11–20 of 673 posts
As an Oregonian not living in one of those sparsely-populated counties that voted for secession, I wonder why the folks who want to be part of Idaho don't just vote with their feet and move there? There's no border wall keeping them in Oregon. These votes are just symbolic and won't get them to their Idaho paradise near as quickly as a U-Haul could.
Why not just move to Idaho then? Or some other red state?
In order to create 2 new Senate seats.
As an Oregonian not living in one of those sparsely-populated counties that voted for secession, I wonder why the folks who want to be part of Idaho don't just vote with their feet and move there? There's no border wall keeping them in Oregon. These votes are just symbolic and won't get them to their Idaho paradise near as quickly as a U-Haul could.
For reference, this is about 100K people of 4.2M in Oregon (1). The rural counties of Southern Oregon and Northern California have been proposing the state of Jefferson for a while now (2). From my experience living there for a few years, it's the most libertarian place I've ever seen. It's like Texas without the Christianity. People there generally support gay marriage, abortion, and cannabis legalization but also l…
My dad was a science teacher so we felt pretty much like an island of progressivism in a sea of very right wing folk. More than once I recall him shaking his head and muttering something like "These people are nuts!" after an exchange with a local that went off the rails into conspiracy land.
Why not just move to Idaho then? Or some other red state?
Doesn't Eastern Washington also have a similar demographic? Maybe combine them too.
It includes chunks of OR and CA but not WA for some reason. It may be explained in the doc.
For reference, this is about 100K people of 4.2M in Oregon (1). The rural counties of Southern Oregon and Northern California have been proposing the state of Jefferson for a while now (2). From my experience living there for a few years, it's the most libertarian place I've ever seen. It's like Texas without the Christianity. People there generally support gay marriage, abortion, and cannabis legalization but also l…
It varies a lot. I spent some growing up years in Southern Oregon and there definitely was a strong evangelical, anti-gay marriage, anti-abortion etc. contingent in the town where I was. Lots of Birchers & KKK types as well. This was in the 70s and while the whole QAnon thing now is epistemlogically shocking, it seems like we had a lot of similar kinds of conspiracies running rampant in small southern Oregon towns ba…
only if you have forgotten, as you say, the great satanic panic(s) of the 70s and 80s. And, every few decades, going back to about Carthage...
https://www.npr.org/2021/05/18/997559036/americas-satanic-pa...
Why not just move to Idaho then? Or some other red state?
I don't have a dog in this fight, but... why are we so adamant about clinging to certain structures even if they don't work for people?
You might say "but not everybody agrees with this move..." well sure but at what point do we say the will of the general population matters more without appealing to some higher authority like the U.S. to implement rules that you agree with even if the local population doesn't?
Some reasonable lines can be drawn. For example, obviously you can't let a group of people just murder other people or something. But what about letting them teach the Bible or Islam in their schools? I mean, it's their schools right? Don't their property taxes pay for them? It's a complicated subject, IMO.
And if you want less clear examples it would be easy to find.
The truth of the matter as I see it is that this "problem" is not going away. Nation states are an historical anomaly, and now that there's no war and need to organize for something meaningful, and the world has gotten much smaller, we're seeing fractures come into being. This could be (and I'm not comparing any of these) Basque rebels, Ireland, China geocoding Uighur Muslims to make room for Han Chinese, Quebec, etc. and you can also look at general wealth and outperformance of smaller countries that trend toward being city states as they can and tend to more freely compete without risk of violence on the international stage.
IMO cryptocurrency, fracturing and bankrupt nation states, and other things will largely destroy the nation states as we know them today, barring anything unforeseen. It'll take a while though, we're just living through history.
And FWIW I am a U.S. Army veteran - so I'm pretty 'Murica, but as much as I don't want to admit it, it seems to me that just having such a large country with a population that is increasingly divided, is just going to lead toward separatists movements.
And just to get a cheap-shot at Texas. Sure is a whole lot of boot and no spur there when you want to deny federal aid to other states, but then have your own problems and come begging hat in hand from the feds. Where's your seccession now?
Anyway.
Doesn't Eastern Washington also have a similar demographic? Maybe combine them too.