states shmates

Oh I agree that we are not going to change the senate in any foreseeable time. But there are interesting stories on how that came to be. For instance why is there a North and South Dakota for instance, what in God’s name is the difference between the two? And I’m sure you know that Texas joined with the agreement that they could become five states if they wanted to. What a liberal nightmare eight more conservative senators, and not just conservative senators, but Texas conservative senators.

But they never will because they are all proud of being Texans. When I lived in Austin they would have music festivals on the river and they would be pretty raucous, but when the band, as they always did, played some jingoist song about Texas, they would stand every man jack of them with their hats over their hearts and not a dry eye among them. Illinoisans would all be snickering, and what kind of songs do we have? Illinois, Illinois, by the river gently flowing, who the hell ever sings that?

And in fact Chicagoans look with contempt at the burbs, who look with disgust at Chicagoans, and both of them are only scarcely aware of downstaters, who don’t know the difference between the two and don’t care because they hate them both, and poor little southern Illinois thinks it is just an extension of Kentucky.

You’ve explained to me how Michigan has, I think, Yoopers and Loopers and stump jumpers, and something else, and Southern Michigan, which I think is just another way of saying Detroit. Missouri has St Louis at one end and Kansas City at the other and in between a big red bible belt.

I guess I am just saying that the idea that each state is a little, or big, conglomeration of like-minded people is a bunch of hooey.

There has been talk about reforming the electoral college, and it’s not so much that it’s unfair, because it is not near as unfair as the senate, as that it results in every election being decided in a handful of purple states while red and blue states stand around with their hands in their pockets while their issues are ignored.

I don’t know what that phrase you quoted from somewhere, in the constitution I suppose, is supposed to mean, but I am pretty sure that congress cannot pass a law that effects the supremes. I suppose they could pass an amendment, and I think they could maybe fiddle with their numbers, but what if they passed a law changing its powers and then the court declared it unconstitutional? Of course they do effect it in a way not envisioned by the constitution, which foolishly did not foresee political parties (what were they thinking?), by choosing who gets to be a member of the court.

I remember some vet hanging around when I lived in Berkeley, who was getting the GI bill, pretending to be going to school, and he would be saying something like your hypothetical Chinaman, about how those fools in the government had nothing to do with him. And I would be thinking, he just spent a couple years halfway around the world, and now he was living off the largess of the land, and how could he think the government didn’t effect him? It’s just craziness.

But I do think it a little odd, the way you think in terms of how what the gov does effects you, and you are not concerned beyond that. Shouldn’t we think in terms when we go to the polls, of what is best for the whole country?

Well that is a core difference between liberals and conservatives. The liberals want to be altruistic and the conservatives think everybody should look out for themselves.

Well, like everything else, it is more complicated than that, but still it makes one wonder, why do a couple nice young boys, growing up in the homogenous community of Gage Park, end up having such differing political views? Nature? Nurture? Looking back through history it seems like every conflict has a left vs right component, but maybe that is just the way we look at it, like everything looking like a nail to the man who has a hammer.