One major interpretation of the 2010 Midterm election results is that many progressive, liberal and Democratic policies have been generally discredited among the majority of the American electorate. So what can Progressives, Democrats and Liberals do over the next few years?
The national rejection is not just a result of poor messaging, nuance, campaign spending, turnout, or anything else political. If the electorate wholly rejects a political party after less than two years and has returned significant power to Republicans at the national and state levels who continue to embrace the policies of the past 30 years, there is no way in hell this dynamic is going to change. The electorate will endlessly forgive Republicans and has no patience whatsoever for anything Democrats say or do.
Progressives, Democrats and Liberals (aka PDLs for short) must simply accept they are a minority in a right of center to extreme right nation in which any sane discussions of facts and reality are irrelevant. More than half of Americans generally live in fantasy bubbles of their own beliefs, fears, prejudices and selected “facts” constituting a worldview that is wholly separate from reality. Unless PDLs can argue principally on emotions, faith, and the perpetual delution of American exceptionalism, most of the electorate will turn away.
PDLs who post, blog and write on various Internet news/opinion sites and blogs (including TMV) might provide themselves with some short-term emotional and intellectual satisfaction. However the majority of Americans will not be interested in considering or adopting any of their ideas – particularly if PDLs insist upon discussing facts and base arugments upon rational causation.
Under our current political system, the national debate is effectively over and Republicans won. Unless an idea gets U.S. Chamber of Commerce approval, it is dead on arrival. Furthermore, all public opinion polls to the contrary (regardless of how lopsided) will be ignored since the American people spoke on November 2nd and unanimously adopted the entire Republican, conservative and tea-party platforms.
Porgressives, Democrats and Liberals cannot complain that the electorate is ignorant, congenitally stupid, racist, fearful, angry, or whatever else that has been offered to date. The positive and negative intellectual abilities of the electorate have been an unchangeable reality for many years. PDLs have been utterly unable to adapt themselves to the facts on the ground but Republicans have been. PDLs were elected by that same allegedly ignorant and impatient electorate in 2008 and 2006. Now PDLs have to get over the results and move on.
The 41 to 49 percent of Americans (PDLs) who disagree with the national consensus as established by the 2010 electorate, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Fox News, and the Republican Party are simply not part of “the American people.” There exists an enormous and irreconcilable divide in almost all ideas, policies, emotions, politics, economics, sports, music, foods, diversions and worldviews between the two camps (and even within the two warring groups).
There is no possibility of compromise when fundamental policy positions and worldviews are so far apart. And this is further exacerbated by the fact that the majority of Americans have no interest in compromising with “the enemy.” There is no middle or moderate position left in America. In a country where “It’s my way or the highway” what can PDLs do?
The laws of every State entitle most married couples to a divorce based upon irreconcilable differences. The same approach may be necessary for America as a whole. This is not an effort to revisit or re-argue the Civil War and the premise that states cannot leave the union and cause a bloody war over slavery or other issues. Instead, it is an attempt to find a sensible and peaceful mechanism to dissolve a hopelessly dysfunctional and irreconcilable relationship that would free the angry and warring parties to find new and more productive and satisfying separate lives.
Unfortunately PDLs cannot easily move to other countries, even though many conservative Republicans might demand that they “love it or leave it.” Most don’t have the money or the foreign language skills. Most all advanced and developing foreign nations are not welcoming to permanent refugees who come without much money, limited language abilities, nor any readily transferrable skills and professional licenses, seeking employment in competition with native workers who are also suffering their own levels of high unemployment.
The world is generally open to free trade in goods, services and financial capital but not for people and labor. Most PDLs are legally and practically stuck within the 50 U.S. States, and due to their citizenship from actual birth within the U.S., have an equal claim to the same national real estate (foreclosed upon or not).
One possible exception for PDLs might be Canada, but who the hell wants to live in a place where Winter lasts about 9 months and the other 3 seasons are known as June, July and August? There are many other third-world nations that don’t care who comes in but with their high levels of poverty, disease, random violence and bloody civil wars, plus generally moribund economies, they make poor alternatives for most PDLs. Is there anyone ready to move to the Central African Republic?
PDLs have to instead gather together in various domestic sanctuaries they can create within the U.S. It might be best that all PDLs – even those living in very “Blue” urban enclaves across this overwhelming Red nation – should seriously consider moving to the Atlantic and Pacific Coastal states. The 2010 election results only confirmed these changing national living arrangements that demographers have been following for the past 2 decades.
Most Conservatives and Republicans might also welcome this complete nationwide geographic separation and re-alignment. PDLs should move to heavily-democratic New York State and the various New England States. Or they could choose to move to heavily-democratic California, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii – particularly if they speak additional languages to English and if their skin tone is not lily white.
There might be a few problematic areas such as Colorado, New Mexico and Illinois with large democratic populations isolated in a sea of Red. However in order to make the Pacific Coast and Northeast U.S. completely blue, then some areas in the middle may have to be compromised away.
Perhaps a special short-term program would provide financial assistance only to Republicans who want to leave those Blue states and move back towards the Red American central heartland between the two oceans and surrounding the Caribbean. Politically it is unrealistic to hope for a similar program to be passed in Congress for Democrats hoping to move out of Red areas. Fortunately for the next several years, there will be plenty of vacant housing across the nation to accommodate such a national re-organization.
Continuing to maintain limited and insular Blue urban settlements within predominantly Red states, and visa-versa cannot work anymore. Just look to the Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank for an example of the many perpetual problems associated with incompatibles living almost on the same real estate. It is easier for separate states to coexist peacefully next to each other rather than forcing complete opposites into one artificial state to perpetually fight over everything.
This re-settlement proposal would be just the first part of a peaceful national civil divorce proceeding. It will eventually permit the laws and policies in our separate realms to fully reflect what the overwhelming majorities want in their separate legal and geographic areas. This arrangement would be far more preferable than perpetuating our current system of one side forcing its views over the other side all across this closely divided nation.
Perpetual internal economic and social warfare, coupled with national political gridlock and paralysis, are not in the best short or long-term health, welfare, economic, or happiness interests of either side. In promptly starting this geographic separation, by 2014 or even sooner we could peacefully separate into at least three (and up to 6) wholly independent, viable and fully sovereign nations. We would have to change our mindsets and some songs from “This land is your land, this land is my land” to “that land is your land, this land is my land.”
Since we can no longer effectively manage the decline and fall of the American Empire, then a peaceful civil divorce may be our last and only solution for sanity and prosperity for all. All the new nations could still be part of a North American Free Trade and Currency Zone with Canada and Mexico, or they could remain wholly separate and free to win or lose in the global economy by their own choices.
The U.S. needs a national civil divorce. It’s long overdue and it would be the only sane approach to address our growing national calamity.
Submitted by Marc Pascal from Phoenix, AZ.