 Hey everybody I've been playing some games lately that I'm gonna get to in the next week or so but today I want to do something a little different so I'm thinking of starting a second YouTube channel And I'm probably gonna put this over there, but here you go Don't screw it up You can't read or talk about the country lately without confronting the highly polarized nature of the times in which we're living And while this seems unprecedented, it's not the fundamental argument between conservatives and reformers is at least 2,100 years old and likely far older The fact that one can read accounts of Rome in 150 BC and see the same damn argument Fully formed with all the same positions on both sides Implies that it's probably existed from about 15 seconds after people created politics Most likely the first time 40 cavemen got together 20 of them insisted that whoever killed the elk should keep it because making someone share by force is theft and really It's only fair that someone should keep the fruits of their labor and the other 20 said that's crazy, man We should split the meat because you only caught it because grog made the spear and lug grub tracked it In any way the last time Brack caught a mastodon he shared it with you plus Brack's father is too old to hunt What's he supposed to do starve? Greece Rome England America France the same arguments have animated politics over and over and over Arguments over what the state should and should not do Arguments over how much wealth is appropriate arguments over how much toleration a nation should have for minorities and immigrants in different religions Read the writings of Edmund Burke and Thomas Payne from the 1700s and you will instantly recognize the same Argument often this argument is settled peacefully and sometimes you get Caesar and Pompey tearing the Republic apart The important thing to learn from this reality is as follows Regardless of which side you fall on in this argument. I can promise you one thing is absolutely true You won't win the other side won't win Nobody will ever win to fully understand what we stand to lose It's important to take a moment and really focus on what's at stake in this 30,000 year old argument America isn't perfect by a long shot and we will touch on those things next but first let's appreciate a few things If you live in the first world, you're amongst the richest Safest most free humans in the history of the world if you live in America You live in an almost impossibly wealthy and powerful nation Rome on steroids the US is a continent-sized land of milk and honey a huge country with hundreds of millions of middle-class people On a landmass that sits perfectly in the temperate zone touches two oceans has multiple inland seas The largest navigable river in the world splitting it down the middle before emptying into an ocean The country stretches across nation-sized bread baskets Long seams of precious resources deep dark forests and expansive prairies of rich black soil It contains unimaginable natural beauty and is big enough so that if one was so inclined They could find tons of places to never have to see another living person again Our poorest people are by historical standards pretty decently off We throw out enough food to feed millions of people in the global south because it will be too big a pain in the ass to Bogger dealing with all the unused corn Our dogs get more health care than most humans in Africa The nation is literally impossible to conquer from without the entire world could a lie to invade and conquer and they would fail Our military is as powerful as all of our rivals combined We have several states that were they independent nations themselves would instantly be amongst the wealthiest and most powerful in the world United the country stands as a behemoth and possible to destroy by conventional means Largely able to be completely independent economically if needed Nobody can starve us of oil or fish or grain or beef or porn or Marvel movies or beer or cola or bourbon This was the first nation on earth founded explicitly without title or caste a vast experiment in building a nation Not based on who the people were but what they wanted to be England is for the English France was created for the French Germany is mostly full of Germans and Belgium is a state that was created to draw the Belgians into a shared political destiny America was not created for any race nationality religion or class It was a nation created from its very founding around truth that were self-evident That all are created equal and are endowed by their creators with certain Unalienable rights that among these are life Liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We live in one of the only nations on earth We're saying I'm an American tells you nothing about how that person looks What God they worship where their parents lived or what their last name sounds like saying on Japanese almost certainly even today Means that that person is ethnically Japanese Saying I'm American can mean that person is Japanese Scotch Irish or the grand kid of Sicilian immigrants. This isn't nothing This isn't something to toss away because you think taxes are too high or because someone on Facebook is a racist It's not something to waste because your neighbor thinks a politician you like is a disaster It is a powerful fragile precious thing America is big and beautiful and full of Americans and that's why I love it this experiment this idea This notion of people but not a people is worth saving And it's through our own actions that we shall nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope of earth The Mongols will never ride over the hills to put us out of our misery only we can do that so many problems Now that we've established the unbelievable gift that we have been bequeathed by nature and reason It's important. We not minimize the problems we face America is a bounty of wealth But pollution and climate change can easily fuck that up The government is too big and wasteful while simultaneously not doing enough to help those who need it because it is fairly Corrupted by the wealthiest people and corporations It's a wash and money and resources But way too much ends up in the hands of corrupt businessmen and feckless politicians seriously Look at like the stock trades your congressman has made. It's horrendous Taxes fees Assessments penalties and fines are indeed probably too high for what the average citizen gets out of the deal It still sucks to be gay or black or native because a bunch