A Question for the "Big Picture" Thinkers: Should the US Divide Itself?

I'm not talking about war. I'm not even saying it is possible to do so ..... but let's consider this from a higher level .... philosophically, if you will:

The US is huge.

Huge population, huge land mass, huge consumption.

And now it has one more 'huge' .... a huge political divide. We all laughed (some not as much as others) when, after ElectionFrawd04, the map showing the US and Dumbfukistan made the rounds.

But was that such a bad idea? Now, I'm not calling for a damn thing .... I'd just like to see the idea discussed. What are your thoughts about this? Is it a bad idea? A good one? Navel gazing that might be a fun Saturday afternoon schmooze?

Some subtopics might be the mechanics of making it happen, the economics of such a divide, how popular support for the idea might be garnered, the possible borders. I'm sure you can think of other aspects of it as well.

So please, let's share some thoughts about it.

<ope>

and apparently...

140 some odd years after the war ended...

The Confederacy won!!!

Who'd a thunk it???

:mad:

How to carve up the US is always a fun subject for discussion. The US does appear to be too big for it's britches sometimes.

Look at a map sometime. All those countries are independant from each other, but have some common links, like the euro.

I've think it would be a great thing if there could be a "Country" that the fundies could have the kind of regulations,rulers, and laws they want, and not have to feel the liberals were forcing them to accept anything! Another "Country" could have the exact opposite and please the liberals in the same way.

I'm not sure something like that could EVER happen within the boarders of North America.

I would love it, as I'm sure many others would as well, but I'd sure have to move!

Florida, South Carolina, and North Carolina back to the Old Confederacy.

Tell them its all theirs but don't ask for any help.

Then you better make room at your house for me! ;-)

I'm not sure just where I'd move though. I have to admit, it's nice having a older, but nice, 1800 sq ft house on an acre of land and my taxes are $850/yr. I don't have wage taxes and a right to work in the city tax etc. like I had in Pa.

I suspect, if the BIG BLUE states didn't have to support all the red ones, things might change there, and maybe those stupid taxes would go away.

not too much has changed. The same blue/red divide. I love the idea and would support it. I'd miss Yellowstone Park but maybe they will let me visit. The main problem with the idea is We have everything important in the blue states..they would never let us go They need us too much.

They would take all the wealth and herd us into states that have little except poisonus varmints and lousy weather.

I've think it would be a great thing if there could be a "Country" that the fundies could have the kind of regulations,rulers, and laws they want...

Even if these so-called Christians had their own country, do you still think they'd leave us the hell alone? No, they'd come pouring over the borders, moonshine in one hand and a rifle in the other, invading and looting. They'd have Rulers like Bush who would include us in the Axis of Evil and with his finger on the button, I'd give us about five minutes before we all fry.

very big fences.

Primarily because, in so doing we would be setting up yet another competitive rather than cooperative environment. United we stand and all that.

I'd have to chew and digest your notion a good bit more before responding with greater particularity. But, thought I'd share my initial reaction.

Lots to chew on ...... no clear answers .... and that's why, maybe, its just a Saturday afternoon navel gaze ....... or not

,...how's 'bout thinking in terms of humanity. Maybe, we should consider pulling ourselves away from those who not only refuse to contribute to the greater good, but also usurp from the common value.

In other words, let's take territory out of the equation and have a discussion about fighting for common human interests.

Wouldn't that be a better approach?

and have-nots by shutting things down in the "blue" states and moving them to the red states, my prediction is that blue state people will simply follow the jobs, the red states will, at the least, become diluted... maybe even turn blue...

In the end, Bush, Cheney, and Rove will fail.

the Civil War, would there still be slavery there? Perhaps not, but if for even a second you can imagine it to be possible, then you'll see what breaking up the US could do.

Bad idea, in my opinion. You could accomplish the same thing by taking down the Federal government, and just increasing "states rights". We all know what kind of abuses that would lead to.

easier to have slaves if you don't have to feed and clothe them. Just work the hell out of them, give them minimum wage, no medical and let them live on kraft macaroni and cheese until they drop from old age, no pension. But if they have the rapture to look forward to, they won't care about it.

