In the New York Times this weekend, Kurt Andersen has an op-ed on how the United States has become so deeply polarized that it just might be inevitable that the country splits in two (gift link here):
I continue to be of the opinion that our current "polarization" is something specific to the Trump Era, which really flooded the Biden Era. Maggie Haberman said recently on Ezra Klein's podcast something I heard often before, but today it clicked: "There is no Trumpism, only Trump." Which also means: "Without Trump, there is no Trumpism." This is a fever like the McCarthy Era, and eventually a fever breaks. At that point, we all may return to our regular lives.
People who live in dense areas have more to gain from public expenditure and a broad tax base for supporting it; people who live in less dense areas have less to gain and less to draw on. And people in the suburbs might be somewhere in between. That's sensible.
But something more is going on than just divvying up the surplus...
This is complicated - rural counties do gain from public expenditure, though they face the problems of being unable to capture economies of scale, and of a low tax base; I don’t envy their elected county councils. Rural places are not always more economically conservative - I look to the history of my old province of Saskatchewan, and the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, which, among other things, brought universal public health insurance to Canada.
On cultural matters, it has forever been the case that rural areas will be more conservative (it’s a theme through many nineteenth-century novels) - there is a greater tie to the land, a smaller range of possible economic opportunities which leads to wanting to protect what they’ve got, and less exposure to the foreign and new that urban life brings.
The New Hampshire libertarians with whom I'm involved talk more seriously about secession than anyone I've encountered, and even they are not unanimous about whether it's viable. Instead they're pursuing assortative citizenship by destroying progressive utility in the state and appealing to freedom conservatives outside of it. States are small in New England so the strategy makes more sense out here than it would in the left half of the country.
For the reasons you state, "real hostilities" are unlikely to be state-based (that is, based on our 50-state map). Have you read "The Turner Diaries" (Timothy McVeigh's inspiration)? I think the scenario painted in that piece of white nationalist canon is more likely: worse than war.
I'm just the reverse of you. I have a set of lovely Red (not Leninist!) neighbors with whom I get along perfectly, and I could move a mile towards the city center and be surrounded by Blue neighbors (who could easily drive me up a wall . . . I'm easily driven).
I lived as an adult through the height of 1960s political fragmentation and after '68 I couldn't see how we'd ever escape it. We did, imperfectly, and then things came back worse a half-century later. I read some comment yesterday making fun of Gerald Ford's statement, "Our long national nightmare is over," because, well, this one's far worse. (Maybe, but there's something to be said for 50,000 fewer combat deaths). But I think Ford was right: he wasn't saying we were done with nightmares. I think we'll grope our way out of this one, imperfectly and uncertainly. I would like to hang around for that gradual awakening, and I'm consoled to think there isn't a chance in hell I'll be around when the next dream begins.
Agreed. On the other hand, "no choice but to live together" does not imply "a feasible way to get along". Northern Ireland as an example.
I continue to be of the opinion that our current "polarization" is something specific to the Trump Era, which really flooded the Biden Era. Maggie Haberman said recently on Ezra Klein's podcast something I heard often before, but today it clicked: "There is no Trumpism, only Trump." Which also means: "Without Trump, there is no Trumpism." This is a fever like the McCarthy Era, and eventually a fever breaks. At that point, we all may return to our regular lives.
People who live in dense areas have more to gain from public expenditure and a broad tax base for supporting it; people who live in less dense areas have less to gain and less to draw on. And people in the suburbs might be somewhere in between. That's sensible.
But something more is going on than just divvying up the surplus...
This is complicated - rural counties do gain from public expenditure, though they face the problems of being unable to capture economies of scale, and of a low tax base; I don’t envy their elected county councils. Rural places are not always more economically conservative - I look to the history of my old province of Saskatchewan, and the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, which, among other things, brought universal public health insurance to Canada.
On cultural matters, it has forever been the case that rural areas will be more conservative (it’s a theme through many nineteenth-century novels) - there is a greater tie to the land, a smaller range of possible economic opportunities which leads to wanting to protect what they’ve got, and less exposure to the foreign and new that urban life brings.
The New Hampshire libertarians with whom I'm involved talk more seriously about secession than anyone I've encountered, and even they are not unanimous about whether it's viable. Instead they're pursuing assortative citizenship by destroying progressive utility in the state and appealing to freedom conservatives outside of it. States are small in New England so the strategy makes more sense out here than it would in the left half of the country.
For the reasons you state, "real hostilities" are unlikely to be state-based (that is, based on our 50-state map). Have you read "The Turner Diaries" (Timothy McVeigh's inspiration)? I think the scenario painted in that piece of white nationalist canon is more likely: worse than war.
I'm just the reverse of you. I have a set of lovely Red (not Leninist!) neighbors with whom I get along perfectly, and I could move a mile towards the city center and be surrounded by Blue neighbors (who could easily drive me up a wall . . . I'm easily driven).
I lived as an adult through the height of 1960s political fragmentation and after '68 I couldn't see how we'd ever escape it. We did, imperfectly, and then things came back worse a half-century later. I read some comment yesterday making fun of Gerald Ford's statement, "Our long national nightmare is over," because, well, this one's far worse. (Maybe, but there's something to be said for 50,000 fewer combat deaths). But I think Ford was right: he wasn't saying we were done with nightmares. I think we'll grope our way out of this one, imperfectly and uncertainly. I would like to hang around for that gradual awakening, and I'm consoled to think there isn't a chance in hell I'll be around when the next dream begins.