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America Is Growing Apart
- simonblack 4y agoPodhorzer isn’t predicting another civil war, exactly. But he’s warning that the pressure on the country’s fundamental cohesion is likely to continue ratcheting up in the 2020s. Seeing the US from outside, some of us think that it's going to be a neck-and-neck race between a another US Civil War or a big US peer-to-peer International War that happens first.
- myrryr 4y agoHonestly, I think that a split _without a war_ is more likely. Either states decide they are going to leave, and people decide not to stop them, or congress decides that "this isn't going to work" and each state has a vote more or less on which "side" they will land on. If you think that is crazy, remember the USSR split up much like this (more or less). Sure there is fighting these days but the split happened with less of a civil war than you would have expected. Also it works for the politicians. Say Democrats win the next election. By offering the split, the losing side still gains power, there is still an ideological enemy they can point at, without the need for a war. There is no requirement for a war in the case of a split, and honestly, it is very unlikely there would be one, since neither side gains anything out of having one. If anything it may avoid a civil war.
- thehappypm 4y agoThis would be absolute mayhem. The USSR was, at least in some sense, independent nations. The USA is nothing like that. Imagine what happens to the army and navy bases of seceded states. Do you think either side will just let them go?
- silisili 4y agoWasn't that exact scenario basically what started the previous civil war?
- thehappypm 4y agoExactly, and that’s the bloodiest war in American history.
- myrryr 4y agoHonestly, the states are pretty independent anyway. They have their own taxes, governance, legal system, laws, etc.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mezentius 4y agoThis isn’t a terribly comforting example, as the former states of the USSR have been fighting a slow-motion civil war since 1991, of which the Russian invasion of Ukraine is simply the latest chapter. See also Chechnya, Georgia, Nagorno-Karabakh, etc. I suspect a serious political divorce in the US, and the bad blood engendered, would inevitably lead to a similar outcome.
- throw-ru-938 4y agoAlso Tajikistan, which was pretty much destroyed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tajikistani_Civil_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tajikistani_Civil_War. Also Transnistria.
- s1artibartfast 4y agoThere is no need for a civil war if the US returns to a less federalist approach. People can spend more time improving their communities and states and less time worrying about what others are doing across a state boarder.
- whateveracct 4y ago
- lapcat 4y agoWhat about Minnesota or Illinois?
- whateveracct 4y agoWay too cold lol
- lapcat 4y agoWell... where exactly in the midwest did you want to live?
- Analemma_ 4y agoDefederalizing won’t work, for three reasons: - the red state/blue state divide isn’t actually real. What we have is a rural/urban divide, and the red/blue state phenomenon is just an artifact of that and whichever faction happens to be larger in a particular area. - Defederalization doesn’t fix human rights violations when there’s disagreement on what counts as a “human right”, which is the case for a lot of our divisions. - the reason the United States doesn’t have its own version of the Greek debt crisis is huge, permanents fiscal transfers from blue states to red ones. This wouldn’t work under defederalization and a bunch of red states would go bankrupt.
- landemva 4y ago>> the United States doesn’t have its own version of the Greek debt crisis is huge, permanents fiscal transfers from blue states to red ones. The Greek debt crisis happened because those southern countries joined the euro without centralizing country debts up to EU. Greece still had it's debt yet could no longer service it by printing it's own currency. At inception, USA federal took over State debts. Nebraska is a red State and has about $1000 State debt per resident. Not likely to go bankrupt before blue Illinois. https://www.270towin.com/maps/blue-red-states-2000-thru-2012 https://www.270towin.com/maps/blue-red-states-2000-thru-2012 https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/debt-by-state https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/debt-by-sta...
- edmcnulty101 4y agoI love that the media is reporting on America growing apart when the media is the reason. The Atlantic is one of the worst at being biased up there with Fox news and CNN. How about the media quits preying on unaware people's ingroup outgroup instincts and starts focusing on things that unite instead of divide.
- klyrs 4y agoThe two-party system is largely to blame for the rise of media polarization. Not to say that either the media or the political structure are "the most" responsible, but pointing fingers at either in isolation at best misses half of the problem, at worst deepens the polarization along another axis.
- sem000 4y agoThe two party system is definitely the root cause, but it is because the mainstream and social media is constantly amplifying the voices and viewpoints of extreme minority in each party.
- kadoban 4y ago
- esyir 4y agoYou mean like the current, openly promoted attempts to perform a similar "coup" on judicial decisions? There are very few cases where protest is illegal, and at a judge's residence to influence their decisions is definitely one of them. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1507 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1507
- kadoban 4y ago> You mean like the current, openly promoted attempts to perform a similar "coup" on judicial decisions? No, I mean an actual coup attempt, not _at worst_ an illegal protest by a biased reading of a poorly written law.
- Proven 4y ago