One big problem I have with the notion of separating red states from blue is that this is an oversimplified fiction.. As a leftist living in West Virginia, naturally I hate the idea. I also note that while WV's legislature is now 90% Republican, just 25 years ago it was 90% Democrat, so these these change. And what about the west coast? Oregon and Washington would need to be split down the middle, with their left coasts and red interiors.Another problem, with the idea of devolving power to states, is that states are still too big to have genuine democracy. And I note that "national defense" is the one thing still to left to the feds--who have have been dedicated to imperialist wars and blocking any kind of international progress, on behalf of special interests like the fossil fools.
Clearly leaving things as they are is a horrible prospect. But I don't see an improvement from division, unless it was a more serious devolvement of power to the local level.
I agree with you that red v. blue it is oversimplified. In fact there are large minorities in most states that do not fit the characterization. You are a good example. I also agree that were things to break up, my part of the country would split on the Cascades crest. There is already a huge movement in Eastern Washington to join Idaho that has gained endorsement by most counties. I do think reasonably sized states can be reasonably democratic, but bringing as much as possible to the local is ideal. The principle of subsidiarity, placing functions at the lowest level possible, should be applied. I am deeply concerned for the situation in states such as West Virginia where the Republicans have assembled super-majorities. It reflects the failure of the Democratic Party to offer real alternatives, I believe, because they abandoned the active public policy approach under Clintonian neoliberalism that in your state could have provided transition from the coal industry. In rural areas of my part of the country that’s true for timber communities. In the article I call for organizing that reaches red states and rural areas. We need far more efforts in this area to bridge the divide. But I don’t know if it can be enough to overcome the hurdles. But if we want to avoid breakup we sure should try.
You bring up excellent points that red states like North Carolina have large democratic cities as Blue states like Washington and Oregon have large republican rural areas. This is a recipe for violence like the Indian partition.
A cogent observation and key reason for being proactive to work to build a new basis of unity before things go completely off the rails. I am acutely aware of the dangers, living in a region with some of the most liberal cities and conservative rural areas. We saw the Proud Boys come into Portland from conservative exurban areas to confront Black Lives Matter protesters in 2020. There was violence and someone actually got killed. Any breakup would be very messy, and we need to seek more peaceful outcomes.
I live in a purple region of a Pacific Northwest state. Our representatives hold on to one political party for long years but do shift every so often, at need. This past election cycle, our congressional representation in the region changed from red to blue (a Trump style abrasive Republican against a small community business owner moderate Democrat new to politics.) Twelve years earlier, it shifted from moderate (but somewhat arrogant) Democrats to a moderate Republican. You get the idea: many people are not comfortable with extreme posturing. The problem with separation is how far one can (cannot) take it. Would my state break in half? What about counties? Neighborhoods? House to house? My neighborhood probably has a rainbow of political affiliations. Would some of us be expected to move? Not talk to our best friends because they're the wrong side of the political fence? How much unraveling would result if this even gets started? My Republican neighbors are showing a certain paranoia by putting up No Trespassing signs all over their property. It's baffling -- do they think those of differing politics are zombies? Coming to get them? Blue contagion, or something???
This is why I conclude the article suggesting how we can build a new basis of unity. I don’t think this sorts out easily at any level. We need to find ways to begin talking with one another again. Though many interests profit from dividing us.
Mar 1, 2023·edited Mar 1, 2023Liked by Patrick Mazza
Kristal McKinstry - Mar 1 2023
One influence leading up to this desire for partitioning is that this nation has become a top down central authority. This is by interpretive implementation, not by legal configuration, as our representative government could have, and likely originally was intended to operate just as much as a localized bottom-up democracy as a top down centralized democracy. We have the civil war to blame for this fading away of the Xth amendment, as at that time it became apparent that some of our neighbors in distant states need our help, and others can become a threat to us all.
Our central authority has two components, restrictive laws and taxes. These could both be replaced by virtual confederacies, in the manner of volunteerism, so for instance only states which desired so would participate in Medicare or various defense budgets. However this would add some complications, for instance the state (or individual) to state cost of transferring benefits - just as one now has to personally buy their way into nations with socialist benefits (which our own nation will not reimburse or subsidize).
