Our Continent

There was a fairly poorly written and intellectually lazy book written in the Nineties named "The Nine Nations of North America".

But the book had some merit. As I have stated before, I don't see the United States in it's current configuration lasting much longer, certainly no more than fifty years, though there it would seem that we are moving fast toward some kind of serious spasm. Joel Garreau at least took the ball and started the conversation, so hats off and many thanks to him.

So this post is just about my neck of the woods, the Pacific Northwest. Garreau had us stuffed into a coastal state of Ecotopia. HA. What really pisses me off is that he lumped us in with those assholes down in California.

Now that I have vented my spleen, lets get back to the task at hand. A true nation is a couple of big cities, an integrated transportation system, a food basket, a resource base, and a reasonably common culture. What I propose (and, let's be clear about this, this is not an original idea, though for the life of me I can't remember where I first heard it. If someone would fill in the blanks for me, I would be very grateful) is that the Northwest United States and British Columbia begin to work on the political structure required to build a nation from the Columbia River drainage.

Just ponder it. The country would have some great cities (Seattle, Portland, Spokane, Boise, Vancouver, etc). It would also have a great bread basket in the Palouse and Idaho (why that idiot Garreau lumped that area into "the empty quarter is beyond me), an great transportation system (river travel and transportation is easy and efficient), excellent natural resources, a pretty fair population with an excellent sprinking of minorities to keep things interesting.

Just a thought