative paradise there. It's fair to say that the conservative demagogues we have in our south are attempting to repeat the process... but since they aren't starting with an uninhabited hellscape they're tripping over existing demography. You're right, however, that the Keyboard Kommandoes are definitely making much ado.
Other problems with "The Untied States" (read carefully) aside, how would we divvy up the military? Am I supposed to believe Greg Fucking Abbott is going to sign or act on an agreement of mutual defense? He's more likely to try and take you guys over, if China doesn't go for it first. Should I plan to move to a state where there's a lot of nuke silos? Should we start digging our own silos right now? How many Texasbucks does a nuke cost? Brexit went great? Seriously, that's a road to calamity. We're certainly at "disaster" already, I agree, and I understand your incentives, but no. "Fuck this stochastic civil war, let's do it up forreal"
Except it's a rural/urban divide. This is one of the main reasons the West tends to be more liberal overall: for all practical purposes, the hierarchy of the west was established by sea, and the major cities of the west were minor outposts until air conditioning and automobiles. Population in the west diffused from city to country. The east is the same just a hundred years ahead or so, such that the rural areas have less of a link to the urban areas. I think this is reversing. If I can pay you 2/3rds your salary to show up via Zoom? If you'll take 2/3rds of your salary because rent is 1/3rd what it is in San Francisco? You're gonna start complaining that there's no Whole Foods in Barstow, AZ. If enough of your friends do the same there's suddenly yoga studios.
I agree a lot with this take. There's really no line you can draw to get rid of the Republicans because they're everywhere. Hadn't considered how remote work would affect things, hopefully you're right.
My wife recently poked a hole in my theory by pointing out that having abortion be suddenly illegal is likely to deflate a lot of plans to move to, oh, thirteen states. I agree with her, she's certainly right. But there's also a broad contingent of Hollywood intent on boycotting Georgia, which is saying a lot considering how much production has moved there over the past fifteen years. Here's the thing: industrial production of whatever we're making is no longer tied to resources. It's largely tied to tax incentives and social conditions. For fifteen years it's been desirable for Hollywood to shoot in Georgia and Louisiana, no matter how regressive their governments are. For the past five or six, though, it's been tenuous. For twenty years it's been desirable for Hollywood to shoot in New Mexico. Which has gone from being republican-leaning in my childhood to being California-democratic. Sure - there's crazy there. They elected a libertarian governor (he ran as a republican, things went worse than expected). But in a global economy where broadband and organic food are enough, industry can pull out of a repressive state as fast as they can move in. I think this is going to suck. I think it's going to suck for an interminably long time, and I think it's going to suck amazingly hard. But I also think we're a long way from steady-state. Some jackass on Twitter tried to make this all the fault of everyone who didn't vote for Clinton because of course they did. He further scolded Democrats for only voting in national elections while Republicans reliably vote every time in every race. He wanted it to be true so badly, and so did his audience, that he didn't even bother linking to anything like facts. What he was trying to get to, which is much less hard to scold people for, is the fact that Democrats want their vote earned, while Republicans will vote Republican unless you've lost their vote. That's the question: how many Republicans are ready to opt out? how many will opt out come November? The basic problem the Republicans have is they've been pandering to their base for so long that their base has peeled them off fully to fascism. Most Americans aren't fascist; history would be much simpler if we were. I don't know how this resolves? But I know that if Republicans hadn't been a minority party for 40 years they wouldn't have to do all the shit they're doing just to get elected.
How would you split it? Northeast + Midwest / Cascadia + Colorado / Everything Else?
This shit is bananas. Hopefully this will serve as a call to action for congress, which has been painfully sleepy on all sorts of issues that are “settled precedent”. They need to recognize there are no rights that are guaranteed by the ultra-conservative reading of the constitution. They need to pass law protecting gay marriage, interracial marriage, contraception, gay sex, privacy generally. Nothing is safe. Not from these people.