No mention is made in this article of the modern migration towards global fascism. While Amazon might prefer uniformity of taxes and shipping laws, they would also be happy to write those and other laws themselves in compacts with small nation states that have no authority or bargaining power. It's also not inconceivable that the CEOs of America would step in to fill the national void (competing against each other) on law policies like gay marriage or lawn herbicides, just as they sponsor ad campaigns and lobbyists today. It would become a champion system regulated by those corporations with strong local influences. Our nation can barely stand against the will of such forces as is. At a smaller regional level companies like Comcast and Amazon would extort whatever they could get away with short of getting banned from business in the region, and much like the G20 or the TPP, a confederation of other global businesses would more likely be setting the standards of conduct nation states must abide by. Already as consumers we have little say in how these corporations exploit africa, south america, or the east.
I do believe in rights of self governship, for communities to establish their own rights, provided people know of the alternatives, and have mobility access. This is rarely the case. Already millionaires can afford to immigrate to wealthier nations while others can not. Most people can not even afford to switch jobs or get a moving truck.
However this goes, we have to look at this as what 'is' happening, not merely what could happen. For everyone of us objecting to a policy elsewhere, there is someone there objecting to a policy here. Global fascism, for instance NAFTA, has always thrived on divide and conquer, leveraging regional and class workers and consumers against each other as revenue streams.
We need to identify where people have the greatest communication and empowerment to control their lives. Generally the smaller the community the better in that regard, and yet only through unification can we ever stand against the giants of industry, religions, and such. Large institutions which are themselves organized with centralized representatives have had an inside ear with our likewise centrally representative government. Where our national governance structure has failed us, we need to develop grass-roots points-of-unity sentiment into systems of virtual confederacy representatives with bargaining power against larger centralized structure forces like the mega corporations or politicized social/religious movements. Undoubtedly those in power are already analyzing the current zeitgeist in terms of opportunity to increase fascist power. We need to analyze this all in terms of identifying opportunities to increase competing grass roots democracy empowerment. If we remain oblivious to this, then with each subtle shift in socio-economic-political configuration we will be losing ground. The rich and powerful are enemies of public democracy, and they are not asleep at the wheel, but rather employ strategists to ever increase their relative empowerment over us. Any juncture of change at any level is an opportunistic moment for the vigilant and aware on one side or the other. Any shift in any direction will become a loss of public empowerment if we do not remain engaged in the new structure and flow of power.
Thank you for your thoughtful reply. The issue of corporate power is one of the gnarliest to deal with in devolution scenarios. Supposedly we have a large federal government to balance against the large corporations. But in fact the federal government is substantially captured by those same corporations, through lobbyists, campaign donations, etc. Smaller units would seem to have less power, and be in an even worse position. But at the local, state and regional levels, there are possibilities for democratic mobilization that are more attenuated at larger levels. Also, if localities and regions develop their own public financial institutions and cooperative economies funded by those institutions, the corporations become less potent since there is a greater deal of economic autonomy. Living in Seattle, I have actually seen and participated in people power mobilizations that beat Amazon on key issues of progressive taxation in their headquarters city where they are the absolutely largest employer. So I have more than theory going into this understanding. Places are also beating Comcast offering public digital networks. This would be a natural element of a local and regional cooperative economy. There are a number of efforts organizing for local power against corporate interests. My contention is that these will be most effective. In terms of an overall scenario, and I write about it in my series on William Appleman Williams’ regional vision beginning here - https://open.substack.com/pub/theraven/p/from-empire-to-regional-communities?r=36q38&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web -is for a cooperative commonwealth of regions organized as a confederation to replace the current centralized system. To make this happens requires grassroots democratic movements at local and regional levels.
I completely agree that the Dems abandoned WV--the way my sister put it "Joe Sixpack used to vote for the Democrats because they protected his paycheck. But now they don't so he figures he may as well please his preacher and vote for the Republicans."
On the division, while the culture wars did arise organically, I suspect that they have been managed to widen the gap. Because in the past, when levels of inequality got this great, the torches and pitchforks, and guillotines, came out. But there is none of that now, as the 99% have their guns trained on each other, sometimes literally. Maybe the 1% just got lucky. I think they ensure their luck--social media is manipulated.
If the culture wars were not so associated in people’s minds with the divide between prosperous, liberal metropolitan areas tending to situate on the coasts and poorer rural areas and smaller cities in the “flyover” heartland, they would not have the potency they do. The working class people who feel left behind and screwed over have their feelings deliberately amplified by reactionary forces which emphasize the cultural issues. It seems quite deliberate.
I've been influenced a lot by Taoist philosophy, from ancient China, in which opposition is often re-framed as complementarity rather than mere opposition. And, more recently, by a scientist and philosopher who literally embodies this notion of the marriage of opposites, and speaks for such a marriage as a good thing -- who goes by the name of Iain McGilchrist.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iain_McGilchrist
For McGilchrist, much of our recent difficulties arise from an incapacity for the two hemispheres of our brains to speak to one another adequately, and so to wish to war with one another for hegemony. If we undererstand what he, and the Taoists, have to say, we wish to be free of the Great Divide. We seek for a harmonic in the clash. This stuff isn't anything near to being recent or new. It's as old as civilization itself.
