Tag: red state – blue state

Stalemate Here and Over There

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Nigel Farage has been the voice of British nationalism for a couple of decades.  Fourteen years ago, he drove the movement that successfully forced the United Kingdom to exit the European Union; “Brexit.”  And he helped the Conservative Party (the Tories) regain their majority and sweep back into power on the basis of his Brexit campaign.

And then these Tories ruled for a decade as the Leftists they truly were.  And this allowed the Left (Labor, The Green Party and the Liberal Democrats) to regain control of Parliament and wreak further havoc on the English in their own country.  Basically, the Tories and the Left have gone all in on turning Britain into a land of third world immigrants.

In the last few years Farage has spearheaded a new party called the Reform.

Well, the chickens have come home to roost.  Current polls show voters have the following preferences:

  • Reform – 28%
  • Labour – 19%
  • Tories – 18%
  • Greens – 15%
  • Liberal Democrats – 13%

Interestingly, this new party now leads both traditional parties; Labour and the Tories by about ten percentage points.  This just shows how hated both parties have become.  But note that neither the Left nor the Right have a solid majority on which to base a coalition.  Reform and the Tories together have 46% of the electorate.  The three leftist parties; Labour, the Greens and the Liberal Democrats control 47%.  So, the remaining seven percent must be made up of people so apathetic they still can’t figure out which side to vote for.  Basically, the electoral situation is on the razor’s edge.  Now doesn’t that sound familiar?

So just as in the United States control of the government oscillates back and forth between the Left and the Right.  And each oscillation enrages the partisans out of power and eggs them on to greater and greater revenge when they do return.

Just as in Britain, so too here eventually something has got to give.  My guess is that it will eventually cause some large-scale violence and after that there will be a political solution involving a permanent division, either complete or else some constitutional change to give greater autonomy to both sides within the states where majorities for the Left or the Right have firm control.  And probably the “purple” states will have to choose which side they want to get in bed with.

Now, this idea isn’t something I enjoy.  The United States is the only home I have ever known.  And so many things about it are wonderful.  But there is no longer one people living here.  There are two.  And they believe in diametrically opposed visions of how this country should work.  And since the Left is the group trying to change “the deal,” they are going to have to be the ones excluded from the areas where the Right wants to live.  They’re using unlimited third world immigration to drown out their opponents at the polls.  So citizenship in the blue states will not be automatically transferrable to the red states.  And you can imagine how this will end up becoming very ugly after the initial breakup of the country.  Families may end up stuck on both sides of a divided America.  But that’s what seems to be coming.

Ancient European History – Part 4

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At the end of the last installment of this essay I said:

“And the stalemate between the Left and Right is maddening to anyone who wants this country fixed.  We seem to be at a dead end.  What’s the answer?”

I think the answer is we’re not one nation.  We’re at least two (and maybe several more than two) nations trapped in the same constitutional system that requires unanimity.  The people who are the majority in the blue states and the people who are the majority in the red states want diametrically opposite things.  It’s not just that they disagree on the details of how things should be run.  They want different realities on the ground.

Right now, people in Minnesota, Illinois, New York and California are actively conspiring to battle ICE agents to prevent them from fulfilling their lawful duty to deport illegal immigrants.  And while Biden was in the White House, he used his office to allow illegal immigrants to enter the United States in the millions.  These two examples underscore that the two major political positions in this country have no middle ground and cannot find a way forward that will satisfy both sides.

And this is just one of a large number of issues that are irreconcilable differences between the Left and Right.  Social, economic and moral differences exist and will not go away.  What seems clear to me is that some change is needed to allow the different groups to exist separately and peacefully on the same continent.

And actually, that doesn’t seem to be a difficult situation to create.  Look at the present situation between Canada and the United States.  If you met people living on either side of the US/Canada border (say between Ontario and New York State) you probably couldn’t tell them apart if they were mixed in a room.  They’re essentially the same culturally and even ethnically.  They belong to two separate countries.  But they can cross back and forth over the border and the companies that do business around there can buy and sell their services on both sides of this border.

