Sarah Palin would run for President.
A rather simplistic thread overall, throwing around scary-sounding words like “theocratic” etc.
But the US at least extensively subsidizes its agricultural industry/
The Prussian junker class came from a society and state which was aristocratic and lacked a clear civilian control of the military which the United States has. If anything the military is getting less hereditary as the military gets more diverse (ie people like Colin Powell).
Hell no.
There are always small numbers of people screaming that America is so divided it’s on the edge of secession and “more divided than it’s ever been since the Civil War” but it’s always been crap.
Hell, we’re vastly less divided than we were in the 1960s.
The US didn’t break up when Bush was re-elected in 2004 and it’s certainly not going to break up now.
Nation. No plural.
But I guess we’re supposed to ignore the dozens of instances when war did ensue over a breakup. Some friendly advice: Don’t go to Vegas until you understand odds better.
As for the OP, I agree. Every time we can’t, as a nation, reach consensus on a particular item the best course of action is to dissolve the union. But it’s funny to hear this from the left, since they are the ones who push for federalizing everything under the sun. Don’t want the good folks in MS to have so much input in how your state runs things? Well, don’t keep giving more and more authority to the federal government, of which MS is a part with their 2 Senators and 4 Representatives.
What strikes me most about that map is that there is very little solid red: some fairly small parts of Georgia, Alabama, and Utah, and that is about it. There is lots of pale pink (which presumably indicates sparsely populated Republican areas), but also quite a lot of blue, both deep and pale, and lots of purple. Presumably many of those purple areas are returning Republicans to Congress (or the House would not be like it is), but they obviously have lots of Democrats too.
It seems to me it indicates how Republicans are only holding on their political relevance by the skin of their teeth right now, and this can’t last much longer (at least not while the party remains in its current form).
I dunno - he might be onto something.
Every time I see him post about how awful I, and everyone like me, are and always were but always getting worse, I keep having sudden desires not to share the same room/state/nation/planet/species/dimension with him.
I’m pretty sure the colors aren’t just vote share, they’re some convolution of vote-share with population density. So the prominence of dark blue and light pink just shows that places with high pop. density tend to vote Democratic. Hardly a revelation, and I don’t think you can really read much into it beyond that.
Illinois, a Great Lake State, would have to remain with the ‘Union’. Yes, downstate is R, but Chicago has always controlled Illinois. I suppose, if the south end wants to, they can join Missouri and sell corn and hogs and beef and soy beans to us by driving through the open border to Chicago. I would appreciate being allowed to attend a few Cardinal games each year. Tourism might work well for the R’s.
The split is not one so much of physical attributes, but, more of one that allows our 60% of the population to develop our own more liberal society, and they, to return to the middle ages.
There’s also the issue that many seemingly “blue” areas are red on some issues, and vica-versa. Take Vermont: first state in the country to legalize gay unions (blue) and also with the loosest gun regulations in the country (red). When it comes to social attitudes, Vermont is clearly very liberal. But when it comes to gun control, it has more in common with Wyoming and Arizona than with its neighbors Massechusetts or Connecticut.
Or compare Iowa and Nebraska. They’re side by side smack in the middle of flyover country. Most people would probably classify them both as red states. But Nebraska has a “defense of marriage” law on the books which defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman, while Iowa has found gay marriage a Constitutionally protected right. Socially, the two states are quite different. Sometimes I think the only thing the two share is the Missouri River.
The country isn’t so much red and blue as it is purple. That’s as true for states as it is for individuals. That would make dividing it up into anything other than 50 completely autonomous regions very tricky.
You really need to get out more. How many different regions of the country have you actually lived in?
There’s been little discussion here on the rather important topic of nuclear weapons. IIRC, after the breakup of USSR, Russia ended up with all the Soviet nuclear weapons (excepting of course those sold to terrorists and rogue countries for cash to jumpstart Central Asian economies). Before planning proceeds too far, I think we’d better come to an agreement on which states will be forced to renounce nuclear combat and give up any missiles and bombs on their soil.
For reference, here is msmith537’s list:
The People’s Republic of Pacifikstan
New New England
The Confederate States of Rednecland
North and South Flyoveria
The City-state of New York City
Texas
N.Y. City people have always struck me as hot-tempered. I expect the Flyoverias to dissolve soon into civil wars. I doubt if there will be much support here for nuclear-armed Rednecland or Texas. Should we split the nukes between the People’s Republic and New New England?
But the military is actually getting LESS diverse in many important ways: recruits are increasingly more rural, more Southern, more politically conservative, and less likely to come from the most economically privileged classes than the nation as a whole. And the country has less social mobility now than it had for most of the Twentieth Century. Those trends, taken together, are worrisome. And the “clear civilian control” is only there as long as the average soldier regards the President as someone with legitimate authority over his General or Admiral.
Right now I don’t think we have a significant problem. But I’m not at all sure we aren’t on the path which old eventually lead to one.
The problem you’re facing there is that the launch sites for the land-based nukes are almost entirely within the Flyoverias and Texas. How do you think New New England and the People’s Republic are going to seize control of them? I think you might end up with a Cold War II on your hands, with the coastal powers controlling the submarine nukes and some of the aircraft nukes, and the interior countries controlling the rest of the aircraft nukes and the land-based ICBMs, and everyone frozen in place for fear of nuclear retaliation from the opposite side.
If you don’t think there are disadvantages to being unable to feed yourself as a country then you are simply ignorant of the history of the Sovet Union and China in the past 45 years.
Russia ended up with all the Soviet nukes? Sure, but not automatically. Belarus transferred its nukes, willingly, some 5 years after the USSR fell apart. Kazakhstan did the same about 4 years later, and the Ukraine did the same by 1996. But there was no requirement for them to do so. As it ends up, none of those countries felt they needed nukes, but Russia certainly had no ability to mandate they turn them over, it was done because the leaders of those countries felt it was in their best interests. In the liberal wet dream of all red states leaving the union it’s a joke to imagine those states giving up the nukes. It would be nothing at all like the USSR breaking up.
[Hijack] Is this the broken window fallacy? Because it sure smells like it to me. [/hijack]
It smells of nonsense to me. The nation of Bluecoastia could write the most draconian gun laws imaginable, and they’d be just as (in)effective as the current US drug laws are. Cocaine can’t be grown in the US, it all comes from abroad. Yet despite severe penalties leveled against drug dealers and smugglers, and major amounts of police effort expended searching for illegal drugs, we can’t stop literally tons of cocaine from pouring across our borders every year. Why would Bluecoastia have more success with stopping a lucrative illegal firearms and ammunition trade?
At least the gunrunners in Redistan would be getting rich. I just hope they use their ill-gotten gains for some worthy purpose (but I somehow doubt they would).
What a depressing thread. I also make it a point to defend New York and California whenever I hear someone refer to those states as not being where “real” Americans live. I will continue to think of New Yorkers and Californians as being every bit as American as someone from Wyoming, Arkansas or Wisconsin.
E pluribus unum
It’s only depressing if you take the OP’s original post seriously. So far I don’t see too many people in his thread doing that (for obvious reasons).
This was my point, albeit hidden as sub-text. I find it easier to contemplate a nuclear-armed Kazakhstan than a nuclear-armed Confederacy. 
YMMV.