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This is exactly why a focus on the one event that happened this week would be a big mistake. That was just the latest most extreme result of a much deeper probl

by wrs 6y ago

This is exactly why a focus on the one event that happened this week would be a big mistake. That was just the latest most extreme result of a much deeper problem, it was not the problem. Those responsible will of course be using the above technique to turn it into an isolated occurrence that has nothing to do with their own activities. The saving grace may be that the Leader himself didn’t stay on message and continued calling the rioters “patriots” after the “shocking” event took place. That was way off script. But if we don’t figure out the deeper problem, the next Leader may be much more competent.

wincy 6y ago
I think the “deeper problem” is thinking that Californians and Iowans share anything in common at all. Or the idea that 300 million people can be effectively governed by a democracy when they have vastly different goals and values. In my ideal world, the states could just peacefully break up into a looser group of nation states, with a shared military against outside threats. We’d invert the tax pyramid where the city and county get the most taxes, and the federal and state governments get the least. If we could have a non violent transition away from the existence of an unimaginably massive federal government. I doubt that’s what will happen. There’s simply too many people employed by the government for it to contract peacefully. I fear for the future, and think that arresting and throwing the book at people at the Capitol is just going to increase the number of scary things happening.
- cle 6y ago
  What you described is how many founders envisioned the US. Granted some weren’t for benign reasons. And I think that’s an important point...many of the civil rights advancements made in the US might have only been possible because the strong federal government was able to drag many states kicking and screaming away from immoral practices.
- pjc50 6y ago
  .. and allow the southern states to reinstate slavery? Sorry, the civil war ended the prospect of the states being quasi-nations. As did the cold war. You can't counter a hegemon with anything other than another hegemon. To fragment the US is to accept the rise of China.
  - wincy 6y ago
    It’s not like the United Nations would stop existing. It’s also not as if interstate trade would stop (I mean, unless a state tried to literally enslave its population, that’d stop interstate trade really quick). If South Africa couldn’t manage Apartheid due to pressure from other nations, there is zero chance Louisiana could magically reinstate slavery. This is an absolute straw man.
  - phs318u 6y ago
    I have an over-active imagination that turns on a dime. It will often automatically (without conscious direction) conjure up instant scenarios based on whatever I'm reading or hearing. Reading your comment I instantly visualised President Trump of the Confederate States of America announcing the construction of their friendly ally Russia's first military base on their northern border. Brains are funny things. If I were a writer it could make for an interesting alt-history novel.
- ReactiveJelly 6y ago
  "thinking that Californians and Iowans share anything in common at all" I wonder what kind of policies / issues you mean by this, so I thought of some strawmen: 1. How to name the streets in San Francisco 2. The insurance pool for social safety nets 3. Abortion Category 1 is issues that are obviously local, and are already handled locally, because there's no point wasting federal time on them. We both agree that Iowa shouldn't care what a street in SF is named. Category 2 is where I oppose your plan. A bigger insurance pool will amortized risk better. If all the states split up, wealthy people can vote their taxes down by moving between states. And the poor are still stuck in whatever state they were born in, which is probably a state with crappy benefits. For welfare, I want the opposite - I think almost everything should be federal. It's a bigger pool, and the wealthy can't dodge taxes by moving. Category 3 is a strawman - Obviously abortion is not related to longitude, so if the states split up and CA allows abortion and Iowa bans it, obviously one of them is wrong. There might be a subtler point that California's politics would advance if they weren't spending time trying to legalize abortion in red states, and Iowa might also get more done if they weren't ... doing whatever Iowa is doing. (This is just an example, for all I know Iowa might be very left on abortion already) What specifically do you think _is_ different about those two states? Don't the citizens need police, firefighters, food stamps, public transit, and public roads anywhere in the country?
  - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
    > Obviously abortion is not related to longitude, so if the states split up and CA allows abortion and Iowa bans it, obviously one of them is wrong. This seems odd to me. Why wouldn't it be good for advocates and opponents of abortion to each have a place where they feel comfortable and their values are respected?
- spaetzleesser 6y ago
  That structure probably falls apart in a world where there is internal trade and multinational corporations that can do tax between regions. Now you suddenly need to negotiate foreign policy and internal trade agreements and slowly stronger federal institutions start to grow. The shared military also doesn’t live in a vacuum but also depends on foreign policy.
- thesteamboat 6y ago
  > I think the “deeper problem” is thinking that Californians and Iowans share anything in common at all. This is preposterous and I am flatly surprised that more people are not challenging it. Our differences may be more salient, but they are vastly outnumbered by our similarities. We speak the same language, eat the same foods, watch the same sports. We don't have vastly different goals and values -- we have serious differences of opinion about a tiny fraction of public policy and our shared culture. What's more, the differences that do exist break down less along state lines and more along the distance from a city center. There are urban areas in every state, and there are rural areas in every state. Iowa and California are different inasmuch as (by the 2010 census) 95% of Californians were urbanized and only 64% of Iowans were.
- mr_toad 6y ago
  > In my ideal world, the states could just peacefully break up into a looser group of nation states The idea that all Californians think alike, or that all Iowans think alike is very strange. If you look at the election results there are plenty of people in both states on both sides.
- perl4ever 6y ago
  >I think the “deeper problem” is thinking that Californians and Iowans share anything in common at all I think just the opposite, there is virtually no difference between "red states" and "blue states", because nearly every urban area is "blue" and a few minutes drive away, every rural area is "red", no matter what state you're in. And there's also the split between people who go to college and people who don't. I think these are obviously the fault lines of today and therefore we aren't going to see a repeat of certain states seceding and something like the original Civil War.

