this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2024
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Is that scale real?
Yes! Check out https://www.thetruesize.com/
Yeah, I-10 goes straight across the western most to Eastern most part of Texas and is almost 900 miles long. The average US state is larger than the average European country if you only count Russia west of the Urals. Europeans think of the US as a country similar to the UK or Germany when theu really need to think of it more like the EU and each state it's own country. New York City to Los Angeles is almost exactly the same distance as Moscow to Portugal. Seattle to Miami is like London to Bagdad.
Europeans understand the concept of states, lots of european countries are subdivided into states. The USA is one country, a large one but still only one.
It doesn't change the fact that the US is more analogous to a super nation organization like the EU than any particular European state. Texas and California aren't conducting their own foreign diplomacy like the Spain or France are, but their internal laws, taxation, bureaucracies are wildly different, with each state essentially out for itself with the federal government intervening in extreme cases. Ohio and Michigan have GDP's that are equivalent to Austria and Switzerland. Comparing Texas to Bavaria is as ridiculous as comparing New York City to Singapore.
I didn’t see no banana!