Two podcasts from the lads, both of which I actually managed to contribute to! (If even only as a 15 minute introduction in the first… I was in the entire episode 11.) I hadn’t actually seen Ep 10 before we shot Ep 11. It was the holiday weekend and I hadn’t expected Grant to get it together so fast, so I never realized it was available until about 30 seconds before we started. Had I seen it, I think I would have addressed the “immature reaction” theme in Ep 10 more, as I think it is misguided.
"When they refuse to seek treatment? When they start abusing your kids?" That's precisely what the blue states are doing. Time to leave. *Immediately*.
Hey, who are those brilliant and engaging "Tonic 7" guys?! I bet they're even more fun and amazing in real life😁...
Anyway, I completely agree with your analysis of the marriage/divorce analogy. Definitely not something to be undertaken lightly, definitely the process of divorce is brutal and tragic for all involved, but sometimes (e.g., a marriage where one spouse is a drug-addicted narcissist who is mortgaging everything the family owns to feed her coke habit and bringing all kinds of unidentified military-age males into the house despite the fact that they sometimes prey upon the kids, etc.), divorce is really the least bad option and *not* divorcing will cause more harm to all involved. Maybe we haven't reached that point yet in America, but at the rate our pathocratic ruling class is going, it won't be long. Like the allegorical drug-addicted, narcissistic, and abusive spouse, they see the harms they are causing and show zero signs of being willing to change of their own volition.
Yes, agreed. I think the mature thing to do, therefore, is to plan for this and think real hard about where the line is at which point you will say "Thus far, and no further." You have to think about it ahead of time and commit, because otherwise when you get there it is very easy to say "well, this was a one off thing, just an outlier, won't happen again." In fact it will, but the cost of making the change seems too high and so we rationalize not taking the necessary step.
Likewise, if one spends the time to think of these things ahead of time you are less likely to take that step when it is not proper, out of some fit of pique. Lots of things seem worth quitting over when you are all worked up, but in retrospect are just the day to day bumps, so we don't want to let ourselves make the decision when we are emotional. We have to think ahead and come up with a list of points where, ok, when this happens, it is too much and we leave. If it doesn't hit that point, we stay.
We ought to do that with national divorces, just as we should with our personal relationships. We should think of what we demand from a political association, and what we will not tolerate, and keep that in mind. I suspect it will teach us a lot about our current state, (and a fair bit about our seeming "allies" as well.)
Now now, are you implying that we Germans have no sense of scale? I'm shocked! ;)
Seriously though, my point was not really about the merits or lack thereof of a different political system, but rather about preserving free will: you cannot be merely reactive and try to immediately ease your pain by jumping to the (on the surface) most obvious bandwaggon. Like, I'm outraged, let's just do X so that it all goes away. Instead, it is prudent to cultivate an inner freedom that allows you to be more stable, see more and better, and take better individual decisions. Even if at the end you decide to go for national divorce, you will then get your timing right and be on top of things, on your terms. Art of war and all that.
Agreed, and I think that it is really important to have the discussion and reflection on when it is time to go in the more peaceful, quiet times so that you know the answer ahead of time and not just react emotionally.
That said, there is something to be said for emotional reactions; for many people that is what it takes to get them to take action away from the status quo in general. Still, it is proper to talk about it ahead of time and not just jump in with both feet without discussing the costs and benefits.
And I just like teasing you, but you weren't there this past Sunday :D
On that note: I thought your video intro was very enlightening. The sheer magnitude of the questions involved in such matters in the modern, hyper-bureaucratic, globalized, technical world are mind-boggling indeed. And you probably only listed the most obvious things.
Yea, high level it looks easy, but goddamn, the devil is in the detail, and there are a HELL of a lot of details for the devils. (Like damned near anything, really.) There are so many friction points that could create the spark of armed conflict it is a dangerous situation.
So much so, that if I were in charge of a think tank or the political agenda for a session of congress or something, I would have a team work on drawing up legislation setting the process for peaceable secession from the nation state. Whether I was talking US or not. Too many states' constitutions assume infinite life, including rules for joining the nation state but not leaving it. That is guaranteeing conflict at some point. Much better to outline a process and hope no one never needs to use it than to not have a process and leave those who need to use it a bloody path to cut.
