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It’s as “easy” to ‘peacefully’ split up a region as it is to ‘bloodlessly’ remove an arm or leg from one’s own body.
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Similarly…
This was also a violent shitshow of forcibly removing people from their homes to be in the “right” place. It did not work in either of these cases and it will not work here. Partian is a recipe for mass violence and ethnic cleansing on a massive scale.
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Honestly, the only case I can think of in the modern era of a peaceful split that has held is Czechoslovakia at the end of the Cold War. The vast majority of partitions in the modern era has led to violence and deaths. That is apparently okay with some people.
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And the next COVID variant will take care of that.
I’m thinking more about the Soviet dissolution. Estonia, Latvia, Kazakhstan, and Lithuania are all doing better since balkanization. Georgia had a successful peaceful revolution in 2003. And Ukraine has had a rocky few decades, but still seems happier being independent, if recent events are any indication. A few states have had it bad, but at least they have the right of self-determination.
New England, the Southwest, the deep South, and lower Florida have radically different cultures- I’ve lived in all four. An EU style federation of independent states makes more sense than forcing compromise on irreconcilable values and pretending we’re not already a dozen different countries in a trenchcoat.
… doing better than they were…
… but you’d put all of us though what they went through for the decades where they were “doing worse” than we have in the states in the past 200 years…
Meh… Hard pass. Some ideas are unpopular because they’re bad ideas. For the people living in the US there’s no reason to want to suffer and decline like that.
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The countries you mention were former imperial possessions. Their not wanting to be part of the Soviet/Russian empire wasn’t simply about partisan political or ideological differences or superficial cultural ones. It’s a fundamentally flawed comparison even before you get to the practical questions you’ve strenuously avoided answering.
Is not going to happen when some of those independent states are run by fascists, racists, and/or Xtianists who believe that America is theirs and won’t accept even the basic standards and norms of the federation (like, for example, Orban’s Hungary does with the EU).
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The right already believes that Karl Popper is some kind of radically utopian social engineer-- the word “piecemeal” has not dampened their fears.
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Ayncaps and Libertarians too. For predictable reasons they have a visceral negative reaction when he’s brought up.
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Yet people keep flipping to that page of the cookbook hoping it will somehow turn out more palatable this time.
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Well that idea and line of thinking certainly worked out well for Neville Chamberlain.
Even if it did work out well at the start, those fashy maniacs will not be satisfied in the long run and then will try to push everyone around just like the days before as history has shown how often that trend repeats.
Can you image how whiney those folks will be??? The Texas, Arkansas & Oklahoma joint union raising a stink at the UN about indian separatists and accusing Cascadia and the Great Lakes republic for funding and sending arms to them. If the country did split up into 5 to 7 parts, it will be a messy split with 2 of those new nations holding all of the economic power and water rights alongside Canada and Mexico on the continent.
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Looks like I chose the right corner if the country to live in. The one with all the water and power. 
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This is the Deep South, home of people like Martin Luther King Jr., or the Deep South, home of gerrymandering politicians who despise him? Because those are already radically different, despite the lack of border between them.
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Maybe you should call up Stacey Abrams to patiently explain that her ongoing and largely successful efforts to get Democrats elected is a stupid waste of time because she lives in the Deep South and there is no way the values of people in Georgia can ever be reconciled with the values of people in the United States of America.
When are all these progressive activists going to just get with the times and embrace living in a neo-Confederate hellscape?
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I’m not sure that the argument you’re putting forward is especially strong because, as you pointed out yourself, you have managed to live in all four locations. Did you have to compromise your own values in order to do that, or did you find a way to coexist while also staying true to your own core principles?
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Perhaps under some sort of Articles of Confederation?
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Maine receives about $17,000 in federal funds for every $10,000 they pay in. They’d go bankrupt under a dissolution.
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This assessment is completely clueless. The divide you highlight isn’t region by region, state by state, or even urban-rural. It’s house-to-house or even room-to-room. It’s person to person. And, to reiterate, the fascists are a small minority of the country.
FFS, stop pretending they are legion. They aren’t. And frankly, given half a chance and some societal feedback and education, most are redeemable. Why do you think the GQP leadership fight so hard against truth, science, and education? Because they know they can’t delude even the useful tools they have if the masses have even a bit of real information and basic critical thinking skills.
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I think that is an unrealistically generous and optimistic assessment.