The complementarity of yin and yang is a concept that influences me deeply. That the west has misinterpreted this as evil v. good says everything about our flawed worldview. The concept of movement as expressed in the I Ching, that movement in a direction reaches its culmination and then moves the opposite direction, also shapes my thinking. Regarding war and hegemony, I often think of verse 29 of the Tao Te Ching:
Those who would take over the earth
And shape it to their will
Never, I notice, succeed.
The earth is like a vessel so sacred
That at the mere approach of the profane
It is marred
And when they reach out their fingers it is gone.
For a time in the world some force themselves ahead
This is an absolutely profound question, and I’m glad you brought it up. As someone who has long favored more decentralist and devolutionary alternatives, I’ve had to think long and hard about the power of massive corporations, and how governments are meant to act as a counterweight. Unfortunately, in the U.S., where the institutions of government have largely been captured by those same corporations, that centralized federal government is an instrument for increasing corporate power, rather than limiting it. So I turn it around and ask where people can accumulate democratic power to overcome corporate power, and the only place I see is closer to home. I look at how grassroots people power managed to pass progressive taxation in Seattle, where I live, that was opposed by Amazon because it would pay the largest share. I believe one of the most empowering acts that will reduce the power of capital over our governments is to create public banking institutions at local, state and regional levels, that finance cooperative economic development aimed at meeting basic human needs such as housing and food. Ultimately, as I reflect in my writing here and elsewhere, I favor a more regionalized arrangement in a confederal system, not a break up. I also write about that here. https://theraven.substack.com/p/while-regional-independence-gains. I worry though that unless we create a new basis of unity from the ground up, as I write in this post, we will break apart.
The sense they are miles ahead of us is not lost on me. That said, progressive centers, cities and states. Public Banking Institute is working on it. Recent action in Colorado, New York State, and East San Francisco Bay. https://publicbankinginstitute.org/latest-news/
One big problem I have with the notion of separating red states from blue is that this is an oversimplified fiction.. As a leftist living in West Virginia, naturally I hate the idea. I also note that while WV's legislature is now 90% Republican, just 25 years ago it was 90% Democrat, so these these change. And what about the west coast? Oregon and Washington would need to be split down the middle, with their left coasts and red interiors.Another problem, with the idea of devolving power to states, is that states are still too big to have genuine democracy. And I note that "national defense" is the one thing still to left to the feds--who have have been dedicated to imperialist wars and blocking any kind of international progress, on behalf of special interests like the fossil fools.
Clearly leaving things as they are is a horrible prospect. But I don't see an improvement from division, unless it was a more serious devolvement of power to the local level.
I agree with you that red v. blue it is oversimplified. In fact there are large minorities in most states that do not fit the characterization. You are a good example. I also agree that were things to break up, my part of the country would split on the Cascades crest. There is already a huge movement in Eastern Washington to join Idaho that has gained endorsement by most counties. I do think reasonably sized states can be reasonably democratic, but bringing as much as possible to the local is ideal. The principle of subsidiarity, placing functions at the lowest level possible, should be applied. I am deeply concerned for the situation in states such as West Virginia where the Republicans have assembled super-majorities. It reflects the failure of the Democratic Party to offer real alternatives, I believe, because they abandoned the active public policy approach under Clintonian neoliberalism that in your state could have provided transition from the coal industry. In rural areas of my part of the country that’s true for timber communities. In the article I call for organizing that reaches red states and rural areas. We need far more efforts in this area to bridge the divide. But I don’t know if it can be enough to overcome the hurdles. But if we want to avoid breakup we sure should try.
You bring up excellent points that red states like North Carolina have large democratic cities as Blue states like Washington and Oregon have large republican rural areas. This is a recipe for violence like the Indian partition.
A cogent observation and key reason for being proactive to work to build a new basis of unity before things go completely off the rails. I am acutely aware of the dangers, living in a region with some of the most liberal cities and conservative rural areas. We saw the Proud Boys come into Portland from conservative exurban areas to confront Black Lives Matter protesters in 2020. There was violence and someone actually got killed. Any breakup would be very messy, and we need to seek more peaceful outcomes.
