Comment by yongjik
4 years ago
330M is large, but not so large that national news stops making sense. Japan is roughly comparable - it has 126M people, and it was composed of competing (and sometimes warring) feudal lords until the Meiji Restoration (1868), a few years after the US civil war.
Yet go to Japan and suggest that it's toxic for people in Tokyo to care about what's happening in Fukuoka, and people will look at you as if you've grown another head.
I mean, what is a nation if not a group of people subscribing to the same central authority and sharing a rough idea of a society? On the face of it, saying that "nationalization of news and politics in a country is toxic" is so absurd that I'd like to see an argument for supporting that, instead of using it as a starting point of an argument.
If people in SF stop caring about what's happening in Atlanta (and vice versa), it won't bring peace. It will merely accelerate the disintegration of the USA as a single country.
I would argue that USA has already disintegrated as a single country with respect to its foundation, which is the society itself - basically, there's no single "American society" anymore. The only thing that still keeps the country together is the formalities of governance, and even that will only last for as long as people are willing to tolerate them (which is less and less with every passing year).
It might be possible to reboot it in more or less the same format as the original was way back when (i.e. by moving most political questions out of the federal level). But there needs to be some motivation to try to keep things together at least on some level. For the original colonies, it was clear that they would simply not survive on their own. But for many states today, they have numerous independent countries of similar size (in terms of territory, people, economy etc - you name it) as a showcase that it is possible.
yeah but the population density of japan is 10x that of america, and the distance between atlanta and los angeles is well over 3x that of tokyo to fukuoka.
I doubt GP was intending to speak strictly about population count itself.
idk, but in japan i get the sense that there is alot less money in politics and media, whereas in the us money == politics, so you get full-tilt media insanity which push people further and further apart
i really think the us needs serious campaign and media reform; there is just too much money sloshing around from all these donors and its creating all kinds of havoc