I still think the development of parallel systems should proceed apace, regardless of whether the wind blows towards reconciliation or divorce. Maybe this is just my professional bias talking, but backups, redundancies, fail-overs and workarounds just seem prudent (and especially in chaotic situations with incalculable variables, in which I think we've found ourselves).
In fact, I think these would be of much greater importance if a divorce isn't coming in the short term.. Development is one thing, but proper testing and mastery is another. Might as well get started on the sidepiece search now, before the paperwork gets started.
I definitely agree with the value of parallel systems, and in fact I think the totalizing nature of our federal government represents a conscious decision to eradicate parallel systems, thus making the overall system less stable.
At the same time, parallel system can become a bit of a crutch or a patch. In a sense, the habits of the excessively online is an over reliance on a secondary system. For instance, a porn addiction starts as a "side piece" to deal with a lack of real life relationships. It can't replace real life relationships in function, but over time it starts to function to keep the addict out of relationships, the end result being zero functional relationships. So we have to be careful with our parallel systems, and be sure that they are actual replacements for what we are missing, or just something to make the problem less miserable while hopefully not making the core problem worse.
(There's a good line from the guy who wrote "The Alternative" if I am remembering correctly, along the lines of "The American welfare system makes poverty more tolerable, but it does nothing to make poverty more escapable." Kind of applies here I think.)
Minor nitpick: Germany has a larger population than every U.S. state. At around 80 million, it's more populous than California and Texas combined (~70 million).
I wonder about how within-state political differences would affect the divorce. In terms of how unhinged they are, from greatest to least, I would rank (1) my home state govt; (2) the federal government; (3) my ideal level of government unhingedness. There are probably sizeable groups of people in my state that would rank them in the opposite way or with our state govt or their ideal govt in the middle. So there would be several different groups within each state, making it difficult for two sides to coalesce on the divorce decision in each state. For instance, in each state there might be (1) a red-coded divorce from state/stay in US faction, (2) a blue-coded divorce from state/stay in US faction; (3) a red-coded divorce from state/divorce from US faction; (4) a blue-coded divorce from state/divorce from US faction [admittedly this would be a wildly far-left contingent in my state, although it wouldn't have to be as far-left in, say, Lincoln, Nebraska]; (5) a red-coded stay with state/stay in US faction; and (6) a blue-coded stay with state/stay in US faction.
I guess my point is that a true national divorce would require A LOT of people to move geographically to an unhinged (in their view) state before there was a critical mass to get a divorce going, unless everyone stayed put, there was a national referendum, and the divorce dissolved all previous states, yielding one huge red-coded rural/suburban agglomeration for Nation 1 and 50-100 tiny blue-coded urban-suburban enclaves/exclaves for Nation 2.
(FWIW I'm not advocating for a divorce--just pondering how one could work).
I suspect you are right, and I wouldn't be surprised to find individual states start breaking apart before the nation does. There are already a handful of state secession movements, parts of Washington state wanting to join Idaho, parts of CA wanting the hell out, etc., and those would be easier to adjudicate than leaving the union. There is already precedence, although West Virginia happening during wartime isn't a great example.
Personally, if I knew there was a critical mass type split coming, I would want to see the states split into smaller states first. That would change the nature of the federal government a bit, but many of the most important laws are state level so that could really give people options. And when I mean break into smaller states, I am talking as small as a few million people, possibly a metro area is one state, then some more rural areas are one state, etc.
One virtue of the states splitting first is that is preserves the union, at least for a bit, allowing more time to fix problems or for the problems to go away on their own. The other virtue, possibly the most important, is that if a national divorce were to follow the units that would go one way or the other would be more granular and so one could avoid the problems you describe. Maybe the Boston-Richmond VA corridor stays in a Blue Nation while everything between Pittsburgh and Philly on up to Albany goes Red Nation. That would be hard to do if they were still tangled up in states, and a lot easier if there is a preliminary detangling first. (Hard and easy being relative terms, here :D )
This is a good point though about why federalism works if the government is serious about it. I don't much care what CA gets up to so long as I don't have to live by their rules. All this frustration could be avoided if the cities were run in their way and the rural folks were left to run things their way.
I started paying attention when MTG spouted off about “national divorce,” considered the ultimate stupidity of the premise, and weathered an assault from a regrettably fellow Republican on Twitter, who was just as stupid.