For 20 years, Wahabi insurgents condemned the "cosmic enemy" of the Great Satan across the Atlantic. The United States was a handy rhetorical punching bag for radicals of all stripes, many of whom ended up on the American payroll, often wittingly. Some tried and failed to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993 and the country slumbered through it. Then in 2001 they succeeded and in doing so, launched an existential war that set back Islamic relations with the west by a century. Support for a total abortion ban has dropped from 21% to 13% since 1976 while unrestricted legality has climbed from 22% to 35% and yet, the laws conservatives have run on are Orwellian in scope. The very same interstate commerce clause that the Roberts court used to uphold Obamacare strikes down most of the laws about to come in force, yet for votes, the conservatives doubled down on their cosmic enemy. It's gonna be ugly. Prior to Pearl Harbor, the US and Japan had an uneasy trade dispute in which mainstream Japan figured American embargoes would end shortly after a sneak attack. After Pearl Harbor, the "deep state" of Japan knew the war was already lost while the Americans edged closer and closer to genocide. But Japan was never going to win. Everyone knew it. The only question was how bloody it was going to be, and whether the Japanese could hang on long enough to force a stalemate that didn't result in their utter cultural extinction. I'm fuckin' tired of living through history, man.
I keep trying to remind my pessimistic friends that things are going to get better not worse, and that we’re living through the transition. Predicting when it’s going to get better is about as easy as timing the market except way slower. Could be 5 years or 50, and that’s not a great consolation.
The idea that things have to or will always eventually improve is not really something we should be so bold in assuming anymore. Might've been a "boomers and before" thing.
There’s a general and a specific response I have to you. The specific: W got re-elected largely by pushing a wave of anti gay marriage state constitution amendments in 2004 that brought the creeps out to vote. DOMA had passed Congress with veto-proof majorities a mere 8 years previous and was signed into law by Clinton. Not even Obama thought gay marriage was a good idea until Sleepy Joe forced him to say so. The backlash was swift and punishing against the bigots. People like me who has never really even thought about the issue before were suddenly steadfastly opposers to any and all politicians who were anti-gay bigots, and a mere two election cycles after W’s reelection, Obergefel (sp?) was the law of the land. My point is that they can awaken beasts they want no part of awakening. It has happened before and will happen again. We’ve never seen the Court strip away a previously granted right. We’re in uncharted waters and it may get ugly, but the side of humanism will win. The general: “This time is different” has been the refrain since the day Jesus emerged from behind the rock and promised to return. Malthusian thinking is not new and is also perpetual. Eventually there will come a day when this time will, in fact, be different. But every generation thinks that time is now and has so since the beginning of time. I am, admittedly, a betting man, and I like betting on solid favorites. Takes a lot for me to take an underdog. The reason is that everyone wants an underdog to win and everyone thinks he’s smarter than the market, so the value is usually on the favorite. Same here. We have a cognitive bias toward the here and now, but past is prologue, and there’s no actual reason to suspect this time is different. We’ve come a long way in a short period of time with respect to individual rights and respect for each other. In the 90s when I went to high school “fag” was the #1 insult and “nigger” wasn’t exactly rare. As a result there were like 2 openly gay people in my 2500 person high school. That was <25 years ago. Try to see the forest for the trees. This is a backlash. And it hurts and it sucks. No doubt. And it’s going to affect a lot of innocent people. But the arc of history is bending toward Justice at an incredible pace.
Fuck, dude, my posse belted out Charlie Daniels' "Uneasy Rider '88" around the camp fire. The last time I hung out with Pete he trashed a convenience store and beat the shit out of the cashier because "he was coming onto me." There were zero openly gay students; when the humanities class brought in two HIV-positive homosexuals to talk about their life experiences, the school board had the humanities class canceled. Chris brought a gun to school and threatened to kill his girlfriend; he was expelled but not charged with anything and resoundingly mocked for only being able to scrape up a .22. My daughter, who is nine, has three transgender friends.
