Serkanner wrote:Jodorowsky's Acolyte wrote:The history of the U.S. is not quite as miserable or anguished as that of the Balkans or the Soviet Union.
You do know what happened last time when US stated tried to secede? And I will not go into a number of other atrocities that happened since the Europeans came to North America in the 16th century.
I know. I know. I should have mentioned the Civil War. (It's another favorite topic of my Dad's, has all kinds of books on that war). Reconstruction was miserable and nasty as well. I was just trying to see we've forgotten all of that in the current century, and haven't had frequent events of instability like the CW or Reconstruction to help us understand the situation in the Balkans. Although, Reconstruction still had its lingering effects a good part of the 20th century (such as the Jim Crowe laws and public lynchings), and we had moments of near totalitarianism with the McCarthyist period and 70s shootings of flower wearing protesters. The social upheavals of the 60s, 70s, and 80s were impactive, but not everyone remembers how crazy those decades were. We Americans are usually too insulated to remember or understand actual instability. We're even insulated from the atrocities committed in 16th Century North America by our predecessors, and are even insulated to the lingering repercussions of the U.S.'s own colonial actions in the current state of the Native American reservations.
In any case, the secession petition is a bit of a joke.
I would like to see stronger state powers and a weaker federal government but I don't think it will ever come to that again.
But what if the state governments become too powerful, and the towns start petitioning the state governments to secede into tiny principalities?
'...all those who took part in the rise and fall of the Dune project learned how to fall one and one thousand times with savage obstinacy until learning how to stand. I remember my old father who, while dying happy, said to me: "My son, in my life, I triumphed because I learned how to fail."' -Alejandro Jodorowsky
