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> People seem to take the unity of U.S. for granted. But there is nothing granted about it. I agree completely. It’s hard for us to imagine seeing it break up
by ericmay 5y ago
> People seem to take the unity of U.S. for granted. But there is nothing granted about it.
I agree completely. It’s hard for us to imagine seeing it break up but there is nothing that prevents that except our general desire to live together.
I think large democracies with functioning governments are very unstable over long time horizons. The reason I mention functioning is that if the government of a large democracy is largely non-functional than you can mostly keep doing whatever you want with whatever cultural norms you have where you live. But a functional one will actually pass laws and actually enact things that affect your life that you may disagree with - look at the current abortion stuff. There is no reconciliation to be had on many of these issues. Or look at the Republicans rhetoric around the debt limit “they’ll have to do it without us” - yikes.
The US has lasted as long as it has because for most of the time the country was somewhat homogenous and where it wasn’t you could “go fuck off into the woods” and nobody would bother you. With that being less of a possibility the country was always on a collision course for instability, but WW2 and the Cold War kept people united around a common enemy that threatened basically held beliefs. With that gone we will either have a new uniting enemy, or we’ll eventually just form some different governments.
- ryandrake 5y agoAn entire bloody Civil War was fought over (among other things) whether or not it was possible to break up the USA. The outcome was: States cannot leave. The Constitution does not address secession, but the Supreme Court has consistently interpreted the Constitution to have created a union that is in their words, indestructible,”[1] and ultimately the Civil War seems to have pretty convincingly established the illegality of unilateral secession. 1: https://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2012/11/14/good-question-can-a-state-secede-from-the-union/ https://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2012/11/14/good-question-can-...
- ericmay 5y agoDefinitely interesting but could you explain or expand upon what your point was here?
- ryandrake 5y agoI guess I was just responding to: > It’s hard for us to imagine seeing it break up but there is nothing that prevents that except our general desire to live together. That thing that prevents it is evidently the [EDIT: Supreme Court's interpretation of the] Constitution, so it's not just a matter of losing that general desire to live together. We'd have to at the very least go through the difficult process of amending the Constitution to allow it, in order to actually legally break the union up.
- dragonwriter 5y ago> That thing that prevents it is evidently the Constitution Laws don't prevent things. Laws provide a justification for people who want to prevent things fo act to prevent them. If there is no will, the law does nothing.
- ericmay 5y agoAh I see. I don't see a legal dissolution occurring so that wasn't something I was really tracking (but hey maybe that's the black swan event?). Much more likely IMO is another civil war (unlikely though because we're fat, happy) or the system becomes so dysfunctional that people aren't willing to shed blood to get rid of it, but they largely ignore it.
- inglor_cz 5y ago"where it wasn’t you could “go fuck off into the woods” and nobody would bother you" This is an important point. Due to the progress in instant communication, all politics is now national.