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Mickey's avatar

Eight sides! Brilliant- and ancient. The Chinese Baqua, and it’s use with the I Ching in divination. I’m INTRIGUED with what You come up with 👍🏼😎❤️🎵

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Sara Robinson's avatar

Exactly. The blue states that want these things will build them. But they'll find significant obstacles in both federal law, and the demands of federal taxation. At some point, they're going to want reclaim both the freedom and the cash to do things their way. And that's when they'll come into conflict with red states who are determined to keep them hogtied and paying the bills. How that resolves is anyone's guess.

California's been fighting these battles since the 70s, mostly over environmental standards. They're the place this future emerged first. But the fast-heating front right now is the tussle between blue and red states over abortion laws: what's perfectly legal in some states is tantamount to a death-penalty offense in others, and the latter keep trying to extend enforcement jurisdiction into the former. The last time anyone (actually, mostly the same states, in fact) tried to do that, it was the Fugitive Slave Act, which was the final match that ignited the Civil War. So that's how that goes.

"Fuck it, we'll do it ourselves" feels like the most likely scenario to me, given the pressures at work. But I wouldn't put down money on the odds that the nation will survive that path intact -- especially since the red states now seem just as determined to force their will on the blue ones as they were in 1860. (They've made it clear that they're quite happy to see us dead, and they've got the guns and a well-developed narrative that would justify doing it.)

They're not going to let us go our own way without a fight, possibly one to the literal death. We should take that seriously. After all, they've done it before.

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