It’s mostly a shitpost, but the US was originally only the East coast. Over time, the states spread more and more west, so it’s saying that all these “new” states are basically a delusion.
Comment on Stop making up states
bennypr0fane@discuss.tchncs.de 3 months ago
Anyone care to explain to European noob what this means?
The_Picard_Maneuver@lemmy.world 3 months ago
CommissarVulpin@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Originally the US expanded quite slowly, due to difficulties in travel and surveying. But in the 1800s, after the Louisiana Purchase, we began to very aggressively expand westward. The construction of the Intercontinental Railroad helped immensely, and towns were being built almost faster than we could name them. The government began giving away land for cheap or sometimes free for anyone who could develop it. State borders became straight lines encompassing vast areas. Native Americans were forced off their land and onto reservations.
bennypr0fane@discuss.tchncs.de 3 months ago
That’s also very interesting in light of the US superficially appearing to be strongly federal in nature (with the individual states enjoying a great deal of autonomy) - a structure which would historically be known to develop in a bottom-up manner, where preexisting smaller entities would federate to form a larger state. This history is telling very different story, where those entities were not actually preexisting, but invented by the central authority 😂
CommissarVulpin@lemmy.world 3 months ago
The original thirteen colonies worked exactly like that. From then on, it went something like “Hey, federal government, we want to be a state. Well follow all your rules, pinky promise.” “Aight.”