In our perfected world, whatever that looks like, from sea to shining sea all will live under a universal guarantee of human rights.  But billionaire-owned media selling tax breaks for themselves with fear of the underprivileged, well, it’s got a big swath of the middle of this country in a death grip.  It does not matter one jot what the actual majority of people in those states want*, the ones favored by gerrymander have decided it’s time for jim crow, prison farms, gaybashing, bookburning, and elimination of any religion but christianity from the public sphere.  And, in this moment, they’ve won so decisively that they are very likely to work the levers of power to eliminate democracy in the USA for decades to come.

In the meantime, the excuse they’re using is state’s rights.  States should have the right to murder their own citizens to meet the cruel whims of Blood Jesus.  Why don’t you understand these things?  It’s only right.  The flipside of this coin is that it may allow blue states the power to pass strong protections for human rights, and might allow for a lot more.

The state of California has so many people, so many resources, that when they pass laws that are technically only enforceable at home, any business that wants to do business in that economy has to conform or gtfo.  Chik-fil-A can deep fry trans people in Arkansas (I assume) but not so much in the city of Compton.  In fact, it’s pretty likely that Cali has everything they need to just ignore the entire rest of the USA economically and use their access to shipping in the Pacific for anything they lack.

They are exceptional in that respect, but a number of coastal states can still pull a pretty strong flex if they want to – which is why it greatly heartens me that my own state has a democratic governor.  During the strife around covid, there were meetings between the governors on the “Left Coast” about how they should respond, almost as if… they had the power to tell the District of Columbia to kiss their asses?  I dunno.  I’m interested to see what’s possible if these leaders are bold enough, when the time calls for it.

It’s not right that in order to maintain their human rights, many people will have to flee their home states.  But as long as states are being allowed some say in these issues – and as long as some states are powerful enough to take that say whether it’s allowed or not – there are places in the USA where hope is a little less crushed.

–

*74 million fascists in a country of 300 million is NOT the majority.