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> ...since each state is unique in it people and geography. This is just so wrong on so many levels it's hard to know what to respond to. Maybe try going outs

• rayiner 4y ago
  > Maybe try going outside, you'll find it's actually completly continuous, there is no species change when crossing state lines Culture is different even in nearby states. I grew up in Virginia, went to college in Georgia, and live in Maryland now. Right before the pandemic my parents moved nearby, after living in Virginia for 30 years. My dad pointed out the other day that Marylanders aren’t like Virginians, something he has realized immediately. Then it clicked for me: Maryland is part of the mid Atlantic (PA, NJ, DE) while Virginia is part of the south. Now I can’t unsee it: the accents, the odd mannerisms, etc. I married an Oregonian. Oregon might as well be Canada. Weird libertarian Canada. My family is originally from Bangladesh, but at least half of the cultural friction between our families comes from Oregon versus Virginia.
  • skissane 4y ago
    > Culture is different even in nearby states. Yes, but the US is arguably much more culturally homogenous than many other countries. Whatever differences you see between Virginia and Maryland, I think they are significantly smaller than the differences between Ontario and Quebec. New York and Alabama may seem far apart culturally, but how does that compare to the cultural differences between Uttar Pradesh and Kerala, or between Sokoto and Akwa Ibom?
    • rayiner 4y ago
      US cultural homogeneity is overstated by comparison to countries or regions with different languages. But Australia and Canada and the US are all English speaking—do they not warrant being separate countries? What about Australia and New Zealand? Ireland and Britain and Scotland? And language aside—are Denmark and Sweden more different from each other than New York versus Alabama?
      • skissane 4y ago
        > But Australia and Canada and the US are all English speaking—do they not warrant being separate countries? Canada is also French-speaking. There are some big differences in attitudes between the US and Australia on various topics - for example, Australians have a mostly settled cultural consensus in favour of gun control and liberal abortion laws, to give two examples, unlike the US where both are very heated political conflicts > What about Australia and New Zealand? New Zealand actually participated in the negotiations for forming Australia (as a federation of British colonies), but at the end decided to stay out-if history had turned out a bit differently, it might have been an Australian state not a separate country. In a lot of ways the differences between Australian and New Zealand culture are relatively trivial - different accents, different words for certain things. You get the same differences between Australian states, albeit to a more limited degree. However, there is one big difference: over 17% of New Zealand’s population have Indigenous (Māori) ancestry, and Māori have a common language and a great deal of common culture-leading to a significant Māori influence on mainstream NZ culture. Australia’s Indigenous peoples are less than 4% of the population, and divided among numerous languages and nations, which means their impact on mainstream Australian culture has been significantly smaller. > Britain and Scotland? One way in which the US is very homogeneous is that state politics aren’t particularly distinctive from national politics. Every state is the same two parties facing off against each other, the main political difference between states is the relative power of the two. Whereas, each of the UK’s four constituent countries have different party systems - the SNP only exists in Scotland, Plaid Cymru only exists in Wales, the major parties in Northern Ireland are different from those in the rest of the UK. Spain, Canada, India and Italy are other examples of countries in which region-specific parties are big players in politics. The only real example in the US are territories such as Puerto Rico, and if Puerto Rico ever became a state, it would likely start converging with the American political monoculture. Politics isn’t the same thing as culture, but political culture is part of culture, and greater political diversity is generally both a symptom of and simultaneously a promoter of greater cultural diversity.
• School-Cotton 4y ago
  I’ll disagree with the poster you’re responding to and admit that indeed, the states are not so culturally and geographically different that they need to be independent: surely, a rural hamlet in France is as different from Paris as any two parts of the US are. But there are good reasons other than those to hope the states evolve towards more autonomy. The US political system at the federal level is fundamentally broken, making it incapable of governing the country. Due to a combination of factors: first-past-the-post voting, skewed representation in the senate, media polarization, the filibuster, and others, it is unique among supposed democracies in allowing small minority factions to effectively veto any mildly controversial legislation. Because meaningfully modifying the constitution is functionally impossible, these issues simply can’t be fixed. But luckily, that isn’t true at the state level! Most states still are functioning, if imperfect, democracies, as evidenced by the very thing we’re discussing in this thread: they’re capable of changing policy in response to changing needs and wishes of the population, in a way that the federal level simply isn’t.