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It's right for everyone to be questioning the foundations of our political order, because our political order isn't working great these days. My assessment is

It's right for everyone to be questioning the foundations of our political order, because our political order isn't working great these days. My assessment is that the US is a structure built on several solid conceptual pillars, and one pillar that is absolutely broken. The strong pillars are concepts like democracy, civil rights, economic freedom, and science. The broken pillar is "E Pluribus Unum" - the idea that we'll all naturally converge on some set of shared ethical values with enough reasoning, debate, and discussion. In reality, the opposite happened - we've split into at least two separate nations. There are millions of people in the US who believe that gun ownership is basically murder and abortion is a sacred human right, and millions of people who believe the exact opposite. These groups cannot be expected to share a political structure, especially one that vests such enormous amounts of power in the central government. And this point of violent disagreement is merely the beginning, there are dozens of other bitterly contested ethical issues. Americans should begin to ask what we actually gain by being locked in a political system with millions of people with moral systems that are utterly different from our own. Remind me why it is so great to live in such an enormous and unwieldy country? What do I gain, exactly? I believe that those who follow this train of thought will see that the only answer to our present problems is National Divorce. Texas should be governed by Texan values; California should be governed by Californian values.

Der_Einzige 2y ago
You can have stronger federalism without a “national divorce”.
rokkamokka 2y ago
Remember that this is really by design rather than something that just happened by itself. The creation of an us-vs-them is critical in order to keep the status quo for the ruling class (otherwise _they_ would eventually be the "them").
energy123 2y ago
Right diagnosis, wrong treatment. My treatment would be to first try to address the root cause of polarization, which is in large part social media. Somehow eliminate the foreign troll farms that have been caught running far-right and far-left Facebook groups for example. Mandatory proof of humanness. Then try less extreme civic measures like more Federalism and a weakening of the executive.
- seabass-labrax 2y ago
  I'm not American, but it doesn't sound to me like this is less radical of a solution. For a country that espouses the principle of free speech so passionately - in my experience, from both sides of the political divide - for the USA to require a form of 'proof of credibility' before allowing a citizen to participate in social and political debate would be for it to lose perhaps the most important part of its identity. Would that situation preserve 'America' more than a collection of not-so-united states which would probably retain bilateral trade and travel agreements, as well as the now-immutable, deep-rooted cultural ties?
krapp 2y ago
>Texas should be governed by Texan values What happens to the Texans who don't ascribe to whatever the government decides are "Texan values?" Forced march to the California border? Re-education camps?

Der_Einzige 2y ago

You can have stronger federalism without a “national divorce”.

rokkamokka 2y ago

Remember that this is really by design rather than something that just happened by itself. The creation of an us-vs-them is critical in order to keep the status quo for the ruling class (otherwise _they_ would eventually be the "them").

energy123 2y ago

Right diagnosis, wrong treatment. My treatment would be to first try to address the root cause of polarization, which is in large part social media. Somehow eliminate the foreign troll farms that have been caught running far-right and far-left Facebook groups for example. Mandatory proof of humanness. Then try less extreme civic measures like more Federalism and a weakening of the executive.

seabass-labrax 2y ago
I'm not American, but it doesn't sound to me like this is less radical of a solution. For a country that espouses the principle of free speech so passionately - in my experience, from both sides of the political divide - for the USA to require a form of 'proof of credibility' before allowing a citizen to participate in social and political debate would be for it to lose perhaps the most important part of its identity. Would that situation preserve 'America' more than a collection of not-so-united states which would probably retain bilateral trade and travel agreements, as well as the now-immutable, deep-rooted cultural ties?

krapp 2y ago

>Texas should be governed by Texan values What happens to the Texans who don't ascribe to whatever the government decides are "Texan values?" Forced march to the California border? Re-education camps?