Two Americas: for how much longer can we prop-up the failed "Blue" America?

10/31/03

[pabianice]

In reading other posts here on FR and in spending most of the day just reading (I'm a reporter), I am again struck how the US has split into two countries: "red" Bush America and "blue" Gore America. That's nit news. What's most compelling is how Bush America is increasingly having to prop-up the utterly failed Great Society/Gore America, and for just how much longer such a situation can exist.

Item: teacher disciplined for telling Mexican kids in her US class to stop disrupting the class (she's a "racist" for so doing). The other kids in the class continue to get no education and the Liberals think that's just fine -- for other kids. The LIberals opt out of the system by sending THIER kids to private schools.

Item: A conservative estimate puts as much as 35% of the American economy underground. Taxpayers are fed-up with having 50% or more of of their hard-earned pay taxed by the feds, the state, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. So peopledo the natural thing: opt out of the system by going cash-only, off the books.

Item: the blue states lead in victim disarmament, where the law-abiding are denied the constitutional right to self-defense while the Liberals turn a blind eye at violence from career criminals ("poor victims of a racist system"). Liberals make sure they live in guarded, gated communities, and never have to set foot in any scruffy areas as they drive their SUVs from gated home to gated office building. Others who can, opt out by leaving such areas for places where they can carry concealed if they wish and where criminals know they are likely to be shot.

Item: International embarrassments like Ted Kennedy give long, boozy speeches about the evils of President Bush while his devotees urinate themselves in the glow of their self-righteousness. Others simply ignore such crap and tune-into talk radio.

Item: "Blue" America is financially bankrupt, and California is a glaring example. "Blue" America has degenerated into a coven of grasping, mentally diminished, selfish, thuggish special interest groups who have become increasingly violent in fighting over what is left of the Big City Democratic machines that have run things for the past 150 years. The "blue" islands on the 2000 map can best be described as cancers on the national MRI -- blighted areas of malignant, imploding selfishness that are trying to spread across the entire national body. And the "red" nation has to keep paying for it.

I have to wonder how much longer this will be the case. The defacto separation of "red" and "blue" has already occurred, and is fat too profound to be fixed by any social "bussing." At what point does the whole scheme collapse? And how is this going to be expressed and dealt with in the coming 2004 elections?

[MissAmericanPie]

"Item: teacher disciplined for telling Mexican kids in her US class to stop disrupting the class (she's a "racist" for so doing). The other kids in the class continue to get no education and the Liberals think that's just fine -- for other kids. The LIberals opt out of the system by sending THIER kids to private schools."

My son is upset because his favorite teacher was fired for saying taking drugs is like playing Russian Roulette. Zero tolerance for talk of guns, and this is in Texas.

[Jack Black]

Are you joking? I guess they have removed history from the curriculum. How can you teach history without discussing guns.

[Held_to_Ransom]

Two Americas: for how much longer can we prop-up the failed "Blue" America?

Until you pay your debts for all the money the red states syphon out of the Federal government from them. Don't hold your breath, the red states have never gotten out of debt since 1787 aren't likely to ever start.

[rmlew]

I hate to tell you but most blue counties pay more in taxes than the get back. The zip codes 10021, 10022, and 10028 spend more in income taxes than many red states.

[MissAmericanPie]

I'm not joking, I wish I were. I've been wondering if there isn't some way to mount a protest. It seems terribly unfair and crazy. If my son likes her, she has to be a great teacher I can't stand to see this on two levels, I hate it for her sake, and I hate to see this totalitarian, Agenda 21, stuff going on in my town.

The cops take their police dogs through class, the kids sit at their desks and the cops walk the dog down the rows of desks sniffing. I don't want my son getting use to this as normal.

[Paulus Invictus]

No! Wisconsin is needed in the Red area. Wow! That was a small Gore win there! How many were illegal aliens from Canada?

[Starboard]

Government overhead costs run about 50 percent. So if you give the government $1, getting back anything over 50 cents is a bargain.

Getting anything over 50 cents would be a miracle. In addition to overhead, there is mismanagement and waste on a grand scale so the money that filters down is really a residual amount.

[HIDEK6]

The notion that we control this country by voting is illusion.

If voting could change anything, it would be illegal.

OK, I stole it, but I don't remember who from.

[tpaine]

Item: A conservative estimate puts as much as 35% of the American economy underground. Taxpayers are fed-up with having 50% or more of of their hard-earned pay taxed by the feds, the state, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. So people do the natural thing: opt out of the system by going cash-only, off the books.

______________________________________

Item: The cash pot froggies are slowly being boiled by more & more 'reporting regs' on ALL large cash transactions.
-- Be prepared to account for a source of the cash when you buy or sell cars and other big ticket items in the near future.