That was months ago, and since you address it, and correctly note the difficulties, please consider: The “blue-state, red-state idea is basically spurious, being color on a political map only. The political map changes, far more quickly than populations can up-end and move to one or the other. In my state we were for Trump in 2016, Biden in 2020 and everywhere you go, Trump billboards remain. No one bothers those because most agree...except in two major cities. So MTG, you idiot, how would this work??
That in itself should be enough. But I get the sentiment.
The fact that a very significant portion of Americans no longer care if there is an America, support socialism, falsely charge fascism and authoritarianism because the rest are nationalists and/or conservatives, is regrettable. And problematic. And why is it so? Opinion time.
Indoctrination has come from two major sources, one, academia through universities and right on down into schools, and two, from corporate media via a corporatocracy led by the WEF.
The WEF has been there ince 1974. It has had, then, 48-plus years to recruit, enlarge, placate and indoctrinate, all on the magnanimous principles of world peace, equity and government.
With Germany in charge.
I do not say that lightly and I do not say it without evidence.
If one visits the WEF website and looks for it, German innovation, leadership and technological superiority are frequently touted.
The idea that a coporatocracy has arisen within should be no surprise to either the world or to Klaus Schwab. They are the vehicle. And they expect to be in charge.
This has been the source of the daily inundation of bull crappery that has denigrated and destroyed our two-party system, through their purchased media, for four decades. Further our sieve-like system has permitted their money to purchase our representaion in the halls of Congress, swing our elections and even pollute our system of justice by donating to campaigns that will cause disruption.
Disruption is precisely what we have experienced. The end game is to socialize our nation, disarm the populace and install world government. The US was instrumental in ending Germany’s last quest for world domination.
Klaus Schwab is an engineer. And a good one.
Action to destroy the WEF and to decouple it from the UN would have to be followed by great patience. It has been nearly 50 years. It will require another 50 for healing to serously make a difference.
Please consider what I’ve said. I will not live to see it.
The UN is set in October to ratify with its member nations, a resolution that places the UN in authority over national governments in the event of another international “emergency,” such as a pandemic, or even disruption of digital communications by a sunspot. One guess if environmental concerns might qualify. The WEF supports it and has coupled itself politically to the UN. The Biden administration also fully supports it. Term of authority is not considered. This has been timed to precede the 2024 US election.
"When they refuse to seek treatment? When they start abusing your kids?" That's precisely what the blue states are doing. Time to leave. *Immediately*.
Hey, who are those brilliant and engaging "Tonic 7" guys?! I bet they're even more fun and amazing in real life😁...
Anyway, I completely agree with your analysis of the marriage/divorce analogy. Definitely not something to be undertaken lightly, definitely the process of divorce is brutal and tragic for all involved, but sometimes (e.g., a marriage where one spouse is a drug-addicted narcissist who is mortgaging everything the family owns to feed her coke habit and bringing all kinds of unidentified military-age males into the house despite the fact that they sometimes prey upon the kids, etc.), divorce is really the least bad option and *not* divorcing will cause more harm to all involved. Maybe we haven't reached that point yet in America, but at the rate our pathocratic ruling class is going, it won't be long. Like the allegorical drug-addicted, narcissistic, and abusive spouse, they see the harms they are causing and show zero signs of being willing to change of their own volition.
Yes, agreed. I think the mature thing to do, therefore, is to plan for this and think real hard about where the line is at which point you will say "Thus far, and no further." You have to think about it ahead of time and commit, because otherwise when you get there it is very easy to say "well, this was a one off thing, just an outlier, won't happen again." In fact it will, but the cost of making the change seems too high and so we rationalize not taking the necessary step.
Likewise, if one spends the time to think of these things ahead of time you are less likely to take that step when it is not proper, out of some fit of pique. Lots of things seem worth quitting over when you are all worked up, but in retrospect are just the day to day bumps, so we don't want to let ourselves make the decision when we are emotional. We have to think ahead and come up with a list of points where, ok, when this happens, it is too much and we leave. If it doesn't hit that point, we stay.
We ought to do that with national divorces, just as we should with our personal relationships. We should think of what we demand from a political association, and what we will not tolerate, and keep that in mind. I suspect it will teach us a lot about our current state, (and a fair bit about our seeming "allies" as well.)
That is excellent advice, applicable not only here but in many other contexts as well!