(citation needed) I'm... probably four hundred history books in, dawg. Optimist, pessimist, liberal, conservative, libertarian, socialist. From the discovery of fire to January 6. And here's what I'm saying: anyone who attempts to espouse perspective is getting shouted down right now. You're doing it. You don't know a tenth what I know about this shit and you're firmly at "my feefees are strong tho". Look - America isn't forever. But the massive hockey stick of progress in this here green world of ours? That's the wonder-twin powers of capitalism and democracy and it so overpowers every other system that it wiped out two entire fucking continents. Fits'n'starts, yeah, and the center of the world moves around but fundamentally, cultures with upward mobility have dominated their spheres of influence since the Sumerians. If we were sitting in Russia? Going "oh holy shit I guess the populace just prefers kings?" Well, Thing 1 I'da been outta there like fuckin' Dunkirk and I hope you woulda been too but Thing 2? Yeah. That's it. Experiment with democracy is fully done. But we're not. We're sitting in a country where half the population is coming to grips with the fact that the tiny splinter faction that believes in kings absolutely wants to take the country backward. You know, we had an amendment to ban booze. And then sixteen years later we had an amendment to ban the amendment to ban booze. In between we gave women the right to vote and moved the transition schedule. Now - are we in a place where we get four amendments in sixteen years? Abso-fuckin'-lutely not. And now? Now a big part of the country is about to go "and why is that exactly." Look, fucker. I got employees who trained up in delivering abortions ahead of this. I got money all over the country. You? You're at I-me-mine. And you're in Texas and for some reason, hell-bent on staying there. My sister got pissed off at the school board - now she is the school board. You want things to change? Fucking change things, don't insist that anyone attempting to assess the situation with clear eyes isn't panicking enough.
Yeah I keep getting shouted at for going "this is definitely bad, and as a provider of reproductive services it matters more to me than it does to you, but it is not the end of life as we know it because the overwhelming majority of the country disagrees with this decision." There's a real tedious liberal defeatism that requires beating up anyone who isn't as fully committed to screaming of the utter downfall of humanity at every fucking thing we predicted the Trump administration would do in 20-fucking-16. Mother Jones is fundraising off of some unnamed lobbyist who told the editor "people are going to feel scared and helpless, you should be a part of the solution" but from all I see? "The solution" is beat the shit out of everyone who tries to look at the situation with clear eyes.
It's been a whole week, and I just want to say that the response of Biden and Harris has been a fucking JOKE. The White House claims to champion a woman's right to choose what to do with her own body. I know that the executive is not the legislature. But I also know that they're fucking chickenshit when it comes to actually exploring policy possibilities, or even putting pressure on congress using public statements. It's FUCKING PATHETIC. Did they miss when the draft of the Roe v Wade repeal was leaked, six weeks ago? Did they forget to meaningfully prepare for when the ruling was given? And this is just one (albeit a MAJOR one) of several rulings passed down this season that the executive (OR Pelosi OR Schumer) could have responded to, tactically, that would have helped boost democratic turnout in the upcoming midterm elections, but, nah, these fucking idiots are living in an alternate reality where they don't have to sell themselves to the voters because they think a plurality is already on their side or something, and they don't have to do a goddamn thing? I've no idea. No fucking idea. I'm done. I have to vote for these stupid fuckwits because the other side are Sith Lords, but fucking hell, enjoy the Jedi shit-temple being slaughtered by Anakin DeSantis or whatever. FUCK
Nah. Ultimately, it's not funny-adjacent. Fuck.a bi partisan, passionately pro-buttsex contingent of judges
Yeah that's part of the "joke". I'm now scheduled for a vasectomy. Consultation and procedure. Same day.
Abortion is not a constitutional right and it's absolutely correct that SCOTUS brought it back to the states., That being said, as a Libertarian I think that any and ALL medical decisions should be between the person and their doctor and I think the government has absolutely no business in my personal, medical business.
so surely then, in the midterms, you will vote for the party aiming to codify those libertarian rights to freedom and bodily autonomy into law
here's the commentary I was sent and vibe with most maybe because it's the least optimistic