The Mainstream Confront US Secessionism By Charles Taylor (Florida)
The issue of the breakup of America is becoming mainstream now, with most Trump supporters, well, supporting it. Given the intense conflict between conservatives, and the Left which has become increasingly insane, one would have thought that the Left would be happy for the Great Divorce. Not so; it seems that nothing short of the total vanquishing of their conservative enemies is acceptable, for no live and let live position can be tolerated. It is just the way the Left has acted since the revolution of 1917. Now it is the revolution of 2021.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/10/no-red-state-rebels-there-will-be-no-secession.html
“Now as then, some elements of the left are happy to let the reactionaries go in order to liberate themselves from the gridlock and paralysis that big national divisions operating under a limited-government constitution encourage. This February at The Nation, Nathan Newman argued for “blue-state secession” in adopting this point of view. And back in 2018, here at Intelligencer, Sasha Issenberg offered a vision of a breakup of the United States via the construction of two big coalitions bound by interstate compacts that were blessed by the federal government, with Red and Blue Federations restrained by a Neutral Federation that contained the old federal capital and many of the old battleground states. …
I don’t know if the hypothetical leaders of an America facing red-state secession would have the unshakable will of a Lincoln. And it’s not at all clear that young men and women in Blue America would be willing to take up arms in large numbers to resist secession with fire and blood. But this Union is still worth fighting for, no matter how frustrated we all are with congressional chaos, with elections that feel like nuclear exchanges, and with “debates” taking place between people who can barely communicate with each other. I’m not willing to peacefully give up our Constitution, abused and abusive as it has sometimes been; our Capitol with its surly bureaucrats and devious pols; or the bonds of kinship and history that connect me with so many red-state people, much as we disagree on most everything other than college football and fried food. …”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/10/06/americans-national-divorse-theyre-wrong-515443
“Divorce usually isn’t a good idea, and that’s especially true of a nearly 250-year-old continental nation.
The notion of a national breakup has long simmered as a fringe argument, but it is increasingly popular in certain precincts of the political right and has gained at least some traction with partisans of both sides. A recent survey by the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia found that about 50 percent of Donald Trump voters and 40 percent of Joe Biden voters agreed to some extent with the proposition that the country should split up, with either red or blue states seceding. …”
“Here are Lowry’s top arguments against the idea:
- We’re no worse off than in the 1970s.
This is mind boggingly naive.
The American population has shifted as the GI Generation and Silent Generation have died off. The Boomers weren’t in charge of America in the 1970s. Fewer Americans can remember the good old days or a major war. Trust in institutions has collapsed. We’ve had decades of global labor arbitrage. We have a massive elite overproduction and fragmentation. We have surpassed the income inequality of Gilded Age America. In the 1970s, there were tiny radical groups like the Weather Underground who engaged in violence, but that radicalization hadn’t filtered down into the population. The American elite wasn’t radicalized either. Obviously, a third of the country wasn’t willing to dissolve the Union in the 1970s. There is also no external adversary like the Soviet Union that poses an existential threat. The United States was just passing the peak of its power and influence when the Vietnam War was raging.
- The United States would instantly be less powerful.
This recommends the idea.
All the wealth and power in the world isn’t worth the loss of your homeland.
- There would be severe economic consequences.
Granted, the dollar would cease to be the world’s reserve currency overnight, which would force a wrenching economic transition from being an imperial parasite with an economy driven by financialization back into a normal country with a productive economy. This transition is necessary and eventually it is going to happen anyway regardless of whether there is a secession crisis.
- The collapse of the United States would strike a blow to the prestige of liberal democracy.
Yes, it would likely discredit liberal democracy, but this would only reveal what we already know to be true. This country has been rotting from the inside out for decades now while a tiny elite of plutocrats has grown fabulously rich. We’ve been steadily losing cultural cohesion as we have been transformed into an oligarchy that presides over a continent sized economic zone. The government has been growing more dysfunctional as a result. Everyone already knows this. It can’t continue to go on like this forever.
- There will be no clean separation.
This isn’t necessary.
Politics would continue to go on as before under a new national government that is homogeneous enough to function. Aggrieved minorities would pack their bags and resort into Red America or Blue America. Most of the people who now live in Florida weren’t born there.
- National Divorce would end in war.
A war is less likely because the partisan fear and hatred is so much deeper that one side leaving the Union would end the gridlock and allow the other side to implement its agenda. Americans no longer believe the preservation of the Union is sacred. The two sides hate each other so much that they are much more willing to let the other side go in peace. Disunion would come as a relief to partisans on both sides. This is why people on both sides of the partisan divide see it as a way out.
- The nuclear weapons issue is insoluble.
The dissolution of the Soviet Union is a precedent for this. Ukraine and Kazakhstan had thousands of Soviet nuclear weapons in their territory when both became independent states in the 1990s.
- The Blue States wouldn’t let Texas go because of its oil and natural gas production.
Why not?
Getting rid of Texas and other Red States whose representatives obstruct the progressive agenda in Congress is necessary to fight climate change and create a green economy and save humanity.
- Disunion wouldn’t stop the cultural tide.
Yes, it would.
The problem is the federal government and coastal sh*tlibs back East and out on the West Coast. Get rid of them and everything changes overnight within the new political context of Red America. CNN and MSNBC would doubtlessly continue broadcasting like Radio Free Europe into a hostile country.”
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