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Monday, October 22, 2018

Microstory 956: States’ Rights

I used to be pretty opposed to the concept of states’ rights. The way I see it, we are meant to be a single nation, under a singular set of laws. Since I live near the border of Kansas and Missouri, I cross state lines all the time. My closest movie theatre is on the other side of State Line, and a lot of the places where I work are in downtown KCMO. I’ve never been able to see us as that different, even though I know we are. I know there is a lot of racism left in Alabama, and a lot of pot in California. Oregon does tend to be more progressive, and Tennessee is all about country music. For as patriotic as conservatives claim to be, they sure hate their own country, and are fiercely loyal only to their state. But like many things that changed in November of 2016, my perspective shifted dramatically, and it bothers me a lot. In a few short months, we started seeing massive changes to the way laws are handled here. Our so-called president is abusing his power by rolling back protections for minorities, immigrants, women, and members of LGBTQ. They’ve even taken steps towards getting rid of a free and fair internet. The fact that these changes seem to benefit directly the wealthy individuals driving the changes seems to be completely lost on Trump-voters. Or maybe they just hate black people so much that they’re willing to accept whatever terrible repercussions that affect them personally come with it. All I know is that I’ve never been so glad for states’ rights. State leadership is starting to fight back, by maintaining the previous administration’s policies on things like sanctuary cities, and clean environment initiatives. They’ve even taken steps towards keeping their citizens using a free and fair internet.

The point of my continuous story of The Advancement of Leona Matic is to give you a really quick overview of what things will be like in the future. By having the main character only live one day every year, we get to skip through all the boring parts, and see how things are going to change. In this future, the boundaries between nationstates slowly begin to blur. The European Union adds more members, and warmly welcomes back certain former members which shall remain nameless. A North American Union will form, likely at around the same time as an Asian block. As Africa continues to develop and progress, they too will form similar subcontinents; though they will likely be divided in some way for some time. China will probably assert itself as an unrivaled superpower the likes of which this world has never seen, but that too shall pass. India may do something similar, but more on an organic economic level than a forceful one. Generation by generation will come, each one less focused on spreading out than the last. Eventually, people will only live in as much space as they need. It will no longer be fashionable to buy the biggest house possible, but instead to have gone out and experienced more exciting adventures. It won’t matter where you live anymore, so we’ll build extremely dense arcologies that house millions of people vertically. We’ll move out beyond our atmosphere, living on orbital stations, satellite bases, other planets, and even asteroids. There will be division once more, but they will be far less violent, and in time, they will dissipate as well. Things will get better. Just like today we laugh at how women had to wear corsets, and weren’t allowed to vote, our descendants will laugh at how we once exchanged money, and built walls between each other. Until those days come, though, we need states’ rights, or else this unsustainable oligarchy drives us towards insurmountable anarchy.

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