Reply #24: The fact that people here talk of secession is not a good sign of things

[Selatius]

I don't remember people speaking about this issue in as cavalier a fashion as people are doing today in my whole life. I always remembered people talking about regrouping and adjusting to changes in the nation, but I don't recall people talking about pulling out. There's only been two, perhaps three times, in American history where talk of sedition was frank and out in the open before today.

Things have changed from before. That's all I can tell given the election and the ever present danger of corporatism. There's always been the problem of greed overtaking politics, but it seems it's gotten to the point where it has become intolerable to a good many people here. They divide us by playing on religious issues, while they consolidates more power and blame the consequences on those who want to resist (scapegoating people for problems of the nation).

Yes, I think it's time to be frank about the situation. The corporatist media's manipulations have shown us differences that have always existed between separate regions of the country. No one here can honestly say that southerners are very much like people on the west coast or the northeast, and no one could say that they are incredibly different from folks in the midwest. Let's look seriously at our cultural differences and our differences over values. This has always been a fixture of American history. What has largely trumped those differences is our collective dedication to the system our Founders established.

The thing that appears different now is that certain people are regularly politicizing these differences in the search for more power and control, and I don't think that's a healthy thing because the implication is that you aren't American if you believe in the "wrong ideal" or come from the "wrong place." It splits us into an us vs. them dynamic that will only lead to more trouble.

I don't know where we're heading as a country. If things change for the better, that's great. If things continue to deteriorate, if the government becomes destructive to our way of life beyond what is tolerable, then I won't say what will happen except to say that it could be something we don't want to see. If certain politicians and other individuals continue to play on regionalism and the politics of division and ridicule, the result won't be good unless it is stopped.

The question is whether they can be stopped in time or whether the system has become so overcome by the rot of corruption and cronyism and greed that the only recourse in the future is to either demand justice and hope it's granted or fight a tyranny that refuses to give in.