[card_zero]

I was just thinking the exact opposite, maybe the US needs to split into two nations. I was drawing border lines in my mind around central regions and wondering how things would pan out if they seceded. The lack of geographic continuity would be a problem for the coasts, but perhaps they could join Canada.

[lenkite]

Won't this be impossible since you have the urban/rural areas of the same state belonging to these two different nations ? At-least impossible without a gargantuan civil war that makes the 1861 war look like a toddler's quarrel.

[verisimi]

Didn't the south try this, before being forced back into the "union"?

[card_zero]

True, that was an awkward episode. Now you've got me reading about the motivations for the civil war. I mean obviously slavery, but why go to war rather than let the Confederacy be a separate nation? Seems the fighting was over the political future of yet-to-be Arizona, New Mexico and Oklahoma (if I've got the right territories there), and whether they would have slavery, once populated.

[themaninthedark]

Because the south decided to start shooting up Federal Forts and killing tax collectors.

[tstrimple]

Blue areas aren’t states. They are cities. Democratic voting counties account for over 70% of the nations gdp. Conservative counties quite literally cannot support themselves.

[squilliam]

> Blue areas aren’t states. They are cities. Democratic voting counties account for over 70% of the nations gdp. Conservative counties quite literally cannot support themselves.

But they can feed themselves.

[a2tech]

Not without illegal labor they can’t.

[carry_bit]

GDP is a flawed measure, and that's especially true when you look at the 70% figure in detail. For details see https://treeofwoe.substack.com/p/gross-domestic-fraud

[ruthmarx]

> Conservative counties quite literally cannot support themselves.

And yet they hold democratic counties hostage. Somewhat like parasites.

[DeathArrow]

Conservative counties produce goods and food. Democratic counties produce rent, interest, financial fees, mortgages, insurance.

[ruthmarx]

Conservative counties produce goods and food that can be produced anywhere.

Democratic counties produce goods that generally require an education and are significantly more valuable. Think big tech, big pharma, engineering, etc.

Democratic counties would be just fine without conservative counties. The inverse is not true.

[CapricornNoble]

I think you are ignoring the lag time inherent in radically shifting international food supply chains, even if you have the money to pay almost any price for goods.

If Conservative counties stopped sending food to Democratic counties, the Democratic counties would collapse into chaos LONG before they are able to secure alternative food supplies. It's a Hell of a lot easier to go 90 days without "Big Tech & Big Pharma" than it is to go 90 days without grains and chicken from flyover country.

[ruthmarx]

Blue states have farms as well, it's just not the primary industry. I'm certain blue states would have enough food to last until they could negotiate to trade with other blue states or international partners.

[card_zero]

It works the same way in other countries, such as the UK and Turkey - rural areas are where the traditionalists live.

[ruthmarx]

It's much worse in the US though because the gap is so much wider. Even in the UK or Canada or Australia, the right is not opposing climate change or healthcare or anything reasonable to the same extent as in the US.

[mrkeen]

The last time the right got voted in in Australia, they revoked the carbon tax that the left had recently set up.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/southern-crossroads/...

[cmrdporcupine]

They absolutely are here in Canada. Especially around climate change because Canada is an oil exporter. And they will be emboldened by what just happened in the US.

Alberta outright banned renewables development for 6 months and then slapped a huge set of restrictions on them after that "moratorium" was lifted. A tax on electric car owners added. The conservative parties nationally are on a constant drum beat about the national carbon tax and it's doomed. Weak emissions caps we have are also doomed. Any little things that have been done for the last 10 years will be undone.

At a recent party convention in Alberta, the ruling party passed a climate denial resolution as official party policy.

Amazingly lots of people on this forum trying to sanitize what these people are about.

[smnrchrds]

Meanwhile the governing party in my home province in Canada is doing this:

https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2024/11/06/UCP-Members-More-CO2-H...

[ruthmarx]

How on earth does anyone think that is a good idea?

Sigh. It's always a minority of humanity that has to save the rest from themselves, as they kick and scream and resist every step of the way.

[ncruces]

Try splitting Georgia, where Harris wins a few populous counties with a 30 to 70 pp margin, and Trump leads the lump of smaller counties with a 30 to 70 pp margin.

They reelected the DA that's prosecuting Trump on one of the populous counties, on the same election where the state swung further towards Trump.

[a2tech]

In the past, maybe. Trump won the popular vote last night. He swept almost everything, as painful as that is for me to say. There is no way to divide the country without mass migration which would never happen.

[DeathArrow]

That would need some population exchange.

[cmrdporcupine]

Cross the border from here in Canada into very "blue" New York and you'll drive through a huge swathe of what is actually "red" Trump country in Western New York.

Outside of the urban areas even "blue" states are red, or "purple."

The reality is that America voted for this guy. It's not nearly as regionally divided as liberals in America want to think.

For me, it means not going there anymore. I just won't cross the border for any reason.

[a2tech]

Rural Canadians are eating up trump style rhetoric as fast as it can be minted.

Canada is next. There’s no escape from this kind of madness.

[cmrdporcupine]

Yeah I live rural Ontario. Last municipal election people's lawns were covered with idiotic "Stop Woke" signs. And my parents are in rural Alberta. Oh boy.

Not with a bang but a whimper, etc. etc.