I actually wrote the following piece a year ago, before the Presidential election. Actually as early as 2015, I predicted the Trumpident for better or for poorer, but as was the case in 2008 and again 2012, America put on its red and blue blinders respectively, and the tradition continued in 2016. No, just as Obama did in fact finish his second term despite the conservative reassurances that the various scandals along the way, such as Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi, would clearly force his early resignation, as Hillary was in fact not dead and replaced by a body double and didn't go to jail (neither her NOR her body double), the Electoral College, apart from some meaningless displays of protest, did not elect Hillary, and Trump was not impeached before he could take the office.
As has been the case since Bill Clinton shamed the office by being caught doing the dirty, half the country is for the President, and half the country is against. Entirely because he's from "the other" party.
I can't say whether it was a happy accident or a conscious decision, although I favor the latter scenario, but what President Trump has done is absolve the Federal jurisdiction of nagging partisan issues and thereby silently invite the individual States or even County and Municipal governments to pick up the slack.
I say RIGHTLY SO.
If I were still a resident of California, I would still deeply resent the Golden State's coffers being depleted to prop up a Texas which incessantly mocks and derides it. Yes, by the way, California is a net benefactor to the Union while Texas, with all its supposed wealth, is a net beneficiary. Molto bene.
California came up with its own healthcare plan pretty quick. Virginia has had one for years. Individual cities are setting their own minimum wages and individual States are equally quickly passing legislation to prevent them from doing so. But let them fight it out at their level. You can't just up and leave and move to Canada despite what celebrities tell you (recently, Canada became an independent country after being a US satellite for decades). But you CAN move to another city or another State which is better aligned with your preferences. One of them being work, so for example, if you can't find work in South Carolina like one of my friends whose car was impounded on his way back to Florida and who then had a bugger of a time finding work at day labor places to pay the mounting storage fees, make tracks for Florida, where at least in most counties there is a labor shortage. Or Michigan. You have to be really dedicated to stay in Michigan, but you know, lead makes you passive and docile. Just drink more water. And as a lesson to others, avoid the Soylent Green manufactured in any vicinity of Detroit.
I moved from California to Florida. Sure I miss the legal weed and my friends fawning over my location as if it were a magical mystical wonderland - but then almost all my friends who lived there moved away as well. To places like Missouri, Alabama and Iowa. That kinda says it all. I sickened of the brown air, the brown landscape, the brown concrete and the stupendous cost of living.
It's not possible for everyone, but it's definitely more doable than Canada. Or even Panama, which takes a special kind of hutzpah. They do have McDonald's there, thank God, but still, you can't just drive back on weekends.
Don't get me started on the Russia thing. People were screaming that Trump would alienate Russia, and now that he's made friends, they're screaming about that too. Or, instead. Just screaming. And selling newspapers (figuratively, of course).
ANYWAY, let the States have at it. Many of our founding fathers didn't want a strong central government and now here we are. Ted Cruz and Huckabee Finn promised they would send troops into Colorado and other places which dared defy the National War On Drugs and shut down marijuana dispensaries by force. Maybe even deposing the Governor, you know, just like in Michigan (oh I love Michigan, what fond memories of living there for almost a year).
It didn't happen because whether Trump knew it or not, that would be political suicide. Oh and by the way, nobody's rounded up any gays and shipped them off to pink concentration camps on pretty pink trains. TRANS, not trains. Except for some States which want to meddle in this whole abortion, rape and marriage thing to prevent further floods and earthquakes. Let them.
So without further ado, here's my brilliant bloggage in sparkling foresight:
Every empire in the history of humankind has imploded for one reason. It got too big and was stretched too thin.
Our 2016 election year has proven and will continue to lay bare the widening rifts between vast tracts of our diverse population. A country this big with such a wide array of culture (good or bad connotations) cannot survive. The first sign of revolt, individual States usurping Federal power, is a remarkable repeat of the individual East European States straining the authoritative stranglehold of Moscow until a grassroots movement infiltrated the very instruments of order propping up the faltering, crumbling empire.