I live in a purple region of a Pacific Northwest state. Our representatives hold on to one political party for long years but do shift every so often, at need. This past election cycle, our congressional representation in the region changed from red to blue (a Trump style abrasive Republican against a small community business owner moderate Democrat new to politics.) Twelve years earlier, it shifted from moderate (but somewhat arrogant) Democrats to a moderate Republican. You get the idea: many people are not comfortable with extreme posturing. The problem with separation is how far one can (cannot) take it. Would my state break in half? What about counties? Neighborhoods? House to house? My neighborhood probably has a rainbow of political affiliations. Would some of us be expected to move? Not talk to our best friends because they're the wrong side of the political fence? How much unraveling would result if this even gets started? My Republican neighbors are showing a certain paranoia by putting up No Trespassing signs all over their property. It's baffling -- do they think those of differing politics are zombies? Coming to get them? Blue contagion, or something???
This is why I conclude the article suggesting how we can build a new basis of unity. I don’t think this sorts out easily at any level. We need to find ways to begin talking with one another again. Though many interests profit from dividing us.
Kristal McKinstry - Mar 1 2023
One influence leading up to this desire for partitioning is that this nation has become a top down central authority. This is by interpretive implementation, not by legal configuration, as our representative government could have, and likely originally was intended to operate just as much as a localized bottom-up democracy as a top down centralized democracy. We have the civil war to blame for this fading away of the Xth amendment, as at that time it became apparent that some of our neighbors in distant states need our help, and others can become a threat to us all.
Our central authority has two components, restrictive laws and taxes. These could both be replaced by virtual confederacies, in the manner of volunteerism, so for instance only states which desired so would participate in Medicare or various defense budgets. However this would add some complications, for instance the state (or individual) to state cost of transferring benefits - just as one now has to personally buy their way into nations with socialist benefits (which our own nation will not reimburse or subsidize).
No mention is made in this article of the modern migration towards global fascism. While Amazon might prefer uniformity of taxes and shipping laws, they would also be happy to write those and other laws themselves in compacts with small nation states that have no authority or bargaining power. It's also not inconceivable that the CEOs of America would step in to fill the national void (competing against each other) on law policies like gay marriage or lawn herbicides, just as they sponsor ad campaigns and lobbyists today. It would become a champion system regulated by those corporations with strong local influences. Our nation can barely stand against the will of such forces as is. At a smaller regional level companies like Comcast and Amazon would extort whatever they could get away with short of getting banned from business in the region, and much like the G20 or the TPP, a confederation of other global businesses would more likely be setting the standards of conduct nation states must abide by. Already as consumers we have little say in how these corporations exploit africa, south america, or the east.
I do believe in rights of self governship, for communities to establish their own rights, provided people know of the alternatives, and have mobility access. This is rarely the case. Already millionaires can afford to immigrate to wealthier nations while others can not. Most people can not even afford to switch jobs or get a moving truck.
However this goes, we have to look at this as what 'is' happening, not merely what could happen. For everyone of us objecting to a policy elsewhere, there is someone there objecting to a policy here. Global fascism, for instance NAFTA, has always thrived on divide and conquer, leveraging regional and class workers and consumers against each other as revenue streams.
We need to identify where people have the greatest communication and empowerment to control their lives. Generally the smaller the community the better in that regard, and yet only through unification can we ever stand against the giants of industry, religions, and such. Large institutions which are themselves organized with centralized representatives have had an inside ear with our likewise centrally representative government. Where our national governance structure has failed us, we need to develop grass-roots points-of-unity sentiment into systems of virtual confederacy representatives with bargaining power against larger centralized structure forces like the mega corporations or politicized social/religious movements. Undoubtedly those in power are already analyzing the current zeitgeist in terms of opportunity to increase fascist power. We need to analyze this all in terms of identifying opportunities to increase competing grass roots democracy empowerment. If we remain oblivious to this, then with each subtle shift in socio-economic-political configuration we will be losing ground. The rich and powerful are enemies of public democracy, and they are not asleep at the wheel, but rather employ strategists to ever increase their relative empowerment over us. Any juncture of change at any level is an opportunistic moment for the vigilant and aware on one side or the other. Any shift in any direction will become a loss of public empowerment if we do not remain engaged in the new structure and flow of power.
