It’s clear to me that (1) there is no cure for stupid; basic facts, let alone the details of late stage capitalism, are too complicated for someone with an IQ of 100 (the average); (2) there is no way to repair our 18th century political system, under which fewer than 600,000 sheep ranchers have the same political power as 39 million people in the 5th largest economy in the world; and (3) while the Chinese empire will be worse than the American empire, Americans are no longer interested in foreign policy, and even Russia (almost a vassal state of China) is confident enough of its power to humiliate our president-elect by publishing nude photos of his wife. Fortunately, people are sorting themselves out, with the Republicans leaving states that allow drug addicts to camp on public sidewalks, professors to lose their jobs for using the wrong pronouns, and men to play women’s sports, while Democrats leave states that allow pregnant women to bleed to death in hospital parking lots, high school teachers to lose their jobs for suggesting that slavery was a cause of the Civil War, and thugs to walk the streets brandishing their automatic weapons. I take no pleasure in the death of the American Experiment, but there’s no benefit in pretending it hasn’t happened. We need to start thinking about how to make the divorce work. As with most divorces, the hard part is the money. We could slash the federal income tax to just enough to pay for a vastly reduced military and leave it to the states to tax their citizens to provide health insurance, old age insurance, infrastructure, education, disaster relief, agricultural subsidies, etc., or we could leave the federal tax system in place and send the money for these things to the states based on the amounts that citizens of each state paid in federal taxes. The social security trust fund could be divided among the states on the basis of the population of those states. Republicans should be on board because they hate the federal government , while Democrats can finally stop subsidizing the red states. I know this will mean leaving innocents in red states at the mercy of Republicans, but there is nothing we can do to help them, except perhaps provide a sanctuary when they need to run. I realize that the devil will be in the details (where he always lurks), but I do think people should start discussing how to make it work.
