Taking the long view: Quo vadis, USA?

[Zorral]

It wasn't that Lincoln didn't run in the southern states, the southern states' power elite made damned sure his name was not even on the ballot.  Almost the ultimate in voter repression, isn't it.  Beating up, killing and blocking people from ever getting to the polls at all, is the ultimate, presumably, and the South did that back in the day, and is still doing it in some places. Again, Texas is a good place to look for that.

Indeed, the nameless is making specific threats to those who he feels are not doing the job and who crossed him.  There was a long article detailing this in the WaPo earlier this week to which I linked, I think in the previous thread?

 

[The Anti-Targ]

Perhaps the USA should go more towards the EU model. Maybe collections of existing states can form their own countries. For instance I don't think there is much point in the North Eastern states all being separate countries, but NY state and states north could be a single country. Given there is a red belt that goes North/South in the middle of the country it is entirely possible that a Texas+ divorce could have states all the way up to the Canadian border wanting to Join, at which point a 2 country solution isn't really viable. Might as well go the whole hog and end the federal structure entirely. But maintain free movement, a customs union, a single market, some common standards and laws and maybe even retain the currency, though some countries might want to have their own.

At some point Canada could be invited to join the customs union and single market. And maybe further down the line Mexico.

[Kalbear]

There is a weird but distinct possibility of the US becoming more states rights and allowing states to do a lot more groupings by themselves which make sense. We already saw that in Trump's time with some of the NE and West coast states banding together for certain things like environmental regulations, fire safety and later covid restrictions. There is a LOT of law against doing that more heavily, and there's a lot of reason not to do that sort of thing (having potentially 50 sets of regulatory bodies and the amount of border crossing restrictions alone...), but it is something of a natural outcome of the Republicans wanting more state power, less federal power, and less overall oversight. 

[Winterfell is Burning]

2 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Perhaps the USA should go more towards the EU model. Maybe collections of existing states can form their own countries. For instance I don't think there is much point in the North Eastern states all being separate countries, but NY state and states north could be a single country. Given there is a red belt that goes North/South in the middle of the country it is entirely possible that a Texas+ divorce could have states all the way up to the Canadian border wanting to Join, at which point a 2 country solution isn't really viable. Might as well go the whole hog and end the federal structure entirely. But maintain free movement, a customs union, a single market, some common standards and laws and maybe even retain the currency, though some countries might want to have their own.

At some point Canada could be invited to join the customs union and single market. And maybe further down the line Mexico.

That looks like a good idea until Russia decides to annex Alaska or China decides that, what the hell, let's just annex all of the South China Sea, Good look trying to get 50 different countries to agree on a strategy there.

[DMC]

27 minutes ago, Winterfell is Burning said:

That looks like a good idea until Russia decides to annex Alaska

Not to worry, Sarah Palin will keep an eye on them.

[Zorral]

Just don't forget all the nukes, airbases, military bases, naval bases Texas has.

 

[DMC]

CENTCOM is based in Florida...

[The Anti-Targ]

Given this thread is not just about the future of the USA for the USA, but also the future of the USA for the rest of the world, and all the other threads I could post this in are more or less ignored right now. I thought I would post this here:

https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/librarypage/climate-and-disaster-resilience-/The-Peoples-Climate-Vote-Results.html

The Peoples' Climate Vote a poll of 1.2 million people in 50 countries.

A couple of takeaways from a quick skim of some graphs:

The global view on whether there is a climate emergency is 64% say it is an emergency. India was among the polled countries with 59% belief in the emergency. Unfortunately China was not among the countries sampled, and that is a vital country for achieving global change. The USA is far from being the country with the highest proportion of people who believe there is a climate emergency, but 65% of the US people polled believe there is a climate emergency, which is just above average. You would think that represents a decent mandate to take significant action, across most countries and also the USA. BUT...

Somewhat worryingly on a global basis, of the people who believe there is a climate emergency only 59% of those people want urgent action and do everything necessary. 20% want to act slowly and with caution. 10% say we're doing enough. 11% say do nothing. Odd that people who think we are in an emergency say we should o nothing. perhaps they are fatalists and think any action at this point is futile and we'll just have to take our lumps.

The breakdown by country of support for urgent action and doing whatever is necessary is 70% in the USA. This translates to only 45.5% of the population in the USA being in favour of urgent, whatever is necessary action. This means there is not a nationwide mandate in the USA to act with urgency. Contrast this with the UK, Canada and Australia, the most culturally similar countries to the USA and the mandate to act with urgency is 62%, 56% and 54% respectively. Not huge popular mandates for Canada and Australia, but popular mandates nonetheless. I suspect that if the US data was broken down by state there would be states that are like the UK, states that are like Canada and Australia, States that are like the US average, and states that are like Pakistan with 29%.

New Zealand was not included in the poll, so I don't know how we stack up. I suspect somewhere between Aus and the UK, but closer to Aus.

The report includes the poll questions.

[The Marquis de Leech]

"If you want a picture of the future, imagine an orange combover flopping on the human forehead. Forever."

Trump isn't Caesar. He's too lazy and too hated by the military to be Caesar. The real problem will come when someone with half a brain picks up the Trump Playbook, and runs with it. At which point? You keep the trappings of the republic, but no-one believes in it anymore.

On the other hand, if this is First Century B.C. Rome re-enacted, it at least means that the USA won't develop real problems until the year 2300 or so.

[mcbigski]

18 hours ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

On the other hand, if this is First Century B.C. Rome re-enacted, it at least means that the USA won't develop real problems until the year 2300 or so.

1st century BC featured Marius v Sulla, and the various civil wars from the first and second Triumvirates.  Unless you're saying we're already entering the age of the Antonines/five good emperors.  Biden as Nerva is kind of a hot take, tbh.  Not as hot as Hunter as Trajan to be sure...

[Darzin]

I think the US is a very very hard state to make authoritarian, it's much more desentralized than Hungary or Russia, niether has anything nearly as powerful as the governments of California or New York, which in addtion to both having bigger economies then Russia and Hungary combined, have their own militaries which answer to them.  A US which slide into authoritarianism will break rather bend. 

I think all of that is idle speculation though. The US system is the oldest goverment system aside from Great Britian, the Papacy and some European microstates. We've had periods of tension before and come out fine. I think this craziness was ramped up by Trump and I think that no one else will be able to rile people up the way he did. Trump is such a unique character I don't think there can be a second Trump.