Thank you for your thoughtful reply. The issue of corporate power is one of the gnarliest to deal with in devolution scenarios. Supposedly we have a large federal government to balance against the large corporations. But in fact the federal government is substantially captured by those same corporations, through lobbyists, campaign donations, etc. Smaller units would seem to have less power, and be in an even worse position. But at the local, state and regional levels, there are possibilities for democratic mobilization that are more attenuated at larger levels. Also, if localities and regions develop their own public financial institutions and cooperative economies funded by those institutions, the corporations become less potent since there is a greater deal of economic autonomy. Living in Seattle, I have actually seen and participated in people power mobilizations that beat Amazon on key issues of progressive taxation in their headquarters city where they are the absolutely largest employer. So I have more than theory going into this understanding. Places are also beating Comcast offering public digital networks. This would be a natural element of a local and regional cooperative economy. There are a number of efforts organizing for local power against corporate interests. My contention is that these will be most effective. In terms of an overall scenario, and I write about it in my series on William Appleman Williams’ regional vision beginning here - https://open.substack.com/pub/theraven/p/from-empire-to-regional-communities?r=36q38&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web -is for a cooperative commonwealth of regions organized as a confederation to replace the current centralized system. To make this happens requires grassroots democratic movements at local and regional levels.
I completely agree that the Dems abandoned WV--the way my sister put it "Joe Sixpack used to vote for the Democrats because they protected his paycheck. But now they don't so he figures he may as well please his preacher and vote for the Republicans."
On the division, while the culture wars did arise organically, I suspect that they have been managed to widen the gap. Because in the past, when levels of inequality got this great, the torches and pitchforks, and guillotines, came out. But there is none of that now, as the 99% have their guns trained on each other, sometimes literally. Maybe the 1% just got lucky. I think they ensure their luck--social media is manipulated.
If the culture wars were not so associated in people’s minds with the divide between prosperous, liberal metropolitan areas tending to situate on the coasts and poorer rural areas and smaller cities in the “flyover” heartland, they would not have the potency they do. The working class people who feel left behind and screwed over have their feelings deliberately amplified by reactionary forces which emphasize the cultural issues. It seems quite deliberate.
I've been influenced a lot by Taoist philosophy, from ancient China, in which opposition is often re-framed as complementarity rather than mere opposition. And, more recently, by a scientist and philosopher who literally embodies this notion of the marriage of opposites, and speaks for such a marriage as a good thing -- who goes by the name of Iain McGilchrist.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iain_McGilchrist
For McGilchrist, much of our recent difficulties arise from an incapacity for the two hemispheres of our brains to speak to one another adequately, and so to wish to war with one another for hegemony. If we undererstand what he, and the Taoists, have to say, we wish to be free of the Great Divide. We seek for a harmonic in the clash. This stuff isn't anything near to being recent or new. It's as old as civilization itself.
The complementarity of yin and yang is a concept that influences me deeply. That the west has misinterpreted this as evil v. good says everything about our flawed worldview. The concept of movement as expressed in the I Ching, that movement in a direction reaches its culmination and then moves the opposite direction, also shapes my thinking. Regarding war and hegemony, I often think of verse 29 of the Tao Te Ching:
Those who would take over the earth
And shape it to their will
Never, I notice, succeed.
The earth is like a vessel so sacred
That at the mere approach of the profane
It is marred
And when they reach out their fingers it is gone.
For a time in the world some force themselves ahead
And some are left behind,
For a time in the world some make a great noise
And some are held silent,
For a time in the world some are puffed fat
And some are kept hungry,
For a time in the world some push aboard
And some are tipped out:
At no time in the world will a man who is sane
Over-reach himself,
Over-spend himself,
Over-rate himself.
This is an absolutely profound question, and I’m glad you brought it up. As someone who has long favored more decentralist and devolutionary alternatives, I’ve had to think long and hard about the power of massive corporations, and how governments are meant to act as a counterweight. Unfortunately, in the U.S., where the institutions of government have largely been captured by those same corporations, that centralized federal government is an instrument for increasing corporate power, rather than limiting it. So I turn it around and ask where people can accumulate democratic power to overcome corporate power, and the only place I see is closer to home. I look at how grassroots people power managed to pass progressive taxation in Seattle, where I live, that was opposed by Amazon because it would pay the largest share. I believe one of the most empowering acts that will reduce the power of capital over our governments is to create public banking institutions at local, state and regional levels, that finance cooperative economic development aimed at meeting basic human needs such as housing and food. Ultimately, as I reflect in my writing here and elsewhere, I favor a more regionalized arrangement in a confederal system, not a break up. I also write about that here. https://theraven.substack.com/p/while-regional-independence-gains. I worry though that unless we create a new basis of unity from the ground up, as I write in this post, we will break apart.
The sense they are miles ahead of us is not lost on me. That said, progressive centers, cities and states. Public Banking Institute is working on it. Recent action in Colorado, New York State, and East San Francisco Bay. https://publicbankinginstitute.org/latest-news/