Hello NiftyNiblick,
I'm not predicting the future because I won't be around to see the not too distant future and also, I realize, that I don't understand how people think anymore.
When you get to be seventy-four, you may be alive but your world isn't. At this point, you're living in the next generation's world.
I don't understand why partition would necessarily precipitate a civil war except for one thing.
It's a mutually beneficial thing in every way except for Red State financial solvency.
The people who leach as recipient-state-residents understand that without being takers of Blue State tax revenues, they could not survive economically.
Take away that factor, and both sides come out ahead not trying to share the same government while having totally incompatible core values.
Unless you're in third grade Sunday school, you understand that we're not living in a "right and wrong" universe.
Right and wrong, even if they exist as actual components of life, play no practical role in our politics.
When people want completely different things, it's about what we want, not what's right.
No, we live in an "us and them" world. We're so polarized that unity would require the kind of capitulation that would bring down humiliation on both sides.
I see the United States as they exist now to be an untenable proposition.
The same condition that caused the partition of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia exist right now in the US.
We have factions who don't ideologically or culturally belong existing under the same government trying with little success to do so.
Economics aside, Red States and Blue States would actually get along much better as neighboring countries than as a single nation.
Coastal progressives like myself share no common social and cultural values with Middle America, but if we weren't making each other's laws, we could co-exist peacefully as neighbors.
Economics are the rub.
Even with amicable trade, the Red States could never survive economically without being propped up by Blue State tax money.
Assume, then, that nothing can be done and we're going to stay the way we are.
Hating each other as we do,
and I dismiss as disingenuous liars anybody who suggests that we don't hate one another,
we'll rot from the inside.
At that point, China controls the entire world with no balancing super power. opposite them;
and the would be Pollyanna "unifiers" will have to bear the blame.
We don't have to be haters. Hate is something that people choose to do. I decided a long time ago that hatred does not work for me. So I don't hate. I don't think hatred is inevitable. I see it as something that can increase or decrease in society.
I simply do not appreciate things I disagree with. That's it. I don't dwell on those things. I look for ways to change what I can; and I accept what I can't.
There is this religious thing called the serenity prayer. I don't get into the religious side of it, but the underlying message is sound.
Have the courage to change the things you can, the serenity to accept the things you can't, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Made perfect logical sense to me, so that's what I try to do.
Look at my PIP. It's really nothing more than the application of the serenity prayer.
I accept that people are going to be mean in an internet forum, and I can't change that.
I do know that I can place them on Ignore, so I do that. I've changed what I can.
I have devised a simple way to discern the difference between who I think belongs on Ignore and who doesn't.
I draw the line precisely where they begin to downtalk me. Whatever goes on between other people I have no control over, so I generally don't make that a PIP violation. The only exception to that is racism.
I am amazed at the number of people who can be really mean to some people, but when somebody like me comes along and promises to be nice, then they can be nice too.
I put out nice; and I get nice back.
I think it's like smiling. I noticed a long time ago that lots of people will smile at you if you smile at them first. But if you don't do it first, they won't always do it. So I like to smile first. Most people smile back, but not all. I have to accept that. I have to figure they are too preoccupied or hurting. I just hope my little smile helps in a small way that I will never know. I like seeing lots of smiling faces. It's worth getting the odd grumpy look or indifference.