Now now, are you implying that we Germans have no sense of scale? I'm shocked! ;)
Seriously though, my point was not really about the merits or lack thereof of a different political system, but rather about preserving free will: you cannot be merely reactive and try to immediately ease your pain by jumping to the (on the surface) most obvious bandwaggon. Like, I'm outraged, let's just do X so that it all goes away. Instead, it is prudent to cultivate an inner freedom that allows you to be more stable, see more and better, and take better individual decisions. Even if at the end you decide to go for national divorce, you will then get your timing right and be on top of things, on your terms. Art of war and all that.
Agreed, and I think that it is really important to have the discussion and reflection on when it is time to go in the more peaceful, quiet times so that you know the answer ahead of time and not just react emotionally.
That said, there is something to be said for emotional reactions; for many people that is what it takes to get them to take action away from the status quo in general. Still, it is proper to talk about it ahead of time and not just jump in with both feet without discussing the costs and benefits.
And I just like teasing you, but you weren't there this past Sunday :D
On that note: I thought your video intro was very enlightening. The sheer magnitude of the questions involved in such matters in the modern, hyper-bureaucratic, globalized, technical world are mind-boggling indeed. And you probably only listed the most obvious things.
Yea, high level it looks easy, but goddamn, the devil is in the detail, and there are a HELL of a lot of details for the devils. (Like damned near anything, really.) There are so many friction points that could create the spark of armed conflict it is a dangerous situation.
So much so, that if I were in charge of a think tank or the political agenda for a session of congress or something, I would have a team work on drawing up legislation setting the process for peaceable secession from the nation state. Whether I was talking US or not. Too many states' constitutions assume infinite life, including rules for joining the nation state but not leaving it. That is guaranteeing conflict at some point. Much better to outline a process and hope no one never needs to use it than to not have a process and leave those who need to use it a bloody path to cut.
Also, thank you! I am glad you found it interesting :D
Good stuff, Doc.
I still think the development of parallel systems should proceed apace, regardless of whether the wind blows towards reconciliation or divorce. Maybe this is just my professional bias talking, but backups, redundancies, fail-overs and workarounds just seem prudent (and especially in chaotic situations with incalculable variables, in which I think we've found ourselves).
In fact, I think these would be of much greater importance if a divorce isn't coming in the short term.. Development is one thing, but proper testing and mastery is another. Might as well get started on the sidepiece search now, before the paperwork gets started.
I definitely agree with the value of parallel systems, and in fact I think the totalizing nature of our federal government represents a conscious decision to eradicate parallel systems, thus making the overall system less stable.
At the same time, parallel system can become a bit of a crutch or a patch. In a sense, the habits of the excessively online is an over reliance on a secondary system. For instance, a porn addiction starts as a "side piece" to deal with a lack of real life relationships. It can't replace real life relationships in function, but over time it starts to function to keep the addict out of relationships, the end result being zero functional relationships. So we have to be careful with our parallel systems, and be sure that they are actual replacements for what we are missing, or just something to make the problem less miserable while hopefully not making the core problem worse.
(There's a good line from the guy who wrote "The Alternative" if I am remembering correctly, along the lines of "The American welfare system makes poverty more tolerable, but it does nothing to make poverty more escapable." Kind of applies here I think.)
Minor nitpick: Germany has a larger population than every U.S. state. At around 80 million, it's more populous than California and Texas combined (~70 million).
I'll be damned! I was sure Germany had something like 30 million people for some reason. Maybe I am still working from East Germany numbers :D
Thanks for the catch! I will update my mental model.
I wonder about how within-state political differences would affect the divorce. In terms of how unhinged they are, from greatest to least, I would rank (1) my home state govt; (2) the federal government; (3) my ideal level of government unhingedness. There are probably sizeable groups of people in my state that would rank them in the opposite way or with our state govt or their ideal govt in the middle. So there would be several different groups within each state, making it difficult for two sides to coalesce on the divorce decision in each state. For instance, in each state there might be (1) a red-coded divorce from state/stay in US faction, (2) a blue-coded divorce from state/stay in US faction; (3) a red-coded divorce from state/divorce from US faction; (4) a blue-coded divorce from state/divorce from US faction [admittedly this would be a wildly far-left contingent in my state, although it wouldn't have to be as far-left in, say, Lincoln, Nebraska]; (5) a red-coded stay with state/stay in US faction; and (6) a blue-coded stay with state/stay in US faction.
