Occam’s Razor | Our island, our world through the eyes, pen of S.C. Watson

By S. C. Watson|2025-09-04T19:46:27-07:00September 5th, 2025|1 Comment

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Welcome to our weekly feature, Occam’s Razor,
from local artist S.C. Watson.

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About the Author: S. C. Watson

S.C. Watson has been drawing and painting for as long as he can remember. Which is to say a couple of days, at least. Mostly self taught with traditional and digital media, he has been selling his artistic soul for the past two and half decades to the highest bidder, including, but not limited to Wizards of the Coast, Fantasy Flight Games, Malfador Machinations, and various private clients, including independent authors. When he's not working in his studio, socially distancing with his family or walking his art director dachshund, Rocky, he can be found wandering the Deer Harbor woods aimlessly muttering about masks, politics, and the artistic merits of taupe. He likes sushi and is dismayed there isn't an established restaurant on the island.

One Comment

Ken Wood September 5, 2025 at 4:29 pm

Beyond the need to counter the chaos at the CDC, the Pacific states are wise to form ever-more cooperative ties with one another. With the country fed up with the political status quo and willing to break things in order to try to fix others, I see a constitutional convention in our collective future. It may be the only way to prevent a second civil war.

While acknowledging that GDP is not a particularly good measure of well being, it is worth bearing in mind that the Pacific states combined have a GDP exceeding every nation-state on Earth excepting the USA and China. The Pacific states have TWICE the GDP of Russia. Does it really make any sense for WA, OR and CA to go along with the self-destructive political and ecological insanity the former Confederate states are aiming at? Does it make any sense for us to allow the 1% of the Bos/Wash strip to siphon off the wealth of the West coast? Does it make any sense to allow ourselves to be governed by a Federal government that consists of politicians and bureaucrats that hold views antithetical to our own?

Call it the Pacific States or Cascadia or Ecotopia but whatever you call the Left Coast, let us agree that we will never submit to autocrats!

I suggest that the United States, as presently constituted, is literally ungovernable. Splitting into a handful of Autonomous Regions would allow for more responsive governance for everyone and allow regional/cultural differences to be formally acknowledged.

Joel Garreau wrote The Nine Nations of North America in 1981 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nine_Nations_of_North_America) and his insights have aged remarkably well. You may differ with him regarding details but the general idea was and is quite sound. Likewise with Colin Woodward’s American Nations from 2011, though Woodward goes into more of the cultural history of each of the major regions.

This need not be outright secession