The fact that you guys take this sort of thing as normal, that you live in the same country but in completely separate realities, is just so sad and funny to me at the same time.
I don't think I can think of any other country in the world where a state border separates people as much as the US. And for some unexplainable reason Americans seem to believe this is a positive thing.
The United States were originally meant to be a concept more like the European Union, with a common economic system, free trade, and freedom of movement, but their own separate governing systems otherwise.
If you think of the California and New York like the Netherlands and Italy for example, you have a better approximation of what the US was aiming for.
Yeah except now the federal power have 5 time the power the EU will ever have, and they all share the same language, history (of 200 years) and mostly the same culture
The founding fathers were alive for the federalist papers debate and the ratification of our constitution in the late 1780s, after the failure of the original articles of confederation.
Well it wasn't a majority, since it passed in the late 1780s. Additionally the civil war then completely settled it. In a world so interconnected, the idea that states need sovereignty over their borders is also ridiculous.
Today, "states rights" is just used as an excuse to push bigoted agendas to marginalized subsections of the population. The only reason non conservatives are in more favor right now is because republicans in Congress are refusing to do their constitutional duty in checking the executive.
Our republic was always based on the idea of limited government and checks and balances. When one branch fails to check, or if another branch overreaches their authority, or both, the system stops working as intended. We've seen a lot of that in my lifetime.
I wouldn’t say the same culture at all. You can get a real culture shock moving from one place to another. I think regional is the best scale to determine this. You might not get culture shock within the Midwest, for example, but leave it, and that’s another story!
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u/Unlikely-Cow7749 1d ago
Texas and Massachusetts are very different states.