It's called the Grand Old Plan. :sarcasm:

and it survived until the 30's in the form of sharecropping and was replaced only as the widespread adoption of industrial agriculture made exploitation of bondage labor unprofitable.

Would we be better served by splitting into geographical regions such as the Northeast, Southeast, Midwest, Southwest, and Pacific Northwest, or would it be a terrible hindrance?

If the Peak Oil scenario plays out anywhere close to prediction, production of goods and services will be much more localized - no more "3000 mile salad", to use Kunstler's famous example. Will having new, "internal" borders between regions make much of a difference when most of the travel options we take for granted today will no longer be available?

and all those maps and the wistful idea of a United States of Canada and Jesusland, there was one rather complicated map that showed this 'urban necklace' of what I will call 'Secular America'. It consists of the major metro regions of the east coast, west coast, lakes, southeast and southwest. It is non-contiguous. It votes overwhemingly blue.

Outside of Secular America is The Christian Republic. They don't believe in evolution, they think that fags should burn in hell, they are fine with killing a-rabs: the more the merrier, they are vastly white and ardently religious, and they hate all of us.

The question we are faced with in our current political crisis is will TCR impose its will, its vision of society on SA? Can we find some way to peacefully resolve the vast gulf that separates us? Or are we in for a long and bloody nightmare?

Even in the red states, the urban areas tend to be more liberal (better education, more union membership, cultural diversity) and vote Democratic.

How do you divide a nation based on an urban/rural split? You really can't. We can only probably be grateful that cities are difficult to sack, or they would have tried that by now.

with all their earthly belongings in these sorts of things ....

..... but I know Canada faced this issue when Quebec put their knife in the table. Cooler heads prevailed and Canada remains Canada.

That may be the answer.

But there's a part of me who wants to consider - in the abstract - the picture of how this country might divide in a way that gives everyone a better life .... however they choose to define that.

Ideally it would be just that: SA its own nation, TCR its own nation. How that works is beyond my limited capacity. One of the problems is that religious fanatics are not satisfied with keeping their fanaticism to themselves: they find us and our way of life abhorent.

No doubt about it - how nice it would be to live free from the death grip of their ignorance, their un-Christian hatreds, their insatiable bloodlust. I'm tired of these mouth breathers trashing my American heritage with their support of fascist principles and illegal wars.

The fact that they plan on legislating their religion and corporate creed onto the rest of us alone is enough to give them the boot.

Aside from the urban/rural split, though, any divide wouldn't leave us with contiguous borders -we'd have them nested everywhere, like vipers thirsting for revenge, in places like Idaho.

I suppose all we could do would be to give them Dixie, and hope they all move there in droves. I think their lust for power and control would win out, though, and they'd still insist on dragging us down into their rathole.

But, we wouldn't be able to throw our weight around and shout "Were #1" anymore. Tsk. Tsk.

I certainly wouldn't mind seeing the pacific northwest become the Switzerland of North America.

that I live in the Northwest,wonderful,beautiful place.

Rules about borders and crossings? Water rights and other resource management? Pollution controls, i.e., say a state's biggest economic factor is fishing, but another state (or country)'s run off is polluting the water and having an adverse impact on the fishing economy?

Then, how would an agreement be reached about enforcing any of these rules?

State laws will become the national law, or if the State were to join Canada as a new province, the state laws will become provincial laws.

It is best if the blue states were to secede as a group and join Canada at the same time. We don't want Bush to bomb Sacramento or Chicago in order to squash the rebellion.

US into two separate countries and not necessarily new provinces of Canada. What if Canada doesn't want any new provinces?

Your irreconcilable differences comment is very appropriate to me and I find myself wondering if we wouldn't be better off trying to amicably split as opposed to a violent, nasty situation, but I can't figure out how to make it happen.

If the Mason/Dixon were used as a border marker, lots of us southerners would freeze in the winters if the blue or secular America was to the north. Oil and heating costs are more in those areas and Peak Oil would only make that worse. I'm already thinking solar energy and growing food indoors in the winter so that could be adapted to colder areas.