by wrs 6y ago

wincy 6y ago

I think the “deeper problem” is thinking that Californians and Iowans share anything in common at all. Or the idea that 300 million people can be effectively governed by a democracy when they have vastly different goals and values. In my ideal world, the states could just peacefully break up into a looser group of nation states, with a shared military against outside threats. We’d invert the tax pyramid where the city and county get the most taxes, and the federal and state governments get the least. If we could have a non violent transition away from the existence of an unimaginably massive federal government. I doubt that’s what will happen. There’s simply too many people employed by the government for it to contract peacefully. I fear for the future, and think that arresting and throwing the book at people at the Capitol is just going to increase the number of scary things happening.

cle 6y ago
What you described is how many founders envisioned the US. Granted some weren’t for benign reasons. And I think that’s an important point...many of the civil rights advancements made in the US might have only been possible because the strong federal government was able to drag many states kicking and screaming away from immoral practices.
pjc50 6y ago
.. and allow the southern states to reinstate slavery? Sorry, the civil war ended the prospect of the states being quasi-nations. As did the cold war. You can't counter a hegemon with anything other than another hegemon. To fragment the US is to accept the rise of China.
- wincy 6y ago
  It’s not like the United Nations would stop existing. It’s also not as if interstate trade would stop (I mean, unless a state tried to literally enslave its population, that’d stop interstate trade really quick). If South Africa couldn’t manage Apartheid due to pressure from other nations, there is zero chance Louisiana could magically reinstate slavery. This is an absolute straw man.
- phs318u 6y ago
  I have an over-active imagination that turns on a dime. It will often automatically (without conscious direction) conjure up instant scenarios based on whatever I'm reading or hearing. Reading your comment I instantly visualised President Trump of the Confederate States of America announcing the construction of their friendly ally Russia's first military base on their northern border. Brains are funny things. If I were a writer it could make for an interesting alt-history novel.
ReactiveJelly 6y ago
"thinking that Californians and Iowans share anything in common at all" I wonder what kind of policies / issues you mean by this, so I thought of some strawmen: 1. How to name the streets in San Francisco 2. The insurance pool for social safety nets 3. Abortion Category 1 is issues that are obviously local, and are already handled locally, because there's no point wasting federal time on them. We both agree that Iowa shouldn't care what a street in SF is named. Category 2 is where I oppose your plan. A bigger insurance pool will amortized risk better. If all the states split up, wealthy people can vote their taxes down by moving between states. And the poor are still stuck in whatever state they were born in, which is probably a state with crappy benefits. For welfare, I want the opposite - I think almost everything should be federal. It's a bigger pool, and the wealthy can't dodge taxes by moving. Category 3 is a strawman - Obviously abortion is not related to longitude, so if the states split up and CA allows abortion and Iowa bans it, obviously one of them is wrong. There might be a subtler point that California's politics would advance if they weren't spending time trying to legalize abortion in red states, and Iowa might also get more done if they weren't ... doing whatever Iowa is doing. (This is just an example, for all I know Iowa might be very left on abortion already) What specifically do you think _is_ different about those two states? Don't the citizens need police, firefighters, food stamps, public transit, and public roads anywhere in the country?
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  > Obviously abortion is not related to longitude, so if the states split up and CA allows abortion and Iowa bans it, obviously one of them is wrong. This seems odd to me. Why wouldn't it be good for advocates and opponents of abortion to each have a place where they feel comfortable and their values are respected?
spaetzleesser 6y ago
That structure probably falls apart in a world where there is internal trade and multinational corporations that can do tax between regions. Now you suddenly need to negotiate foreign policy and internal trade agreements and slowly stronger federal institutions start to grow. The shared military also doesn’t live in a vacuum but also depends on foreign policy.
thesteamboat 6y ago
> I think the “deeper problem” is thinking that Californians and Iowans share anything in common at all. This is preposterous and I am flatly surprised that more people are not challenging it. Our differences may be more salient, but they are vastly outnumbered by our similarities. We speak the same language, eat the same foods, watch the same sports. We don't have vastly different goals and values -- we have serious differences of opinion about a tiny fraction of public policy and our shared culture. What's more, the differences that do exist break down less along state lines and more along the distance from a city center. There are urban areas in every state, and there are rural areas in every state. Iowa and California are different inasmuch as (by the 2010 census) 95% of Californians were urbanized and only 64% of Iowans were.
mr_toad 6y ago
> In my ideal world, the states could just peacefully break up into a looser group of nation states The idea that all Californians think alike, or that all Iowans think alike is very strange. If you look at the election results there are plenty of people in both states on both sides.
perl4ever 6y ago
>I think the “deeper problem” is thinking that Californians and Iowans share anything in common at all I think just the opposite, there is virtually no difference between "red states" and "blue states", because nearly every urban area is "blue" and a few minutes drive away, every rural area is "red", no matter what state you're in. And there's also the split between people who go to college and people who don't. I think these are obviously the fault lines of today and therefore we aren't going to see a repeat of certain states seceding and something like the original Civil War.