Since you’re here there’s something else on my mind.
This country would be better off certainly saner if it were smaller. We’re just too damned big violent, and crazy. We’ve got fifty States aka tribes that insanely hate each other. A re-arraignment into autonomous regions might make sense. We’d be one country paying taxes to the same crooks in D.C. like Canada, and Québec pay Ottawa. That and we gots Nukes so nobody out there gets any funny ideas…we’re looking at you Russia. However, we’d be less in each other’s faces.
My region would have seven or eight states. All of New England, and a few others say New York and Pennsylvania. Note I leave out New Jersey. They can join Alabama in a new Confederacy. On the other hand Brooklyn could be it’s own gleefully deranged country. Our national crest, and flag above. I’d run for Congress or Empress or something. Our main exports would be bagels with mustard ganja used bikes, and rats. Dead and alive your choice.
There's something to this. I don't think a republic can really operate successfully above a certain scale, well under population 300 mil. But I also don't think we could function as autonomous regions with DC still in charge; a lot of our problems come from the mentality of the managerial honchos clustered in the DC bubble. So I think we may eventually by talking about breaking up into separate nations.
ReplyDeleteIn that case, I would worry about the ability of the western seaboard to defend itself. The east coast has Langley, but what is there here? The Coast Guard? Hardly a mighty force. We'd have to raise taxes to pay for a new navy, and I don't see that happening with our economy collapsing. More likely Gavin Newsom - who is, by the way, a Davos-certified Young Global Leader, as is the governor of Washington - would just sell the whole state to China. Also, at some point Mexico will be looking fondly on its former territory, what is now the southwestern United States. That might get awkward. So I can see some downsides.
Still, any region of the contiguous 48 that has a reliable watershed and plenty of arable land should do well, and that's pretty much any place east of the Mississippi. I hope they don't fight with each other. Because I think this breakup is eventually going to happen.
Z
I was thinking about the west coast. You folks have so many scary variables. Back east it'd be much like how it was during the Articles of Confederation period. Also we have the likelihood of strong alliances. Canada and the European Union. My region might even try to join one or the other.
ReplyDeleteThe West would be just that...the wild West. Fighting over water food power use...rolling brown and black outs. Then the Mexicans and Chinese both looking you guys over for annexation. This might be why we may need to stay one country.
However more loosely connected.
Aka the Articles of Confederation...least as best I recall how it worked. Think NATO's Article 5. If one is attacked, we're all attacked. Mexico and China would have to be a bit more subtle than Putin in any land grab plans.
At least the generations long Culture Wars would fade and with it the threat of an equally long bloody asymmetrical civil war.
As usual all the choices tend from profoundly bad to horrifying.
Yeah, I think it's as you suggest, with one proviso: I looked up naval defense on the west coast, and we do have the Pacific Fleet, HQ'd in San Diego. That should be good for something; but the entirety of the US military is surely a much better deterrent against foreign aggression.
ReplyDeleteOtherwise it's all as we've observed: deepening drought in the west, with annual wildfires gradually turning most of California into a desert (not the first time this has happened), while the Willamette River Valley (in Washington) with its reliable watershed, fertile soil and sparse population will make a juicy target for wannabe invaders. So go east, young man, go east!
This bums me out, because to tell you the truth I really like the west. I like its weird spiky desert plants, its seriously big mountains and bizarro rock formations. If I leave, I'm going to truly miss those redwood trees and little orange poppies. Where else in the world do you find stuff like that?
Ever since the Civil War the Federal government has steadily suppressed the autonomy of the states, increasing especially with each major conflict. Maybe rolling some of that back by mutual agreement might lessen the intensity of internal conflict.
Occultists have suggested that the next big civilization to arise in North America will start appearing about 500 years from now, possibly in the Ohio River Valley. According to them, it'll be a genuinely American civilization, not a knockoff of Europe or someplace else like we have now. Should that prove so, it ought to be interesting.
Z
I know that area, so I'm not surprised it could be a seed bed for a future civilization. Good land water assorted resources not yet used up raped away from nature. So it will be there for that future. These and maybe among the most important. A centuries long tradition of literacy and relative tolerance. These may survive our fall and be passed on. This is what I like about history. Despite our addiction to horror there's always those nuggets of hope.
ReplyDelete