What if...

[Femme Folle]

...the USA has evolved to the point where it needs to become two or three separate countries? It seems that the philosophical disparity between the country's political parties (and people) is greater than ever.

Anyway, it just occurred to me that maybe we've outgrown the original concept of the United States and it's time to move in a different direction.

Perhaps it could be split up like so:

New York, New Jersey, Delaware, southeastern Pennsylvania and all of New England would be one country.

California and whatever other western states they wanted would be another.

Whatever is left over can be yet another country or two. Maybe they can vote on it.

Alaska and Hawai'i can be independent, if they so desire.

People could choose which country to be part of, depending on their political leanings.

I know this is rather simplistic, and not very practical in reality, but it is something to think about. What if it's true? People get married and then grow apart, so what's to stop it happening on a much, much larger scale?

My parents have their passports now, so they could come and visit me in my new country, NewEnglandYorkadelphia. Or something.

[Brandenburger Toro]

What if...

Much more likely, I think, is a disintegration of the traditional party alignments. I think we're quite possibly on the verge of that at the moment, the battle-lines of the last twenty years have never looked so frayed...

[E10 Rifle]

What if...

It seems that the philosophical disparity between the country's political parties ... is greater than ever

I'd dispute that.

[Femme Folle]

What if...

Both points well taken. I suppose what has changed then, rather than the parties themselves, is the sense that as Americans we have to get behind the president, regardless of which party he belongs to. He was elected by our so-called democratic process, so he deserves to be in office and he deserves the respect of every citizen.

That was then. This is now. People aren't willing to blindly pledge their allegiance to someone they disagree so strongly with, just for the sake of being patriotic.

I don't know if people here became smarter, or just more cynical, but a lot has changed here since the 1950s (when men were men and women were in the kitchen baking pies).

Maybe I'm talking out of my arse, I don't know.

[NHH]

What if...

My impression of the US is that it might just be too big too. I just don't get a sense of much by way of common ground, and the different constituent parts seem to really dislike each other.

The only thing that possibly unites them is a sense of patriotism, but that's just another site of conflict, since there's such disagreement about what america is, what it should be etc.

Also, Angela Carter to thread.

[West End Zuma]

What if...

You mean break up the Empire? I think we're a long way from that no matter how far on the downward spiral things appear to be.

Rome didn't fall in a day and it took another 1000 years or so of greed, incompetence and mismanagement before the eastern half was history.

Besides, modern states are very hardy creatures. It's usually states with strong regional ethnic/religious based differences that are more liable to break apart.

[ursus arctos]

What if...

The Nine Nations of North America.

This book is far from perfect, and can even be described as facile, but some of the underlying political and cultural realities it describes are indeniably accurate. And it's almost 30 years old.

It ain't going to happen in any of our lifetimes, but I don't see any significant party re-alignment happening either, absent fairly radical changes in an electoral system that has proven highly resistant to change.

Our federal system has always allowed for a greater degree of regional variation in basic domestic policies (including taxation and public spending) than is generally possible in most of the rest of the world, and that flexibility is to my mind largely responsible for the fact that the country hasn't broken apart already. That modus vivendi, however, comes under significant strain when, as now, there are significant regional differences over foreign policy, when economic growth has halted, and when elements of that flexibility are under threat from the reactionary elements of the federal judiciary.

[San Bernardhinault]

What if...

I've always felt like there are probably 5 countries in the US.

The North-east, which stretches probably to Chicago, just, along the Great Lakes, and down to the Mason Dixon line, or possibly to DC; The Pacific Coast states (which might, or might not, include Arizona these days), The Mid-west and the south (basically "The Rest"). And two independent city states in Las Vegas and New York which have their own, nearly separate, identity and culture.

[Anton Gramscescu]

What if...

I'd forgotten about that nine nations concept, Urs. Thanks for bringing it up.

Some things have changed since it was written though, I'd say. Or maybe they were wrong in the first place. There's absolutely no reason to hive off gaspe from Quebec, for instance. WV should be part of The Foundry, not Dixie. Northern Ontario is in no sense part of the Breadbasket. The grouping of "the empty quarter" is a dumbass one that takes no account of the energy economy of Alberta (it's capital now would almost certainlu be Calgary or Edmonton) - and I think because of energy, Alaska would be more likely to end up with Alberta than it would be with BC.

