https://twitter.com/CasperFox/status/1447169211500048389
I feel inclined to remind them that are only three or four actual Blue states.
The big “Blue states,” e.g., New York, California, Illinois, Michigan, are merely Blue metropolitan bubbles inside of Red states.
Where will the Central Valley of California, upstate New York, downstate Illinois, etc. go?
Will the farms and factories stay with the urban bubble or will they join the adjacent Red State?
What sort of economic sanctions can LA, San Francisco, Chicago, and New York City impose on the rest of America that won’t be reciprocated by cutting off the urban bubbles from food and electricity?
We wouldn’t need to fire a shot to end NYC. Just block the bridges and tunnels, cut the power lines, and wait for them to starve in the dark.
I’d give them a week.
Not to mention the riots and looting.
Robert A. Heinlein wrote a short story _The Roads Must Roll_. The story line is about how the US now uses convenor belts as wide as road lanes and hundreds of miles long to move people and goods from place to place.
Technically there were multiple belts each belt having only a 5mph difference from the belt next to it. So you can easily walk up or down the different belts from 5mph all the way up to 100mph.
The 100mph strip had restaurants and other places where people could hang out while traveling from place to place.
That’s the layout for the world. The story is about how the “road men” go on strike. They bring a strip in one section to a full stop and cause havoc throughout the road.
The point in all of this was that all of the striking men believed that they deserved more because “nobody can do anything if the roads don’t roll. We are the most important workers in the country.”
Many many people believe the same. They feel that the economy, company, country will just shut down if they strike.
This hasn’t been true in years and years.
This maroon believes that there are goods or services that are only available in his little enclave. Never realizing that most of the goods and services in his enclave come from outside and that those people likely don’t *need* what he has to offer.
Sort of like the guy that thinks his degree in underwater basket weaving at a high priced university is worth more to the people of a small town than the guy who went to trade school and know owns the biggest plumping company in the area.
One is full of shit and the other removes shit. Which do you want to employ.
Biggest … plumping … company …
Must hit mute before LOL on Zoom meeting…
Oh, right. Plumping, you said, not fluffing. Well, still.
“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as “bad luck.”
You forget to attribute it to RAH via LL.
ISTR the strikers ended up gunned down. That may have been the radio play version of the story, though.
Picture California after the water and electricity from the Hoover dam gets shut off.
Yea by all those workers that vote “red”. They have no clue how the world actually works…
Considering lake Mead will be an empty dead lake in a few years it’s not actually hard to imagine.
If Cali “divorces” itself from the red states, and the water is cut off, Lake Mead should recover in a few years. With out Colorado river water, the Central Valley will quickly return to the desert is originally was.
I know where the soda is made. I know a couple plants where the flavorings are made.
More importantly, I can drink water.
How long will they last if, say, coffee beans stop flowing to the cities?
I will say it till yall tell me to shut up- when are the 74% gonna start acting like 74%????? These morons have no F’in idea what We the People are capable of. Years ago a truck drivin guy was tellin me that they was gonna go on strike cause the feds were gettin pushy.. I said it will never happen cause too many truckers got bills to pay. All truckers have to do is boycott an area( I said DC) no delivery of ANYTHING on a truck. After a week that area would be like a mad max movie… THIS is what should happen to these “blue” areas. If and its a big if, a “civil war “ got started a whole bunch of people are gonna be amazed at what happens…
The reason is that once it begins, there is no going back. Ever. The life you knew, the life you had, is over and will never be back. People just want to be left alone. That is human nature. People have a point that they will not be pushed beyond. Once that point is reached, people will know that the old world, their old life, is over.
Then there will be no quarter.
Revolutions are also a lot like gambling, but you’re going up against Lefty Rothstein from ‘Casino’.
No matter who wins, you’re probably going to lose, because once a certain point is reached, it becomes more about personal power and less about whatever principle it’s supposedly about. And at that level, even the supposed Right would follow the old successful revolution trick of shooting their own revolutionaries.
