koolaidblue wrote: Sat Oct 27, 2018 10:36 am I'm becoming increasingly convinced we are going to go the way of the USSR or Balkans.

I can see our republic fracturing into perhaps 4-6 unified regions.

Perhaps new england, the south, Midwest/great lakes, texas, northern rockies, southern rockies and West coast.

That's in addition to perhaps some of those states or regions becoming more aligned with either Canada or Mexico.

I see a messy divorce in the future. :/

I can envision increasingly toxic political rhetoric, social media outrage and extremes and levels of violence continually increasing regardless of what political party is in control. Some event will come along that will eventually ignite a powder keg and there will be insurgency, conflict, turmoil, chaos, alliances, enemies. What that trigger will be I'm not sure, could be a major stock crash, dollar being devalued, mass unemployment, a foreign/terrorist attack who knows..

If you ask a marriage counselor for their honest opinion on when they "know" a marriage is beyond saving or repair, they will say it's when the 2 parties not only fight, but view each other with animosity and contempt. I fear we have reached this point in American politics. I blame our corrupt self serving politicians, special interests And the media and social media is to blame for flaming the flames and creating a culture of non stop outrage behavior.

koolaidblue wrote: Sat Oct 27, 2018 10:36 am I blame our corrupt self serving politicians, special interests And the media and social media is to blame for flaming the flames and creating a culture of non stop outrage behavior.

highdesert wrote: Sat Oct 27, 2018 10:58 am

koolaidblue wrote: Sat Oct 27, 2018 10:36 am I blame our corrupt self serving politicians, special interests And the media and social media is to blame for flaming the flames and creating a culture of non stop outrage behavior.

I agree, but I'm optimistic that we're not close to the end. Politics is cycles and I'm just waiting for this one to end.

Wino wrote: Sat Oct 27, 2018 9:19 am Texas would be the first to go 3rd world if seceded. The notion that Texas could exist as a nation is ridiculous, plus it would make Yugoslavia breakup seem tame. If not red neck white, would be legal to drag you behind their pick up. Many Texans remind me of the Afrikaners I worked with years ago when it came to racism and Texas is BARELY covert in that regard.

K9s wrote: Sat Oct 27, 2018 2:13 pm

Wino wrote: Sat Oct 27, 2018 9:19 am Texas would be the first to go 3rd world if seceded. The notion that Texas could exist as a nation is ridiculous, plus it would make Yugoslavia breakup seem tame. If not red neck white, would be legal to drag you behind their pick up. Many Texans remind me of the Afrikaners I worked with years ago when it came to racism and Texas is BARELY covert in that regard.

Texas could trade goods for food with California. Texans would make it work and California would help them make it with food aid and whatever else was needed (on the condition Texas protects human rights). While the bad side of Texas might rise up, the corporate interests wouldn't necessarily put up with that.

The Yugoslavia-Texas scenario is also very possible after some time. Civil war is almost the worst idea and very unlikely, but interesting to debate here. The size of US state economies is interesting (CA, TX, NY, FL, IL, and OH have higher GDPs than Saudi Arabia). It wouldn't be the same as a smaller, weaker nation breaking up. The top 20 GDPs in the world would include five US states.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compariso ... _(nominal)

Wino wrote: Sat Oct 27, 2018 9:19 am Texas would be the first to go 3rd world if seceded. The notion that Texas could exist as a nation is ridiculous, plus it would make Yugoslavia breakup seem tame. If not red neck white, would be legal to drag you behind their pick up. Many Texans remind me of the Afrikaners I worked with years ago when it came to racism and Texas is BARELY covert in that regard.

K9s wrote: Sat Oct 27, 2018 7:25 pm I personally experienced far more racism in Michigan and Missouri than Georgia or Texas. Georgia is nearly 50% minority population, so you have to go to rural areas to find most Kemp voters. Florida has its issues in certain places, too. I think every state has its own problems to solve.

featureless wrote: Sun Oct 28, 2018 2:59 pm California has a huge number of white supremacist groups, even some in the Bay Area.

Most, but not all, agencies that broke down data by month or quarter, showed
dramatic increases around election time in November 2016. So called “blue” Democratic majority places like California, New York City, Los Angeles,
Philadelphia, Boston, Washington, D.C., San Jose, Seattle, Phoenix and Montgomery County, Maryland were among those jurisdictions experiencing
precipitous increases in hate crime during that period in 2016. In New York City, the two week period around the election saw a five fold increase
over the same period the year before, and the 129 hate crimes that occurred after election day through year’s end accounted for for 34% of the annual total.

Los Angeles registered a 29% increase in the fourth quarter of 2016, when compared with the previous year. For California as a whole, November had the
highest total for any month in 2016. In Philadelphia, there were seven hate crimes in November 2016, compared with only one over the previous four November
months combined. Nine of 21 hate crimes in 2016 in Philadelphia, occurred in November and December; while in Montgomery County, Maryland over one third
of its annual total “incidents” occurred in November and December. In Seattle 14.6% of the year’s hate crime took place in November 2016, and the 13 cases
that month were more than double the previous year’s same month total.

In San Jose, California hate crime increased from two in November 2015 to five the next year. Thirty percent of the annual hate crime total in Phoenix was in the
fourth quarter, the most of any quarter that year. Boston, which like Phoenix actually had an overall annual decline in 2016, nonetheless, also experienced a
spike in November 2016 with 40 hate crimes - the highest number for any month in either 2015 or 2016. By contrast the previous month of October 2015 had only 21
hate crimes, and there were only 29 during the previous November.

However, mid-west cities including Chicago, Columbus and Cincinnati did not experience significant increases reported during that period. Of the 31 cities and
counties surveyed, 27 were in “blue” counties that voted democratic in the last presidential election. Of those 15 cities and counties experiencing multi-year highs,
all but one, Fort Worth (Tarrant County), Texas voted Democratic in the 2016 presidential elections. Similarly, some “blue” states like California, New York, and Minnesota, registered double digit increases, while many “red” states like Texas, Ohio, Tennessee, and Missouri experienced declines.