Hacker News Reader

Comment by seanmcdirmid | Hacker News Reader

Maybe it’s time to split the country? We are so polarized with very different visions about the future and what is needed to reach and increase prosperity. Let Mississippi be Mississippi with Texas and Florida, let California find its own way with New York and Washington. Democracy is fine, but we are just too divided and either side thinks the other side is dragging all of us down, and refuse to believe it’s because of their own policies.

View on HN

Don't consign us here in Mississippi, voting in every election, to not be represented in a democratic society. It's hard enough living here without getting dogpiled by external people who never visit and think that just because our "representatives" are a certain way that everyone here is like them, instead of the messier reality that power structures here are misaligned with the actual population's collective will.

I lived in Texas, Mississippi, Florida before, so I’m unsure what you mean by not visiting. I didn’t list a state that I hadn’t lived in for at least 3 months. Unfortunately that was 5 years in Mississippi.

Regardless what would you have us do? More autonomy for states? You can’t go out alone, and we have a nice red-blue state now to base a division on.

no, they are saying that by discarding mississippi, you are ignoring like 45%+ of the state that didn't vote for whatever politician you hate. and also you are ignoring the centuries of disenfranchisement that prevents more people from voting against whatever politician you hate. it's not a monolith. mississsippi is the blackest state in the union yet coastal liberals who are supposedly anti-racist are quick to throw out the state.

So? How's that any different than everyone in Buffalo just having to bend over and take it because NYC and Albany want to do spreadsheets and services instead of factories?

No state is a monolith.

That's exactly the point. It makes no sense to say maybe if New York went off and was its own country it'll finally not be so divided.

I mean it'd be less divided insofar as the minority would be more thoroughly subjugated by the state. No pesky federal government getting in the way. Though that's probably not a good thing.

Having actually lived in Mississippi, I’ve seen the disenfranchisement first hand. But what can we do? We can’t fix Mississippi, they will have to want to fix themselves, so why not let them explore more fully the consequences of their own actions? Mississippi thinks California is keeping them down, then without California they would have to start blaming themselves more.

> then without California they would have to start blaming themselves more

Because blaming a foreign country for your woes just doesn't happen.

You know, we can blame China (another country I've lived in) all we want for our problems, and China definitely blames the US for a lot of its problems...but at the end of the day, the Chinese and the USA don't really have to care what the others think about them.

i'm from there and there are so many people trying to fix it. somehow you lived there so long and didn't realize this fact, bless your heart. (this is helping prove my point btw)

who in mississippi is blaming california for their problems, other than state politicians who think that is effective political rhetoric? all of the voters i know can read past that BS even if we have different political ideology.

idk this is just my experience growing up there and then later studying the south as an academic. we are used to being condescended to.

How is it condescending to say that Mississippi should just do its own thing and we don't have to bother ourselves with their choices? I feel like we are in a damned if we do, damned if we don't situation. Whatever we say, or even if we say nothing, will be seen in Mississippi as being condescended to. Just us existing is seen as condescended. This is why we should just give up, we do our thing and they do their thing, if Mississippi is still offended by our existence, we can just ignore them.

If there’s a “collective will” then why isn’t the population forcing its collective will on those power structures?

as if the civil rights movement didn't have very significant events take place in mississippi https://bookshop.org/p/books/local-people-the-struggle-for-c...

Right so what’s stopping people from doing it now?

i guess you haven't been seeing the news of all the southerners fighting the redistricting efforts after they gutted the VRA

You mean Southerners like me in Virginia who are actually doing that “fighting” and it’s making absolutely no difference whatsoever

is that who you’re talking about?

I’m literally 10 toes down on the ground trying to do exactly the thing that everybody says should be happening which is democratizing community development and nobody gives a fucking fuck

they will show up when you give them resources but never step up to lead after

I’ve started so many goddamn community things but the second I pull back from them to let others lead nobody picks up the slack

I’m excruciatingly done with over and over and over trying to help people take care of themselves

yeah i'm sure you're doing this: https://mississippitoday.org/2026/05/20/mississippi-redistri...

You can move, trading places with a conservative stuck in a blue state, with assistance because many other people are moving.

> Let Mississippi be Mississippi with Texas and Florida, let California find its own way with New York and Washington.

These places aren't homogeneous in their political tastes.

I live in a northeast blue state, but there are rural pockets that are still heavily MAGA. And I'm sure Mississippi has liberal enclaves.

That being said, I don't know what the "solution" to this problem is.

further, California is a big state. For the concept to work you'd have to split California lengthwise, the Western 1/3 would align politically how the op is assuming but the Eastern 2/3 would not. If the counter argument is majority rule then you're pretty much back to where you started with a divided population and 2 wolves + 1 lamb voting on lunch.

There will still be liberals in a new confederacy, and there will still be conservatives in a new union, we are only really talking about changing 50/50 into 60/40 on either side. BUT let's face it, our current equilibrium is not sustainable, this country can't survive another Trump, let alone the current one. Trump is talking about disenfranchising voters in blue states (because we must be cheating or we are illegal immigrants or something), I feel like that if we continue to union with these states, I will just wake up with a knife in my back someday.

Democracy works, we just have bad partners right now.

> we are just too divided

I challenge this.

I think the TV media, social media, and politicians like to make us feel like we are very divided because that's what gets "the base" to give a shit.

But if you throw away all of the garbage on TV and the garbage online, how divided are we? Really?

I think if you strip away the distractions, the people in conservative Florida have a lot more in common with people in liberal NY than one might assume.

It's a tempting thought but play it out. Now you live next to a belligerent fascist theocracy with nukes who likes to invade foreign countries and aspires to control the entire western hemisphere from Canada to Chile. How does that end?

E pluribus duam?

You're confusing neo-feudalist oligarchical propaganda with the will of the people.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com