morolf: I suppose this will only get worse with climate change. Maybe the US will eventually have to give up the entire southwest. Isn't California in for some 20-year drought (which seem to have been a recurrent phenomenon in previous centuries)?
tinyE: Trust me, we gave up the South West a long time ago. We got so tired of them refusing to admit the rest of the country existed so we gave them their walking papers and went about with our lives.
That actually makes me think, and this goes for anyone not in the States. Are there people in Germany for example, who think their particular region IS Germany and that everything else is some Mad Max Thunderdome-esk wasteland?
Germany is actually a fairly recent construction as a state as you might know, no older than 1871...and national identity was pretty much discredited by Nazism. There are strong regional identities, something of a North-South-division, and an East-West division between the former West Germany and the former GDR as well.
Personally, I really can't stand Northern Germans...they're arrogant, cold and self-righteous. I also strongly dislike North-Rhine-Westphalia, Germany's most populous state which is rife with corruption, crime and inefficiency.
Only really good parts of Germany are in the south, the rest is pretty horrible.