of people are still kind of assholes Who won't just mind their own business and just shut up or at least be polite about it way too many people are poor and Being poor is pretty much a crime Hundreds of thousands of people in the wealthiest nation in history of the world Literally sleep in cars or on cardboard boxes and the police still have way too many mute heads Who are such cowards that they can't check a license without killing an armed teenager or offhandedly violating the fourth amendment now There's a lot of good people who are cops But just like there's an awful lot of plumbers and Walmart greeters who are assholes. There are a bunch of cops who are assholes I don't even understand this can be debated. Why would cops be the one profession? That's magically asshole free I've never worked in a place that didn't have a sizable asshole contingent The only difference is the state hasn't given your asshole plumber a gun a taser and instructions to go create public order Roofing is more dangerous than policing and I did it for many many years without even once killing someone or Wrongfully searching their glove box and violation of their constitutional rights rich people are indeed awful The schools are kind of garbage the roads and bridges are a mess Going to college costs way too much fucking money and even my family was an income that is far above the median Can't afford to buy health insurance for our kids while also getting them food and letting them have shoes and occasionally get a latte from Starbucks Drugs and prostitution are still Pointlessly illegal despite the fact that I will bet you $10,000 that you can drop me in any town in America and I will find drugs and a prostitute within 48 hours I will take the bet I promise you Seems like a massive waste of money and energy trying to empty the ocean with a spork Jeff Bezos could never make another penny Sell his stock tomorrow give himself a budget of 10 million a year to squeak buy-on and he would not run out of money until the year 25,022 I Call that a problem. You might disagree, but I would love to hear your argument, man I need a license to cut your hair and a permit to build a fence and it's illegal for you to hire me to patch a Small leak in your roof it's getting harder for people to practice their religions Most of which are admittedly pretty odd without running a foul of someone or something and people on both sides are trawling the internet to find Outrage fuel to feed the fires of the retweet industrial complex Being wrong or mistaken or ignorant or unorthodox online is becoming a license to pass judgment on a person's worth as a human Problematic statements are not licenses for public shame. Both sides are on a heavy anti-free speech kick Except for their speech that speech is awesome It's the other speech the bad kind the kind that sucks and should be banned That speech is totally outrageous and we should make sure it's never heard again. So yeah problems So many problems and because these problems have coalesced into ideological camps where they don't even logically fit Everything seems split. Seriously, man There is no logical reason belief in religious liberty must also come packaged with the belief in the flat tax Those things have nothing to do with one another and in fact could easily go the other way and have in the past That's a whole different essay though. Anyway splitting the country. Holy hell. That is a terrible idea Such a bad idea It's becoming more and more common to hear people talk about a civil war or at least Secession I Suspect the reason this is in the air is because the other civil war we had was strangely neat and tidy by historical standards Because the civil war was a civil war about slavery. It broke down nice and simple geographically The deep south was almost totally agrarian and relied on slavery The north was mostly industrial and did not the border states were a mix and fell on one side of the other based on a bunch of different factors secession made sense in 1860 because it was possible and Obvious the north and south both made nice little mini states that could instantly coalesce into functioning societies more importantly the conflict Itself was tidy the issue at play was expanding slavery into new territories The south wanted the territories to choose for themselves in order to make sure that new senators and congressmen would preserve slavery Indefinitely and they were sending pro-slavery settlers west as fast as possible the north wants it all new states to be free This is no longer the case The ideological split in America is far less neat and simple than it looks on an electoral college map Even deep red states have huge minorities of liberals and even the bluest states have huge minorities of conservatives Alabama is as conservative as a state gets and even there 37% of people voted democratic in the last election. That's more than 840,000 people in Alabama Florida where I live has two Republican senators and voted for Trump The election here wasn't considered close, but that is a crazy way to look at it Trump won 51 point two percent Biden won 47 point nine. That's nearly five point three Million people who voted blue in a supposedly red state Even in the most conservative states the cities all vote democratic and even in the most liberal states the rural areas vote Republican and on politics things are not neat and tidy either people vote one way or the other While holding far more diverse beliefs than the politicians who represent them Texas just banned abortion despite more than half of its citizens believing abortion should remain legal California always votes democratic despite an awful lot of people thinking taxes are too high and not liking the way the schools are run So how would one even accomplish this split? There's only two ways neither of which will work You could divide the nation into a ton of smaller mini states Clustering a few states here and there or you could create a few huge nations Pacifica, Atlantica, Texas, the Deep South, the South Atlantic Federation Actually, we'll just do it by NCAA conference because strangely that would work about as well as anything else Let's assume that this is the most likely solution But you still haven't solved the problem These mini states would instantly decay into the same argument The SEC Republic would be governed by conservatives, but 45 to 49 percent of people would still be unhappy Even in the conservative heartland of the Big 12 all cities would rebel against the government In the Deep