Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2017/10/02/sausage-to-catalonia.html
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This is not going to be pretty.
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This is the future! Secession for everybody who needs it, and more small-scale/custom government.
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Indeed, an intriguing idea: solve divisive political culture by creating more silos of ideology.
It’d work great. Right up until Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas all merge together and start thinking that Missouri looks like a nice addition, if only they’d just cooperate…
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You make it sounds like repeating feudalism would be a bad thing.
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The level of bungling on Madrid’s part in handling this whole situation has been stunning. Even a heavy-handed thug like Franco was more competent. This mishandling bears the hallmarks of this kind of Spanish leader:
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I don’t think it would. As long as I get to be a Lord.
It’s proven difficult to get anywhere with Democracy when your campaign slogan is, “Vote Regular in '16! Your Village will be Spared!”
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Consent of the governed. It’s a neat concept.
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Cheers!
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If we define “abstention” as “any of abstention, living in a town where the riot police successfully shut down the polling station, or being legitimately afraid of being seriously injured in attempting to access the polling station”, I guess…
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Both you and @popobawa4u have important ideas here.
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Feudalism is a top-down system of coercive organization. It has more in common with the contemporary Westphalian nation-state than it does with localized strictly voluntary government.
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Whether Catalonia gets out of Spain or not, I sense a government’s gonna fall soon.
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I don’t know about that, Farage’s Islamophobia has struck me as being rather provincial, and he sounds like a capitalist. So I doubt if our views have much in common.
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“The destiny of Man is to unite, not to divide. If you keep on dividing you end up as a collection of monkeys throwing nuts at each other out of separate trees.” – T.H. White
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That’s pretty much the deal. When you are a captive citizen, you are prevented from most meaningful social organization. That unity is something we each create, rather than something we are subjected to. I can’t speak for all countries and laws, but having been a communist in the US for more than four decades, I can tell you that the law here exists to prevent unity. People are strongly dissuaded from forming collectives or communes - except for a few symbolic kinds that consolidate wealth and power, rather than distributing it. YMMV
Capitalist nation-states require their citizens to be selfish. So to be emancipated, people need to be able to secede and organize.
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Ironically, if Madrid had stayed out of it, the referendum may well have failed… polls had it failing by about 8 points before the crackdown started. And of course those who favor remaining under Spanish rule are a lot less likely to brave Spanish riot police to vote in an election that Spanish authorities claim is illegal.
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Spain’s GOV really screwed the pooch on this one.
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Somehow, I don’t think that concerted inbreeding (to extinction as with the Habsburgs) explains, or will handle, the current Spanish government.
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