[JoeSchem]

The solution is simple. The Union must be dissolved. Let the fifty states go their own way. Then there's no longer a federal monopoly on being American, and there will be fifty governments competing for law-abiding, taxpaying citizens.

[reed_inthe_wind]

One of the goals of public policy is to stabilize food prices. As a result the government became a purchaser of grain and other commodities. the grain was stored in silos and this cost taxpayer dollars. With some frequency the grain rotted in the silos. Someone came up with a way to save expenditures on silos and protect the environment - governemnt incentives to allow farm land to lay fallow in sequential bumper years.

No one put a gun to New Jersey residents and forced them to develop their land. If farm subsidies are so great, convert your land back into farms. While you are at it, why not donate some more land for huge Federal Parks.

[Jack Black]

ALREADY HAPPENS. When I bought my wife a car we had to fill out forms telling where the cash came from. Don't remember the exact details.

[archy]

In point of fact the divide is not really red states versus blue states as those states in the red column have substantial blue voters and likewise those states in the blue column have substantial red voters. If this devolves to civil war then the net result will be far more chaotic then anyone imagines as there will not be clearlines drawn. Think of just about every state as a Civil War border state.

I'm looking for the opportunity to settle a few scores with some of those left-handed southpaw ba$tards myself....

But y'know what? In a lot of locations, I'd bet local politics will be tha cause of more acrimony than supposed national major issues.

-archy-/- -archy-/-

[archy]

CW II AND FSP Porcupines ping/s!

Sorry for any overlap from both lists....

-archy-/-

[archy]

Just an off the cuff ( and probably off the wall ) comment? I have long wished we could split America in two-- one nation of "Just let me aloners" and the other of "I want the government to be my Mom & Daddy..."

Unfortunately, the latter require the money and labor of the former, so it would never stand for long.

The Free State Project now directing its attentions to New Hampshire hoping to accomplish just that; and they've been both welcomed by the state's Republican governor and excorciated by the Democrats with visions of finding themselves in the fourth place of the Granite State's listed political parties. With 5000 pledged members now assembled, they've got a fourth of the numbers they require for their relocation to that enclave to begin, and have spun off a similar *Free West Project* effort in the American West with the intention of doing something similar west of the Rockies- possibly in multiple states.

And if they set the example, and voters in other states look on longingly, and the Republicans and Democrats elsewhere have the choice of either adopting similar platform planks, or seeing their dwindling numbers of voter members attracted elsewhere, the nannystate mam have to take on additional employment as a cleaning lady.

-archy-/-

[archy]

In point of fact the divide is not really red states versus blue states as those states in the red column have substantial blue voters and likewise those states in the blue column have substantial red voters. If this devolves to civil war then the net result will be far more chaotic then anyone imagines as there will not be clearlines drawn. Think of just about every state as a Civil War border state.

There are of course considerable differences in communications and transportation than in the days of the American *Civil War.* But note that when similar divisions between Finland's pro and anti-Communist factions moved from debate into gunfire in 1918, the result was both exceedingly bloody and intense; but over in something like 4 months.

In many locations in the US, I don't think it'd take anywhere near that long. And the survivors could then be gainfully employed cleaning up the messy aftermath.

[wardaddy]

But Finland was Finns.

We do not share the same longstanding steppes bond....we are fragmented much more so along every imaginable avenue.

I do like the Finn example in theory though.

I see many fronts here.

[Ogmios]

Read Ayn Rands "Atlas Shrugged" and you will know exactly what we are talking about.

I was using "Who is John Galt" for quite a while in my tagline, but it seemed to upset a few people for some reason, so I changed it.

[Concentrate]

Item: "Blue" America is financially bankrupt, and California is a glaring example. "Blue" America has degenerated into a coven of grasping, mentally diminished, selfish, thuggish special interest groups who have become increasingly violent in fighting over what is left of the Big City Democratic machines that have run things for the past 150 years. The "blue" islands on the 2000 map can best be described as cancers on the national MRI -- blighted areas of malignant, imploding selfishness that are trying to spread across the entire national body. And the "red" nation has to keep paying for it.

I have to wonder how much longer this will be the case. The defacto separation of "red" and "blue" has already occurred, and is fat too profound to be fixed by any social "bussing." At what point does the whole scheme collapse? And how is this going to be expressed and dealt with in the coming 2004 elections?

FR is going to get a lot more interesting if a Dem wins the oval in '04, which is entirely possible. If they win, it will be terrible, but at least we'll have somenoe to blame it on.

[Concentrate]

The first thing we've got to do is stop bailing out the liberal spendthrifts like NY and CA.

Truth is, NY has always paid more than it receives in Federal money. It's those lazy lay-abouts in the rest of the country that should pick up the pace and get to work. You just can't get much done when you talk slow, move slow, etc.