But while there is some truth to these groupings, they simply ignore politics and economics, which are powerfully shaped by institutional structures. If having your own culture and a slightly different economy led inexorably to independent statehood then Quebec, "Padania" (sorry Urs), catalunya, etc - heck, maybe even Texas - would all have become independent decades ago.

And the assumptions underlying the cross-border unions is beyond facile. Yes, objectively, Manitobans (for instance) have far more in common with North Dakotans than Torontonians. But we grew up in a different media space, grew up hearing different stories and with different persepctives about how the world works, and, because of internal freedom of movement, are far more likley to have relatives 2000 miles away in the same country than to have them 200 miles away in a different one, thus creating horizontal unifying loyalties. As a result, Manitobans and North Dakotans choose to live in different polities which more or less reflect those differences of outlook.

[ursus arctos]

What if...

I think Nine Nations was both wrong in such details originally and fails to take account of relatively recent changes (like Alberta and the wave of immigration to BC), but still believe the concept is thought provoking.

Chubby, there is absolutely no f*cking way that Arizona and Northern Calfornia inhabit the same cultural, political or economic space. And one can make a good argument that Washington, Oregon and California should all be split east/west, as well as the traditional north/south split in California (which is less prominent than it was in 1980).

Genuine question to our only native Manitoban. Are the media spaces really that different? Did you only watch the CBC and read McLean's and the Globe & Mail? I had been led to believe (mostly by Canadian politicians) that such "distinctive Canadian voices" were constantly under threat from the dross produced south of the 49th parallel.

[Anton Gramscescu]

What if...

Well, a lot of that is protectionist nonsense from the local arts community, which until recently had no skill in telling Canadian stories in a way that anyone would want to see them (although Paul Gross' new movie Passchaendaele - due for release this fall - means that for the first time we will have our own equivalent to Peter Weir's Gallipoli. I almost started crying watching the trailer, for God's sake). And so the movies we watch are entirely America, the TV we watch is mostly American as is to a lesser extent the music we listen to.

But I was thinking less about television in general than I was about news, and about how what is covered and the manner in which it is covered affect the way people think about the political process. Think about it this way: There's about four important dates in the way any prairie community sees the world. There's the day it got its own newspaper (100-120 years ago). There's the day it started getting CBC on the wireless (75-80 years ago). There's the day it started getting CBC television (50-55 years ago), and there's the day it started getting cable TV from Detroit (30 years ago). As in all media waves, no new wave completely displaces the previous ones.

We still have a substantially domestic print media market (it's not all that national, though. Local papers will beat the crap out of the Globe and the Post everywhere - even in Toronto). Radio is almost entirely domestic, for what that's worth. It's only TV where there's a real American "threat" and to my knowledge pretty much everybody switches over when it comes time for the news. We'll watch CNN when there's a war or an election on (and also because we find it hilarious that old MuchMusic VJ and Mississauga boy JD Roberts has morphed into the very serious "John Roberts"), but that's about it.

Yes, competition from US media makes life tougher for everyone and slightly affects ("coarsens" might be a better word) our national debates. But our cultural elites routinely exaggerate our vulnerability to the lure of Americana. We're hosers and despite all the self-deprecation, we're proud of it.

[Guest]

What if...

But why should countries be split up just because the people in them are disparate? It's not as if the US is about to have a civil war over irreconcilable religious differences, say?

[ursus arctos]

What if...

Some of us would really like a chance not to be governed by reactionary, war-mongering idiots.

[Anton Gramscescu]

What if...

Those people tend to move to Canada (or, less frequently, Milan) rather than become secesionists, though.

[ursus arctos]

What if...

But that doesn't save us from constant verbal assaults at cocktail parties . . .

Just to be clear, as far as I know there is virtually zero secessionist sentiment in the US at the moment (what you hear are the likes polygamist Mormons and rabid Libertarians wanting their own state). It is, however, possible that that could change in the not too distant future, particularly if the tensions I outlined above continue to get worse.

It isn't so much that the are millions of Americans yearning to be free of Texan (or New Yorker) yokes, but rather that I can see quite a few people saying "hey, you know, that ain't a bad idea" were it to become a subject of serious discussion.

[Guest]

What if...

Some of us would really like a chance not to be governed by reactionary, war-mongering idiots.

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I know how you feel.