According to the Book

I have a book, "How the States Got Their Shapes" by Mark Stein. It says that congress was always trying to make new states approximately equal in size, but things came up that tended to frustrate this plan. Texas and California were both independent republics before they joined the union and they basically said that the union had to accept them as they were or not at all. Texas actually was larger than it is now, but they sold some land to the feds to pay off the debt they had incurred in their war of independence from Mexico. They also gave up that little strip, which became the panhandle of Oklahoma, so that they could be south of a line previously drawn by the Missouri Compromise and come in as a slave holding state. Congress had created the Dakota Territory mostly from land left over from the Minnesota Territory when Minnesota became a state. This territory was too big to make into a state that they wanted to be approximately equal to Kansas and Nebraska, so they divided it into two states.

The passage I quoted to you about congress and the supreme court didn't just come from "somewhere in the constitution", it came from Article III, Section 2, Paragraph 2. I gave you the numbers so that you could look it up if you didn't believe me. Don't feel bad, not many people know about that clause because it has seldom been used. What it means is that congress can exempt certain laws they pass from judicial review. All they've got to do is put wording in the bill that says "This law shall not be subject to judicial review". I believe they did that to a couple of laws passed during the Civil War, but I'm not sure about that. It also says that congress can make "regulations" under which the court may operate. This probably meant when the court was first being set up, but I think a smart lawyer could make a case for congress passing such regulations even unto this day. Congress, however, has not seen fit to exercise their authority over the court for a long time. I don't know why, maybe few congressmen have read the constitution or even care what it says.

The reason I brought the Chinese into this was that you said something about all the laws that have been passed which have benefitted me. I was trying to think of some, and then I realized that there weren't many laws that have been materially harmful to me either. Of course I care what the government does, but I only have one vote, and I have to get on with my life as best I can regardless of what the government does or doesn't do.

I agree that most states are not any more united within themselves than they are with the rest of the states. I think that's mostly a result of how the demographics have evolved over the years. For instance, Chicago has more in common with Gary, Indiana than  it has with Peoria, Illinois because Chicago and Gary sit side by side across the border from each other. If you've ever driven that stretch of I-94 that links them together you know there is a lot of traffic on that road. I've never driven to
Peoria, but I would be surprised if somebody told me that there was that much traffic on whatever road links it with Chicago.

Of course I care what's good for the country, and I would probably support it if the country ever made up it's mind about what that is. Like the states, only more so, the country contains a great diversity of people who have never come close to a consensus about anything important in my lifetime. Be advised that a consensus is more than a simple majority. A consensus is when almost everybody agrees, and the few who don't are willing to go along with it because they are tired of arguing about it. Most Native American tribes operated by consensus, but there was plenty of vacant land in those days, and anybody who disagreed with the tribe's consensus could move a few miles down the river and start a tribe of their own. You can't do that today, you have to travel hundreds of miles,  live in the swamp, work for low wages, and put up with long winters. Even then you will have neighbors, but they won't bother you much because they are at least as goofy as you are.