11-27-2016, 10:49 PM
What states, or contiguous collections of states, are economically viable? New York/New Jersey/New England, of course. Washington, Oregon, and California singly or together. Not Virginia or Maryland, full of government employees. Illinois -- except that the liberal zone is Chicagoland and the rest is about as right-wing as rural Texas. Minnesota? It would need to combine with Wisconsin... not likely if Scott Walker is Gauleiter. Colorado? New Mexico? Certainly not.
Anything is possible in America, including nuclear attacks in a civil war and Soviet-style gulags. At some point many will accept that it is better to work seventy-hour workweeks for the Master Class (thirty of those hours unpaid for the purpose of creating enough wealth to Make America Great Again) than to be murdered.
If Donald Trump becomes as horrible a leader as I imagine in the worst possible scenario -- and not simply muddled and incompetent -- then the best hope for America to get back freedom and dignity for the masses is for America to lose its next big war and have the whole rotten order toppled, whether by a popular insurrection or the dictates of the victors.
Anything is possible in America, including nuclear attacks in a civil war and Soviet-style gulags. At some point many will accept that it is better to work seventy-hour workweeks for the Master Class (thirty of those hours unpaid for the purpose of creating enough wealth to Make America Great Again) than to be murdered.
If Donald Trump becomes as horrible a leader as I imagine in the worst possible scenario -- and not simply muddled and incompetent -- then the best hope for America to get back freedom and dignity for the masses is for America to lose its next big war and have the whole rotten order toppled, whether by a popular insurrection or the dictates of the victors.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.