^^^^^
This!
Once it starts, it will get ugly fast. There is a reason we had US Troops in the Balkans for too damn many years. Imagine feuds and vendettas for years. Maybe not every survivor, but even a hundred every year in this nation will be horrendous.
Like I said yesterday, it stops at less than 10,000; or it goes to 30-50 Million, and if someone goes nuclear? 150 Million easy. Never mind what the rest of the World does to itself when we turn inward.
So what wet work for the Resistance have you done today?
Lots of people out there like you calling us out for not acting. Yet you are not acting. Unless you are a fedboi acting as a resistance fighter.
You mentioned “4 or 5 blue states”. Let’s see… MA, CT, RI, DE, maybe VT though they are more like CA — red with some communist cities. Doesn’t add up to much of anything, does it?
Make mine Jameson Irish Whiskey
The thing is, though, the big cities can still hurt the country. There is one thing they provide that the whole country needs, and that’s financial transaction processing.
Maybe 30-40 years ago that wasn’t true; there were more small town banks that didn’t have as tight a tie to the mega banks (or so my perception is of how it was) and could do more things between and amongst themselves. And we’re getting closer to it not being true again thanks to cryptocurrency. (About which I am still skeptical … another thread.)
As it is today, though, even if Farmer A can buy fertilizer from Processor B and sell his milk to Dairy C without any of that needing to go through a city physically, and none of it being made or processed in said city, the financial exchange likely will, at some level, run through a big city corp. Unless it’s cash money all the way all the time. Even a check will likely be sent to the clearinghouse for processing, unless everyone uses the same bank … and maybe not even then.
So … Yeah. Cities could hurt the countryside by making it really really hard to do do business, on the money handling side of things.
True, but it’s a lot easier to work around a lack of banking than a lack of food or water.
Matthew Bracken has several essays and short stories on this general theme. “When the music stops” explores how cities could collapse. But “Alas, brave new Babylon” begins with the financial system stopping, and it’s a lot more bleak than the other.
Why do you think the Biden Administration has been pushing for tighter and tighter regulation of cryptocurrency, small dollar stock traders (e.g., Robin Hood), and monitoring of any checking or savings account transactions over $600?
Alas, if only, if ONLY, red state folks contemplated shortages, or storms, or unemployment! If that only had put something by, against some calamity!
Why, if they had only done so, perhaps they would not be helpless against the Blue Helmets…uh, I mean, STATES!.
The funny thing is if you flip it around it’s plausible. If the Central Valley declared an embargo on LA, they would beg for a Baja Blast in a few weeks.
If you want an idea of what this would be like? Divorcing into a Red Country and a Blue Country? Look at the Partition of India, after their Independence. Suddenly it was a scramble, violence, riot looting and bloodshed that resulted in Pakistan, India, and East Pakistan (later Bengladesh).
Imagine millions of people moving from their homes to a new place with little warning. Bandits, Mobs, Militias with Murder, Rape, Plunder and Pillage on a continental scale.
Or maybe it will be Rwanda and a Genocide?
Yugoslavia and a how many years long, atrocity filled hellscape?
Or like the split of Norway from Sweden? Or Czech republic from Slovakia? Or Belgium from Holland? There are examples in both directions.
Except we are all mixed together and interlaced, including families and marriages. Even New York F–ing City has about 20% Republicans, and Oklahoma has Democrats. Minnesota votes Democrat, but outside the I-494/694 Freeways around Minneapolis and St. Paul, we are pretty solid Republican (60/40). Even the Iron Range is voting in Republican US Congressmen.
Is Minnesota a Blue State? Or a Red State with a small dense Blue Cyst inside it?
The examples you cited were all existing ethnically distinct enclaves. But I pray we could split that non-violently.
“National Divorce” is a pipe dream pushed by people who don’t want to do any of the work of defeating the fascists.
Split off the more troublesome areas? Gotta prepare first…
Paging John Carpenter: we’re gonna need a bigger soundtrack!
BUILD THE WALLS!