Shrink The Nation The American Divorce: When Red and Blue Call It Quits
The “national divorce” fantasy sounds tidy until you run it through family systems: cutoffs, triangulation, custody battles, and a court stuck parenting two furious adults. Translation: America doesn’t need a split; it needs differentiation. Keep your values, lower the reactivity, stop outsourcing maturity to the judiciary.
What we do in this episode
- Put “national divorce” on the couch: why it’s not feasible, not cheap, and not a cure
- Triangulation 101: how parties use you to fight each other and why that keeps us stuck
- Emotional cutoff vs boundaries: preserving self without exiling neighbors
- Why the judicial branch is mediating fights lawmakers won’t touch
- Representation upgrades: expand Congress, shrink districts, increase voice
- A practical playbook for common ground that isn’t code for surrender
- Local first: where influence is real and algorithm drama isn’t
Prescriptions
- Practice differentiation: “Here’s what I believe; here’s how I’ll behave with people who don’t.”
- Don’t feed triangulation: stop using enemies to regulate your anxiety.
- Push for representation reform and show up locally where outcomes change.
- Choose better “parents”: reward leaders who de-escalate instead of auditioning for cable.
It’s not kumbaya. It’s grown-up conflict skills for a country that keeps threatening to move out.
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Shrink The Nation is where America lies on the couch — and we pour the bourbon.
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Shrink The Nation — On the Couch With America.