South you would have an enraged Ethnic minority that is just as angry as it is now and in the Pac-10 states of César Chávez You'd have a conservative minority that is just as pissed off as it is right now Let's go full crazy and have a 1940s style political cleansing with a full-on trail of tears Four lawn conservatives forced to flee their ancestral lands driving their cramped GMC suburban towards Texas While a gleaming River of Priuses was forced to flee Florida for the Golden Land of the Big East We did it. We finally did it guys. Everyone lives in a nation that they chose We totally extirpated anyone who disagrees with us from the land It's blood and soil and ideological purity from sea to shining sea There's just one problem with this utopian tomorrow where the Pac-10 can teach nothing but critical race theory and the SEC can meet Every river privately owned abolish all taxes and fund government entirely by making a cost 500 bucks to vote in 30 years You will be in the same damn place Because it won't take very long for a bunch of people to change their minds and a bunch of kids to decide that their parents were totally Idiots and it's time for a change ideological bent isn't a race It's a set of ideas and people change their minds and it's also kind of a personality type And as Alex P. Keaton so wisely taught us in the bygone days of parachute pants Liberal people can end up having annoyingly conservative kids who get born again and conservative people end up having gay Anarcho-cynicalist kids who suddenly listen to propaganda and dream of one day starring on Broadway in 40 years Every one of your pure new states would be riven with the same damn arguments if Aristotle was having this argument Your grandkids are going to be having it if Caesar couldn't solve the problem. You can't Stalin basically massacred anyone who is even suspected of maybe Possibly not agreeing politically and it took like 15 seconds after his death for the same factions to form China's a one-party state and in the upper reaches of the CCP There are liberal factions and conservative factions and they are having the same argument right now Right now someone at a central planning committee is having the argument And in exchange for a plan that will not work that by its very nature cannot work What have you lost? You've traded an imperfect union founded on liberty for nothing You've carved up the economic engine of the world for what a Gadsden flag and not having to tolerate that Rachel Maddow was allowed to exist You've ruined the greatest military power in history in exchange for the right to raise the marginal tax rate 8% on those earning over $10,000 a year and then before you know it some annoying little rat would start a new Tucker Carlson show in an apartment in the Upper West side of Manhattan you would go from living in the wealthiest most powerful nation on earth to living in a couple of Germanies a Few Belgians and a couple of Polans each of which hated the other's guts It's entirely possible. You would end up with a bunch of classic old-time European border wars while the under-populated Upper Midwest wonders what to do with its strangely huge nuclear arsenal or Everyone could stop and recall a few things They could admit that this is a deeply flawed nation rife with injustice and pain But also a thriving place of possibility a land a wash in weapons But also covered in church food drives a place where nobody can agree on anything But almost anyone will stop to jump your car battery a land of unimaginable wealth a young nation loud Stupid obnoxious, but also strangely naive and romantic It's a teenager nation a place where nobody is better than anyone else by force of law But actually Jeff Bezos is objectively better than you because he has descended his phone number All of these are true. We're a country that vehemently opposed gay rights until all of a sudden for no apparent reason Everyone just kind of said yeah, of course gay rights whoever said anything different It's a nation that should be able to be moved by reading the timeless powerful nearly religious ethics of the Declaration of Independence While simultaneously pointing out that the guy who wrote it also kind of sucked in many ways America is a land big enough beautiful enough Rich enough and founded on principles broad enough to accommodate the argument if Martin Luther King couldn't win the argument Ted Cruz won't and if William F. Buckley couldn't win the argument AOC won't and the simple fact is you're just gonna have to deal with that You'll just have to get over it friend because the country is indivisible Literally and also ideologically. It's written into our very core. The nation was founded on that argument It came to be through pain and Burke It was created through the arguments of Jefferson and Adams the argument is America the country was founded as a place to have that argument as Equals as citizens as patriots The country is very big and it is just and proper that its arguments should be equally big The only thing that can destroy this nation is cowardly deciding that we don't want to have the argument again that we don't Like people were reminding us about racism So we're taking our ball and going home or we're tired of explaining how miserably terrible the health care system is So we're creating a whole new nation the country was founded on truths that are self-evident The role of racism seems very clear to me, but it's not self-evident How high taxes should be might seem clear to you, but it's not self-evident What's self-evident is that all are created equal and are endowed by their creators with certain Unalienable rights that amongst these are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness We haven't always lived up to that lofty standard But the pure radiating beauty of the creed it inspires is that it leaves everything else up to us We get to decide everything beyond those basic truths We get to decide through politics through the argument through the freedom to decide for ourselves How we have and have not redeemed that sacred promise The argument is the nation trying to get away from that argument is an abdication of our Responsibility to our ancestors to forge a more perfect union. It's a blessed enough nation that it is still worth trying I would dearly love for Tucker Carlson to not exist But I am willing to live in a nation with him because there's no other choice Plus I'd be stuck in Florida and that would suck for me badly All right. See you next time. Thanks for coming Bye