We've proven to ourselves over 150 years ago that our regional interests trumped our national interests, and the wounds from that bloody battle have not yet even healed. Instead, they have festered for decades.
In appointing ourselves arbiters of global law, we have deflected our own turmoil onto the international scene. But very soon, our far-flung chickens will be coming home to roost.
Our main flaw is assuming there is always a "right" and a "wrong". The North was right, the South was wrong. Christians are right, Muslims are wrong. The Jews are right, the Arabs are wrong. The Taliban are right, the Soviets are wrong. The Afghans are right, the Taliban are wrong.
This empirical reasoning is eminently doomed after just a few iterations, as I started to show above. The valiant US-trained and US-funded Mujahhidin whom we enlisted to defeat our arch nemesis, the USSR by proxy, subsequently became our own enemies when popular opinion turned against them.
I say "popular opinion", meaning popular opinion in the US and among many of its puppet allies, because the Mujahiddin didn't suddenly say one day "ok, we're renaming ourselves the Taliban and we're gonna be evil now", or whatever the Pashto equivalent is. It's more to the point that some advisor in Washington or across the Potomac suddenly blurted out "holy shit, these guys are worse than we thought and if that goes public, we'll look like idiots supporting them".
We've supported corrupt regimes in Nicaragua, the Philippines, Iran, Iraq, South Africa, China, Cuba and even Nazi Germany. And we have egg on our national face from all of these blunders.
In the meantime, we have experienced an IRREVERSIBLE (sorry GOP) shift in demographics. We count Muslims who don't like our foreign policy in the Middle East, we count Jews who want to dictate our policy in the Middle East, we have Asian and South American refugees who resent our support of totalitarian regimes. Has anybody heard of Taiwan ? They used to be our friends until we changed our minds and aligned ourselves with a government which is their mortal enemy and perpetrates unspeakable human rights violations because of corporate profit. And lulling the American consumer into a false belief of global supremacy by providing cheap goods which were supposed to simulate the highest standard of living in the world.
Our compulsion for "right" or "wrong" judgements has led to this fractured muddle of American policy. These cracks first became apparent during the Vietnam War, or whatever the Government wants to call it now. Millions of people died needlessly, and millions more continue to suffer injury from Agent Orange and unexploded land mines.
So hey, yeah, we ended that disaster pretty quick and a decade later, all was forgotten. Until Saddam Hussein thought he was actually the ruler of his own country, thereby defying his US overlords and puppet masters. We had a brief run of relative quiet from the late 70's until the late 80's. The military industrial complex must've been inconsolable.
But somehow, something in our country had changed. Vietnam was really the first time large segments of our population disagreed with a Federal Government policy action. Add to that the unheard-of Civil Rights Act and the seeds of divisiveness were inexorably sewn.
Let's face it, not even tiny, piddly places like Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Yugoslavia and Northern Ireland were able to reconcile cultural, ethnic and religious differences. How then is a vast empire of 350 millionish people from many different backgrounds supposed to function.
We've basically grown ourselves beyond our own limits. Texas thinks California is stupid which thinks New York is stupid which thinks Mississippi is stupid which thinks Florida is stupid which thinks Arizona is stupid.... Blacks and Whites think each other is racist, Christians think Catholics are not true Christians, Heterosexuals think Homosexuals and Transgenders are the problem. Republican States account for the highest levels of pornography, teenage pregnancies and STD's but decry Blue States who are more progressive as hurting the moral fiber of the nation. Bristol Palin. Nuff said.
There is simply NO WAY any configuration of government in January 2017 will truly represent "the voice of the people". Our only hope is a looser association of States, a weaker central government. I call bullshit on "America". The movie is over, the lights are coming on in the theater, and the popcorn is cold.