Could some sort of a "Divorce Committee" be established to hash out the details of amicably splitting? It seems as though each state to itself would be entirely too fragmented.

Bush would have to attack Canada to prevent it from taking the seceded blue states.

As to an amicable split, there is no such thing. However, secession does not necessarily lead to bloodshed. The bloodshed, if there is any, will be in Jesusland when the American Taliban finds itself no longer restrained by the blue states and proceeds to impose its Gospel on all non-believers at the point of the sword.

It was fiction of course, but had a lot of thought behind it. Dividing the roads, currency, federal lands, federal corporations, mail, native rights, parks, rails. Very detailed the problems associated with dividing a country.

The dountry was or at least seemed a lot bigger than it is today.

It took days or weeks to travel around.

No tv or radio or internet or telephone.

Many people were born lived and died within a 20 mile radius of their home. People spoke in much bigger accents than they do today and had much more regional political issues.

If peaceful separation was unacceptable then, I don't see why it would be acceptable today.

PS - I think Tom Delay would make a good General Benjamin (Beast) Butler. I could see a story of General Delay's March to the Sea to make California howl.

To rape them of resources.

Back then there were riots in the streets. America survived.

I lived through that era and I never felt like there were two americas. Perhaps it was the confusion of the 'youth movement' that made the divisions seem more generational than regional/cultural. After the hawks caved in the early 70's there was this interim period, that lasted perhaps until the Iranian Embassy Fiasco and the Reganization of America in the early 80's, where it looked like we were going to develop into a laid back ecologically aware 'green' society. How I miss those days. What a bad dream the last 20 years has been.

I lived through the same time period and my views are pretty much in line with yours.

There was, to be sure, more open unrest in the country. There was overt violence (on both sides - the passion of youth and the blowback from the grownups) back then. But at our core, I don't think we were anywhere near as intractably divided as we are now.

and I remembered discussions of race war.

Speaking of which, does anybody here think that they'll be done with the conservatives if we just cut them off into their own country? Somebody several posts up suggested giving them Dixie, what about the black people there who have made their homes, farms, and businesses there for generations? When racial oppression is given a free hand in Dixie, are we going to let black people deal with it on their own?

Yes, I think it will be a LOT harder to ignore than Sudan. We'd be going to war with Jesusland over the human rights outrages taking place there. I'd rather we settle our differences in the US Congress, and the courts.

The radical hippies vs the hard hats. Maybe it was because of the draft and the fact that the "under 30" crowd stood a very good chance of going to Viet Nam. Today, people who are going to Iraq are doing so because they volunteered. Whether they knew that they'd be going to Iraq when they signed up is another matter.

If my memory serves me correctly, the Viet Nam war was the big defining issue of the period. There , of course, were the civil right acts and the race riots in the 60's that added to the turmoil. Today there are more reasons to hate Bush than just Iraq. There is a sense of the rich oppressing the poor, the religious right against normal people, Bush giving America to the big corporations, etc.

I get the impression that people today are more apathetic than they were in the 60's and early 70's (except for DU). Maybe the news media has something to do with that. We also don't see the anger expressed in art and music like we did in the 60's. Where are all the anti-war songs today?

I see your point, but I will stand by my original statement based on the violence in the streets of America that occurred back then.

I don't feel the hope now that I felt then. I'm the only one of my friends with no grandchildren and, though I love babies and children, I'm mostly thankful not to have another generation of loved ones to worry about. I'm not sure the country or the world will be here another twenty or thrity years. I never felt that way before, not even when we were ducking and covering back in the Fifties. I guess I always thought the grownups would fix things and America was the best country so everything would be OK. Have learned a lot of hard lessons since then.

If this were a marriage, we would be in divorce court by now!

The other side wants to turn the US into a Holy American Empire, while we want the old Republic back.

As the remnants of the old Republic are swept away, by some devices such as doing away with the Senate's filibuster, so are the reasons for remaining in the Union.

The United States of America exists in name only! It is time to go our separate ways, and let the rest of Jesusland continue on its merry way to their inevitable destruction.

1. A Congress who have royally f-cked things up by kissing up to the Corporate beast at every turn instead of serving the very people who elected them to represent them in the first place.

