Consociated: An Actual Mechanism for Splitting Apart

I’m publishing this series of articles to share and discuss my ruminations on coping with a troubled and messy world. Please “follow” me to never miss an article.

The Sunday July 17, 2022 edition of The San Francisco Chronicle contained a most important article by Joe Matthews. It was entitled “Voting that crosses borders.”[i] It outlined a mechanism, Consociated, that would allow States that have common interests to ban together. They would do so by sharing Representatives that would have voting rights in one another’s States. Thus, those States that are Pro-Abortion and for greater Gun Controls could formulate and pass Laws thereby buttressing their mutual concerns.

The main point is not whether this particular mechanism would work completely or not, but that talk about splitting apart has reached the stage where ways of accomplishing are being seriously considered. As I’ve discussed before in previous blogs, certain West and East-Coast States would ban together to form an alliance to further their common interests.

Not only has it become clearer by the day that Blue and Red States have fewer and fewer things in common, but that the will for working things out has all but evaporated entirely. Although I’ve written about them before, I cannot help emphasizing those things in particular that have driven me to this position.

That a 10-year-old child who was raped had to go to another State to terminate a pregnancy for which she was not equipped either mentally or physically is an outright abomination. That librarians in Idaho had to resign because they would not remove books that some parents found distasteful and were overly abusive in their condemnation of both the books and librarians is equally abominable. So is the fact that the word “Gay” is prohibited in certain States. And, we’re the only country in the world that enables Mass Shootings by making Guns so readily available.

These of course are only a sample of the many things that so bitterly divide us. Indeed, both Political Parties have serious divisions as well. As a lifelong Liberal Democrat, I’m greatly disturbed by the actions of West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin. He should be expelled from the Democratic Party, Period!

The key point is that we’re beyond the point of return. If someone as decent as President Biden can’t bring us together and heal what ails us, I don’t who and what can do it. Major calamities like Covid and Mass Shootings without end haven’t done it.

[i] Joe Matthews, “Voting that crosses borders,” The San Francisco Chronicle, Sunday, July 17, 2022, p. J2.

Ian I. Mitroff is credited as being one of the principal founders of the modern field of Crisis Management. He has a BS, MS, and a PhD in Engineering and the Philosophy of Social Systems Science from UC Berkeley. He Is Professor Emeritus from the Marshall School of Business and the Annenberg School of Communication at USC. Currently, he is a Senior Research Affiliate in the Center for Catastrophic Risk Management, UC Berkeley. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Academy of Management. He has published 41 books. His latest is: The Socially Responsible Organization: Lessons from Covid, Springer, New York, 2022.

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