As I recall, the system was set up with 3 branches of government in tension. Obviously, that was naive.
Obviously not since you can't follow it.
> Seeing as most people on the internet are from Maryland, assuming that every poster has an opinion about Baltimore is both logical and useful for conversation.
I accounted for ignorance in my first sentence, and your conclusion doesn't even follow from your bad interpretation of my logic.
Baltimore has many problems and I can't do the history justice here. I'm not interested in writing a thoughtful essay from which someone cherry-picks a sentence, and I said as much in my second sentence. This isn't the SAT; the facts aren't all contained in the prompt. If someone is coming to this from a place of total ignorance, sincerely, from the bottom of my heart, I think the best thing this person can do is simply read about Baltimore.
Baltimore isn't just something people from Maryland know about. It's a tragic national disgrace. Real suffering has been inflicted on the current and former residents of Charm City. In many ways they've caused their own suffering. There's a conversation that's worth having, and I'm willing to have it.
> One time I saw somebody post that they’d never been to that city so I assume that they were workshopping a character for an outlandish piece of speculative fiction.
If only OP's goals were that interesting.
Exactly! Baltimore is something that everyone knows about. People do not simply have political opinions without a stance on Baltimore. That isn’t really possible because the US just isn’t that big of a place.
Obviously we can imagine (with great difficulty of course) a hypothetical person that doesn’t know about everything that has happened, is happening, and what might happen in Baltimore. It is, however, impossible to imagine a person that doesn’t know why Charm City is the single most important place in American politics. It can’t be done, it is like imagining a new color. The human brain can not exist without some appreciation for Baltimore, which is why questions like “what is happening there” can only be asked in bad faith.
It is like when somebody brings up Santa Paula. Obviously I don’t need to tell you what that means