Sorry, Mr. Lincoln, but the Time Has Come

Abraham Lincoln looked at the warring nations of Europe and drew the conclusion that the North American continent had to avoid that fate and so when the Southern states attempted to leave the union, he refused to grant them a divorce.

Better a bad marriage than no marriage, Lincoln thought.

The twentieth century proved the felicity of Lincoln's concept--were it not for an enormous country of unified  states capable of producing 10,000 airplanes a month, the Third Reich might not have been defeated and one needs only watch "The High Castle" to imagine the consequences.

But now, in the twenty first century, the truths of the 19th and 20th centuries may have to give way to a new truth. The new truth is that the time may have arrived when we should arrange for as amicable divorce as we can arrive at and go our separate ways.  Let the red states in the South and the middle of the country live happily in their own way and allow the blue states on the coasts with selected mid section friends form another country.

As Michelle Goldberg enumerates in her inaugural article in today's New York Times, there are such genuine and irreconcilable differences built into our union that we can no longer hope for even a more perfect union. That a citizen of Wyoming should have 67 times the power of a citizen of California, that 40% of the country should have 80% of the power in the Senate and even in "the people's chamber," the House, is simply an unworkable sort of politics.

As Lincoln noted in his second Inaugural address, when facing such disagreements, we all, on both sides,hope for a results less fundamental and astounding.  But the seeds of this dissolution were sown into the soil of the Constitution. The first cause for disunion was the unresolved issued of slavery, left intact by the Constitution which recognized "three fifths of all other persons," who were universally understood to be the colored slaves. "Indians" were mentioned as Indians, but slaves were not even called slaves, just, "three fifths of all other Persons." 

If slavery was the first fault line, then disproportionate representation was the second.  California has more people than 11 other states combined, which have a total of 22 Senators to California's 2.  The fact is, empty land, mountain ranges, deserts have been given more weight than human beings in the representation in Congress. 

The fact is, when I watched the Senate hearing on the Graham-Cassidy bill this morning, and saw arrayed on one side Senators from Nevada, Louisiana, Georgia, South Dakota, I loathed every last one of them. On the other side, the Democrats from California, New York, Washington were people I could smile about. They represented what I thought of as reasonable legislators.

It is true there were loathsome Republicans from Pennsylvania and Ohio. But overall, if you kept the Middle Atlantic states, New England, Illinois and Minnesota and the West Coast, you'd have, not a homogeneous collection of soul mates, but you'd have a workable grouping of liberal folks who believe in government, not as the ultimate solution to every problem, but as a bedrock resource for the common good. 

The red state Republicans talked about "one size fits all" medical care as if that was an anathema, oblivious to the biggest one size fits all medical program: Medicare, as if they would love to deny that to every American.  These tough minded, independent Republicans from tough minded independent states want to forge a country where no citizen asks help from any other, and certainly not from the government, because, don't you know, nobody deserves government help and nobody ought to think they do. Oh, just be sure no bureaucrat from Washington, D.C. comes between you and your doctor, or has anything to do with supporting you in your old age.

Private enterprise is the only moral mechanism for achieving the common good, and prosperity for all, according to the Republicans. Competition and the profit motive will solve all problems in medical care, in everything for that matter.  Tree huggers who worry about climate change, bleeding heart liberals who want to invite immigrants into this country, godless atheists who want to allow gays to marry, who want to allow for intermarriage of the races are what's wrong with this country!

Well, all this would be wrong in their country, for sure.

For generations, really from the late 19th century through the middle of the 20th century, the South, that bastion of the Ku Klu Klan and other more genteel versions of the Klan, managed to control the Congress and only when the Supreme Court and the Presidency intervened did segregation, racist laws and repression of civil rights of every stripe from those affecting women to homosexuals finally begin to wane.

But we are now swinging back into a repressive, racist society because of manipulations of the mechanisms of power, the Electoral College, gerrymandering, a Constitutional guarantee allowing for small states to wield disproportionate power, as if land mass were more important than people.

This is a structural flaw, built into our Constitution and nothing can change it because the power to change it has been rigged from the inception of the nation, intentionally, to prevent that change.

At this juncture, it might make more sense to smile, shake the hands of the folks in the South, the Far West and possibly many in the Midwest, and say, "Good luck and best wishes. You are on your own. We are heading our own way."