In a national divorce, I’ll take the blue states
Marjorie Taylor Greene, that wacky member of Congress, shocked Americans far and wide last month by proposing that we split the “red” and “blue” states and let them go their very separate ways. Predictably, within minutes, folks were howling in their outrage over the proposal she dubbed the National Divorce.
This woman really is dangerous, but this concept is an interesting one. Let’s look at just a few of the indicators of what makes a place work. Maybe it will shed some sanity on the proposal.
Let’s start with median household income. The highest is the District of Columbia. Second is Maryland. Third is New Jersey, fourth Massachusetts. Noticing a pattern? The first red state doesn’t show up until number nine. That’s Alaska, wallowing in all of that oil money. Of the 10 lowest, South Carolina is worst, then Tennessee, Oklahoma, Kentucky and Alabama. Get it? Just 1 state in the worst 10 isn’t red, but it is purple (New Mexico).
How about average net worth? California comes out highest, followed by Connecticut, Washington, New Jersey … Get it? Purple Virginia is the only state not blue. Among the lowest? All but purple Arizona are red.
How about infant mortality? Nine of the 10 worst states are red. One is purple. The 10 lowest infant mortality rates? Every single one is blue.
I’m not sure what y’all are looking for in life, but I’ll take blue. If you want hot weather and nobody to tell you that you have to wear a mask or do anything else for the common good, take red. If you don’t want your children to read literary classics like “Catcher in the Rye” or Dr. Seuss, go red. If you think regulating what trains can transport through a residential community is some kind of Commie plot, by all means, go red. If you think the best way to protect third graders from a mass shooting is to give them each an AR-15, red it is!
You might have a very smart child and you want her to attend one of the best schools in the country that isn’t too far away. Well, that rules out the Ivy League schools, the super elites like Williams or Johns Hopkins or even the next tier like Bucknell, Franklin and Marshall or Dickinson. You could always pick between, well, William and Mary, Duke or Vanderbilt.
Are museums a factor of a high quality of life? The Blues have the National Gallery in Washington, Field in Chicago, Getty in Los Angeles, and the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, both in New York. And there are others. Red? I can’t think of any.
It is clear that the quality of life in most red states can’t compare with that of the blues’. Evidence of that fact is ubiquitous. The red states hate our government but apparently love being the net beneficiaries (of the 10 states that get the most of their tax payments back relative to how much they contribute, only one is blue and one is purple). So, they gripe about us even though they collect welfare from us. Turns out that Ronald Reagan’s famous “welfare queen” doesn’t live in Chicago, drive a Cadillac and eat steak using food stamps. No, the big welfare cheat is the collection of red states that Greene thinks are somehow better.
But in true far-right tradition, count on those right-wingers to chant it over and over until good people start to believe it. “Ingrate” comes to mind. So does “liar.”
So, Rep. Greene, lie to your constituents. Tell them what a good life they could have if only the government got out of their way. Load up on guns, smoke in the restaurant, skip the life-saving vaccines, buy the products that have been proven unsafe. And the next time you approach a busy intersection and you realize there are no traffic lights because, after all, they impede your freedom, think again.
Give me the traffic lights; you can have the under-regulated train cars loaded with toxic chemicals.