I guess my point is that a true national divorce would require A LOT of people to move geographically to an unhinged (in their view) state before there was a critical mass to get a divorce going, unless everyone stayed put, there was a national referendum, and the divorce dissolved all previous states, yielding one huge red-coded rural/suburban agglomeration for Nation 1 and 50-100 tiny blue-coded urban-suburban enclaves/exclaves for Nation 2.
(FWIW I'm not advocating for a divorce--just pondering how one could work).
I suspect you are right, and I wouldn't be surprised to find individual states start breaking apart before the nation does. There are already a handful of state secession movements, parts of Washington state wanting to join Idaho, parts of CA wanting the hell out, etc., and those would be easier to adjudicate than leaving the union. There is already precedence, although West Virginia happening during wartime isn't a great example.
Personally, if I knew there was a critical mass type split coming, I would want to see the states split into smaller states first. That would change the nature of the federal government a bit, but many of the most important laws are state level so that could really give people options. And when I mean break into smaller states, I am talking as small as a few million people, possibly a metro area is one state, then some more rural areas are one state, etc.
One virtue of the states splitting first is that is preserves the union, at least for a bit, allowing more time to fix problems or for the problems to go away on their own. The other virtue, possibly the most important, is that if a national divorce were to follow the units that would go one way or the other would be more granular and so one could avoid the problems you describe. Maybe the Boston-Richmond VA corridor stays in a Blue Nation while everything between Pittsburgh and Philly on up to Albany goes Red Nation. That would be hard to do if they were still tangled up in states, and a lot easier if there is a preliminary detangling first. (Hard and easy being relative terms, here :D )
This is a good point though about why federalism works if the government is serious about it. I don't much care what CA gets up to so long as I don't have to live by their rules. All this frustration could be avoided if the cities were run in their way and the rural folks were left to run things their way.
I started paying attention when MTG spouted off about “national divorce,” considered the ultimate stupidity of the premise, and weathered an assault from a regrettably fellow Republican on Twitter, who was just as stupid.
That was months ago, and since you address it, and correctly note the difficulties, please consider: The “blue-state, red-state idea is basically spurious, being color on a political map only. The political map changes, far more quickly than populations can up-end and move to one or the other. In my state we were for Trump in 2016, Biden in 2020 and everywhere you go, Trump billboards remain. No one bothers those because most agree...except in two major cities. So MTG, you idiot, how would this work??
That in itself should be enough. But I get the sentiment.
The fact that a very significant portion of Americans no longer care if there is an America, support socialism, falsely charge fascism and authoritarianism because the rest are nationalists and/or conservatives, is regrettable. And problematic. And why is it so? Opinion time.
Indoctrination has come from two major sources, one, academia through universities and right on down into schools, and two, from corporate media via a corporatocracy led by the WEF.
The WEF has been there ince 1974. It has had, then, 48-plus years to recruit, enlarge, placate and indoctrinate, all on the magnanimous principles of world peace, equity and government.
With Germany in charge.
I do not say that lightly and I do not say it without evidence.
If one visits the WEF website and looks for it, German innovation, leadership and technological superiority are frequently touted.
The idea that a coporatocracy has arisen within should be no surprise to either the world or to Klaus Schwab. They are the vehicle. And they expect to be in charge.
This has been the source of the daily inundation of bull crappery that has denigrated and destroyed our two-party system, through their purchased media, for four decades. Further our sieve-like system has permitted their money to purchase our representaion in the halls of Congress, swing our elections and even pollute our system of justice by donating to campaigns that will cause disruption.
Disruption is precisely what we have experienced. The end game is to socialize our nation, disarm the populace and install world government. The US was instrumental in ending Germany’s last quest for world domination.
Klaus Schwab is an engineer. And a good one.
Action to destroy the WEF and to decouple it from the UN would have to be followed by great patience. It has been nearly 50 years. It will require another 50 for healing to serously make a difference.
Please consider what I’ve said. I will not live to see it.
My children, will.
The UN is set in October to ratify with its member nations, a resolution that places the UN in authority over national governments in the event of another international “emergency,” such as a pandemic, or even disruption of digital communications by a sunspot. One guess if environmental concerns might qualify. The WEF supports it and has coupled itself politically to the UN. The Biden administration also fully supports it. Term of authority is not considered. This has been timed to precede the 2024 US election.