Why stay together? There’s nothing united about today’s United States

By David McElroy · August 24, 2011

More communication is supposed to lead to people getting along better. That’s what I’ve always heard. But when it comes to political communication in this increasingly polarized country, there’s no understanding. There’s less and less attempt by people to understand each other. Instead, there’s more hatred.

I browse strongly partisan websites every now and then just to get an idea about what people on both sides of the mainstream are saying. Every time I do, it seems to leave me feeling physically ill and emotionally numb, because the partisans of the mainstream don’t just disagree with one another. They hate each other.

Have you read what the partisans on both sides have to say about the other? They’re angry and vicious and mean. Much of what they write is unfair and intellectually dishonest. I first added links to four of them — two on each side — but I realized that I don’t want to do that. I’m not trying to make you angrier. I’m trying to get you to look for a solution beyond the anger.

Why can’t we simply agree that we’re not going to all want the same things and that we’re not all going to want to live the same ways? One of the original founding ideas of this nation was that the states were independent about most things. We’ve been taught that the Articles of Confederation weren’t good enough because they allowed states to control their own affairs and made it hard for the union’s government to do anything. But history is written by the winners — and the federalists won. Who’s to say that a strong federal government was ever a good idea — even if it weren’t the monstrosity it’s become in the last hundred years?

Since we do have groups of people who want fundamentally different things, why can’t we go our separate ways? You could argue for ages about the correct way to divide the land and who might get what and how many new entities there should end up being, but it’s a conversation worth having. You could even have a unified national defense force to protect the current national territory and establish that the entire thing is still one open market for travel and trade and movement. Why not at least think about it and decide whether there really is such a thing as “United” States anymore. What we have now is one Federal State.

Ideally, there would be no state in the traditional way of thinking about it. I want people to be able to set up whatever governing structures they want — of whatever size they want — if they own some land. The logical thing would require some people to swap land and move in order to be in an area consistent with what they wanted. It would be messy to set up. But would it be worse than where the current hatred is taking us?

Even if you’re not willing to envision letting a breakup happen, why couldn’t we allow groups to set up their own semi-autonomous cities in undeveloped territory? Even if you don’t want to rebuild the structure of the entire nation, why not let people with ideas about the way things should be done have at least as much sovereignty on their own land as Native Americans have in some places?

Obviously, most people’s first emotional reaction is to reject any form of this. People have been indoctrinated — for as long as they can remember — to believe that the nation is one unified whole that can’t be split. Getting past that emotional propaganda is a big block for most people. But if some form of collapse is going to happen anyway, why not plan for it and lay the foundation for dealing with it peacefully — while we still can?

If you think it’s impossible, consider Yugoslavia. What was formerly one communist country with various groups who hated each other is now five independent nations. Why couldn’t some form of that work for us?

I’m tired of the hatred and the bitterness. We can’t go on rhetorically trying to kill each other to control the whole pie. In time, the rhetoric is going to turn to something more serious. It’s time to consider cutting the pie and letting lots of groups take their own slice. Why not at least think about it?

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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