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Cut the Failed Red States Loose: Why America Can't Keep Carrying the Dead Weight
(cmarmitage.substack.com)
this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2025
305 points (89.2% liked)
politics
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What you're describing is exactly what I said will happen down the road as the states start making wars of redistricting. When states here like Texas gerrymandered their districts they are basically saying "only the red/republicans get representation." It invalidates the constitution to some degree. But it also creates such an unfair advantage when trying to pass national policy that the only possible choice is for another state to do the same to balance seats in federal government. Then if they respond in another red state and do the same, well now this is just a slide until every state is one solid color or another and parties are meaningless. Representation is meaningless. At that point, like-colored states are just going to start forming coalitions and negotiating or reducing federal contributions and doing their own trading, their own new systems of representation between them, and so on. At some point, every region or power bloc will have it's own international policies and defense forces.
At that point, Washington DC is just for show, for ceremony and rivalry and making trade deals and hurling shit at other regions. Some say it's already like that, but we still do have a working and vastly complex federal/state relationship.
It isn't wrong per-say for all this to happen this way, but a lot of people here want the USA to continue, it was an effective system for a long time. It will never just "go away" entirely, but many people feel like the erosion is beginning, or accelerating with events of the last decade or so. Losing a cohesive USA could be very destabilizing. Not because I'm under any illusion that the USA preserves order, but because some of the power-blocs that arise from the division may be very dangerous.
i think it’s certainly possible that it could start down that path, and it’ll become blatantly obvious that trickle down economics, “socialism is evil”, anti-intellectual crap that the red states bow at the alter of is a huge reason for their suffering and they’ll want to join those coalitions, but those coalitions will have years if not decades of policy on their side to make sure they aren’t overrun with the same ideas
could the process then just start over again? perhaps… it could just be a property of the system