11-09-2018, 02:56 PM
(11-08-2018, 10:37 PM)David Horn Wrote:(11-08-2018, 06:21 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(11-08-2018, 04:43 PM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote: One conceivable possibility is that the USA may decentralize. We might see state lines redrawn. We could see semi-autonomy on a local scale, such as charter cities.
The catch is that Boomers-as part of a deal-may see their visions realized only in particular regions, or locally.
Would it be possible these days to have a polka dotted state, blue dots in a red sea, within a given area? You vote town by town which state you belong to? Every once in a while you can revote to join the other state, but not too often as it would be disruptive? Would you need a supermajority after the first vote? What sort of rules would be necessary to create such states?
Would the existing red states let their blue dots go freely? Vice versa? Would adding new states of a given color change balance of power in the senate, with two votes given per state? If you just allowed the blue cities to join in new dotty states, you would move to undo the old slave compromises, get closer to a representative democracy.
Lotsa questions...
If this happens, it seems to me that Yugoslavia is the model we would follow: fracture until the pieces are stable enough to exist, then reassemble enough to acquire reasonable mass without starting the fracture process again. At that, only Bosnia and Herzegovina managed to reunite, and that may be due to geography rather than politics.
That did not happen. Serbia and Montenegro split, and that was the end of Yugoslavia.
Even the most likely reunion of two former Yugoslav states, Slovenia and Croatia, has not happened. It is more likely that Macedonia would unite with Bulgaria than with Serbia. Bosnia and Herzegovina have been one legal unit since the Austro-Hungarian Empire took it over from the Turkish Empire in 1907, except during World War II.
...Most American states would be economically viable on their own. Whether some would stay together as they are is much in doubt. I can think of some obvious border changes: the section of Arizona north of the Colorado River might as well be a part of Utah, as Utah can far more reliably do highway maintenance on an expensive expressway (Interstate 15) that connects a part of Arizona to no other part of Arizona. Pittsburgh is so far west in Pennsylvania that it is closer to Cleveland and Columbus than to Philadelphia. Tennessee? Putting Memphis into Mississippi would improve both Mississippi and Tennessee. El Paso is effectively the capital of southern New Mexico, and at this point it might prefer to be in New Mexico, politically and otherwise.
But how about this solution: go parliamentary. We would have a Prime Minister instead of a strong President, and the vote of no confidence would solve lots of problems. If you say that someone like Eisenhower would have never been Prime Minister -- maybe he would have stood for Parliament as a well-deserved honor and become PM at some point. Maybe Governors would get automatic, formal seats in Parliament... non-voting due to the other responsibilities, but they would be relevant.
One gets fewer outsiders, but Donald Trump shows everything that can go wrong with an outsider as leader.
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.