glennds wrote: ↑Fri Jun 10, 2022 4:36 pm
Federalism is brilliant in its aspiration. The question always becomes at what point is the differentiation from one state to the next counter productive?
I'd say I'm a fan of differentiation up to the point where it starts to threaten the "United" in United States of America.
Unthinkable things are possible. I never thought I'd see a day when a sitting President would refuse to accept election results. Even in defiance of Court rulings. So what if a State refused to accept a SCOTUS decision that came down in a way that it perceived as adverse to its interests? Hard to imagine, right? But it's occurred before where a group of States refused to accept what they perceived as a restriction on their independence and we know what happened next.
Have you ever noticed anything and found yourself wondering if it was truly new, or whether it was always there, and you simply hadn't noticed before?
It might be the combination of the pandemic, polarization in general, the 2020 election, and now what could be a SCOTUS trend. But I worry about whether the cohesion among States is going to become more stressed than in the past. Let's hope we can keep it in the healthy zone.
That's a great post glennds with some associated great observations and questions.
In section order...yep 100%.
Ditto...mind blowing. Unfortunately it was so long ago I don't remember who the historian was, but he/she is a presidential historian and I think it was on PBS were they made the comment that while we've had bad president's we've been hugely fortunate in that we haven't had one who really did not want the best possible for the United States so far as they saw it...IMHO, we had our first not in that category. On the state thing...when the south had problems with racial segregation in the late 50s and 60s we sent in the Army to enforce the law. I don't like that as a general rule as an ex-military guy I'm the first to say keep the military out of politics...my solution would be to send in the FBI and start making arrests.
Personally, I don't feel/see any tensions between the states themselves as entities. Right now isn't anything like the civil war lead up. It's more the populations in "red/blue" states who ID heavily as right or left...well really I think it's a small minority on both sides egged on and promoted by the media so they can sell commercials. I consume very little mainstream media (right or left) in the US because it is so very, very bad I think. I do have a subscription to the WSJ but that is it. US TV news, forget it.
And as a general rule, I think the personal behavior filter is WAY off than it has probably ever been and I attribute that to the anonymity of the internet and too much time in the virtual world combined with the Covid stuff. Too much of this stuff is absolutely not good for one's mental health. I really do think there needs to be visible/advertised arrests for crimes committed due to out of control social behavior (as differentiated from just good ole fashioned criminal crime and intent). The poster child for this is people going wacko on flights...just to name one example, but there are more.