Do you think that you could fight division with division? I know how that sounds but hear me out.

What do you think would happen if blue states and red states made a pact to try and heavily incentivize all people on the left to relocate to blue states and all people on the right to relocate to red states?

Perhaps the reason things are so hostile between the aisles has a lot to do with the fact that people who want vastly different things from their government are being forced to live under the same lawmakers and enforcers. If they had their own dedicated spaces don't you think that would allow for a great deal of decompression? Distance makes the heart grow fonder and all that?

Sometimes the solution to issues can seem counterintuitive but work very well; for example, did you know that if someone bites you the best thing to do is to force whatever part of you they're biting into their mouth as hard as you can?

Your first instinct will be to snatch it away but that will give them room to bite down harder. If you force it into their mouth it will open their jaw and allow you to quickly remove your appendage from their teeth.

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BlueVeins · 22-25

Ehhhhh I hate republicans a lot, but living with them every day, even a political extremist like myself grows to view them as the basically normal people that they objectively are. If you've never met a republican before, your view of them is informed solely by the shit you read in the news, and that could be incredibly dangerous. And obviously, there are gonna be kids born in both these territories whose political leanings end up opposite of the people around them, which is gonna be a huge source of animosity.

Kwek00 · 41-45, M

Perhaps the reason things are so hostile between the aisles has a lot to do with the fact that people who want vastly different things from their government are being forced to live under the same lawmakers and enforcers. If they had their own dedicated spaces don't you think that would allow for a great deal of decompression? Distance makes the heart grow fonder and all that?

No... not really, no.

Most social scientists I'm aware off, believe that a large amount of social and bridging capital (depending on the example) favor positive outcomes when it comes to relationships between groups. Social and Bridging capital, is perceived as an amount of relationships within and between diffrent groups. If you know one another and befriend one another, it's easier to create levels of respect altough this isn't a guarantee.

Isolation on the other hand, makes it way easier to move further away from another and see the other as a total outsider. It becomes easier to demonise people you never mingle with. It's easier to foster biasses for people you never mingle with. In short, people often fear (and/or hate) that what they don't know. The more you isolate, the less you know and the more control someone can have over the isolated group towards the unkown surrounding groups. Cause they stopped listening, understanding and learning from the other/opposition.

TinyViolins · 31-35, M

The split between Democrats and Republicans, more than age, more than education, more than race, religion, or gender, boils down primarily to urban vs. rural. That's the single biggest predictor of whether someone will vote red or blue.

You can't exactly urbanize all rural areas or deurbanize large cities. It's not something that demography will solve since rural areas are dependent on cities for money and technology while cities are reliant on rural areas for food and resources.

It'll lead to the exact problem we had with the Articles of Confederation, where each state was looking out for it's own interest and spited the federal government for trying to unify them.

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TinyViolins · 31-35, M

@Eternity The federal government could easily be weakened with extreme enough legislators or presidents, which is what the electoral college is doomed to produce with states becoming more partisan and more extreme after this realignment.

We need more moderation, not more polarity. I think the only way to do that is to break up the duopoly with more third parties and more independent candidates. The best way to get them on-board is by breaking the stranglehold at the state level.

Make it so that anybody can run in a primary, instead of having one Republican and one Democrat one. Then make something like ranked-choice voting where people can vote for more than one candidate so they don't have to feel so strongly about one, and they won't become so embittered when their top choice doesn't make the cut.

Eternity · 26-30, M

@TinyViolins fair enough. I like what the #RepresentUs movement is working toward...pretty much all you've said here.

My only qualm is that what you've said and what they say is so much more complex than just sending people to their respective corners and having the fed gov actually work for their livings by playing peacekeeper.

TinyViolins · 31-35, M

@Eternity The problem is a cultural one, not necessarily a political one, and it's guaranteed to be a losing argument when you tell someone their culture is wrong.

Life moves very differently in an urban environment compared to a rural one, yet our political mechanisms are expected to represent both. That becomes exponentially more difficult when you have curated media outlets feeding each audience an unbalanced diet of information which exalts one political party and demonizes the other.

The solution is to create more cultural bridges so that people can actually trust and respect each other, because it makes us more likely to work together instead of quarreling from opposite ends. We can promote civility by promoting empathy, but there's only so much the federal government can do with that regards.

th3r0n · 41-45, M

Short term it would actually be brilliant and work out very well

Eventually they would wind up in civil war and even possibly splitting up and warring against each other

When people from the left get power it will be a totalitarian government that takes over, as all communist countries have gone before it

Eternity · 26-30, M

@th3r0n i feel that with proper checks and balances a civil war could be avoided.

I think that a good follow up measure would be to forbid Federal level politicians from being associated with the left or the right in any way shape or form. Federal level politicians, in this scenario, should be legally required to be impartial to either side.

That way the military will not be under the control of either the left nor the right, and policies such as mandatory national retaliation against whoever the agressor is can be enacted without fear of it being twisted into an excuse to wage war.

RebelFox · 36-40, F

What if I don’t affiliate with either?

Eternity · 26-30, M

@RebelFox go where you want then i guess. Whatever state has the most appealing laws to you.

RebelFox · 36-40, F

@Eternity ugh, still sounds like politics and control to me

Eternity · 26-30, M

@RebelFox yes. That is a reality of the world we live in. Even intentional living communities have rules that members have to abide by to avoid taking more than they give to the collective effort.

TurtleEclipseOfTheHeart · 22-25, F

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