2. A War that's cost gazillions of dollars that is based on a lie and that most people don't support.

3. Not for National Health Care or Strong Social Programs that help the people of this country who should ALWAYS come first!

The list is endless-I could go on and on. We are being bled dry and getting absolutely nothing for it!

:grr:

Oh yeah, but we're so much safer from the "terrorists" now. :eyes:

Always a question in messy divorces...

:evilgrin:

proportional distribution of the military's assets, with manning of the new militaries the province of each new 'nation'. Layer on that an initial mutual coorperation treaty. Kinda like NATO. After that ... it goes wher it goes .......

I'm navel gazing ... :)

Seriously, I hadn't thought that far at all. Surely there are enough bases around to go around ... and probably fairly. Certainly the high tech, high cost, most difficult to replace bases (generally Navy bases) are at least all along the coasts in a fairly even distribution. On the east coast we have Portsmouth, Newport, Philly (sorta still), Norfolk, Charleston, Jacksonville. On the west coast, they're in Washington, Oregon (I think), San Francisco, and San Diego ..... and Hawaii.

Air Force bases, if not evenly distributed, could, at least for a time, collocate with civilian airports (Charleston, SC was, and may still be, like that). Army and Marine bases are probably the easiest to move around and relocate if need be.

But this is a knee jerk answer and could be totally wrong. :shrug:

Since this is a Saturday navel gaze, how about this notion ..... ?

Establish two (or four or six or eight) 'countries' ... each with different ways of life. Social experiments, let's call them. (Yeah, I know, we're not lab rats ... but hey ... this is a navel gaze, so why not gaze?)

See what works out. A theocratist state next to a socialist state. A secular state next to a religious state. A warring state bewteen them all.

I can only imagine ......

the 'warring theocratic state has taken over and sees no particular reason to cede any power to anyone.

Santa has little desire to visit Dumbfuckistan...

why can't two "nations" occupy the same ground, with some citizens of one "nation" and other citizens of another?

Why couldn't like-minded people from many different geographical locations combine to create a virtual nation?

The super wealthy already do this "extra-national" thing.

but I can't get my head around it. Can you 'slain a bit more?

have their own "federal" government and let the RW wack jobs have theirs.

Services, like roads, police, fire, etc, could be provided by a local political entity to which citizens subscribe.

Parts of this idea are very simple, but parts get pretty complicated, but I'm out of time.

:-( !!

could be our president? Dalai Lama--chief of protocol ? Or perhaps we could persuade George Galloway to come to our new country and help run things. This is fun to think of.

That way we'd be adding the tempering coolness of the north and the hot passions of the south, and we could get past this divisive "illegal immigration" issue. There'd be plenty of room for people who want to come here.

an issue that, if we were in a perfect world, Canada, Mexico and the US would work like the EU ... soveriegn but completely open. Benefits earned would be universal among the three countries as would be taxation and rights, etc. The combinng of the three populations would have a tempering affect on everyone.

That's a whole other solution, really, to dividing. I dare say if we added Mexico and Canada to our mix, the whole would be much more liberal that the whole of the US is now.

Of course, the robber barons would simply see it as a way to take Canada's and Mexico superior natural resources for their own.

CA has more Bush voters than NC and SC put together. How will you fit all of the Bush voters from the "Blue" states in the Southern states? :P

to the states with the highest number of electoral votes. Sounds crazy? Well They won't be able to convince ANYONE living in a Liberal only state that Cheney or some other evil PNAC Dominionists bastard won ANOTHER election if the Liberals OWN all the electoral votes! Maybe this country could get something done if we all decided to live among each other!

I have a funny feeling most of the RW nut jobs wouldn't notice the large influx of liberals moving into these states. I know this is a pipe dream, but let me just say. I think the RW has done EXACTLY that. They've relocated their people to the places they think they need their votes. My "red" state was fairly liberal until a butt load of Texans started taking it over.

but I cannot imagine living in a land with no civil rights. No rights for gays. No rights for the poor. Only those with money have any rights, which is where Bush is heading us.

No, I cannot imagine that.