The same kind of arrangement would be possible between two or more successor states existing where the United States is now.  The only thing that would change would be the status of citizens in each of these new states.  Citizens of the blue states wouldn’t be citizens of the red states and vice versa.  So, no one would be moving from California to Texas anymore without the equivalent of a green card.  Now theoretically the blue states would have this open border mentality and would allow anyone in the world including red state citizens to just settle in their country willy-nilly like they do now.  But I predict that once the split is made the blue states will change their immigration policy at least with respect to the red states for spite.  Which is fine.  But I would guess that once they aren’t spiting the red states through their open border policies anymore, they’ll probably re-evaluate how happy they are with this status quo.

But immigration is only one aspect of what would drive a separation between the red and the blue areas of this country.  We can talk about social issues and whether this would cause a separation into two nations or possibly more in the next installment.

Guest Contributor – Tregonsee – 17NOV2025 – Handicapping a Civil War

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The thought of a civil war is VERY messy. My (limited) familiarity is that I’d say 80% of the enlisted tend to be from the poorer (bottom 3-4) deciles of the population. The upper enlisted officers tend to come from families that have been in the services for a long time. They are more from the red/purple areas than deep blue. Officer Corp is more split(again from my very limited experience), Flag officers are VERY political and Obama’s purge of the flag ranks (as well as Col. ready to promote) means there is a very blue tinge at the top. Lower rank officers likely come from families that have traditions of service and come from more traditionally conservative backgrounds as the militery calling is pooh poohed by the Left. Pretty sure neither red nor blue troops would kill civilians without severe provocation. Most would also not participate in massive disarmament of citizens. I think the latter ends up with mutinies and fragging of officers, with enlisted disappearing off into the bush. That said, the Left has its own shock troops in the armed bits and bobs of Antifa/Pantifa and other similar groups. They are far less morally bound than the members of the armed services. Would the National Guard and LEO stand back and let them go at it? Beats me, I’m not eager to find out.

As for strategic resources, the blue states have an issue. I think all the missile bases, plus Whitman AFB (B2, soon B21) are in red states). The Atlantic Boomer base is in a red state (no boomers run out of Groton CT any more), Pacific Boomer base is at Bremerton WA but would that matter? Boomers are odd they really try hard to stay at sea for long periods before switching crews. In a Red/Blue divorce, the Reds end up with most of the fixed ( Missile assets). I doubt the Red would disarm, given the Ukraine precedent.

Honestly any scenario I see tends to be rife with insurgencies. Blue in the more rural parts of Red would have massive hit and run attacks on them by light arms. Red going into citified areas will have Viet Cong like insurgents blending into the populous (with either the populous supporting them or by threatening the populous.

I just can’t create an Arisian like vision of the cosmic all on this one. If I were using the old magic 8 ball I’d be getting “Better ask again” or “Reply Hazy, try again”. The only thing I can say is I deeply doubt your model of a looser coalition, it seems very doubtful. Much of the Blue side views this as almost a theological/eschatological vision. There are as likely to live and let live as the 16th-century Spanish Inquisition. Certainly, there are parts of them that don’t believe (all) their nonsense. But those parts know that if they divert from the path, they are likely to find an ice pick in their forehead like a good menshivik.

Reading the National Tea-Leaves

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I think the experience of the last several decades of American politics has made it clear that there are two completely different and, in some ways, diametrically opposed cultures existing within this country.  And it’s also clear to me that they cannot coexist.  How this will play out is not obvious.  I can think of a few scenarios as to how this will evolve but which one will actually happen is unknown to me.

First, I guess is the possibility that the status quo will go on forever.  I find this scenario the least likely.  The amount of psychological damage being done to the country is extreme and anger that is starting to build up is starting to break out into acts of extreme violence.  Look at what’s happening with psychotic individuals committing mass murders just to protest against political and social conditions.  It seems to me that of its own accord the current situation will fall apart in a very few years.

The second possibility is that the two sides break into open hostilities.  I think this is a likely short-term result.  The range of hostilities can stretch from low level guerilla activities all the way up to organized warfare on a national scale.  And it can also wax and wane.  I think that warfare of whatever type is also a temporary situation.  I think one way it could be settled would be for an agreement to loosen the terms of the federal government to allow both sides to control life within their own jurisdictions.  So, the red states will be red and the blue states will be blue.  So, by allowing the two sides to live the way they want on their home turf, it permits them to allow for the not-so United States to continue as an entity.

Another outcome would be a split of the United States into two separate countries.  And of course, there would be a national divorce that allowed for the divvying up of the family assets.  So, both sides would get a certain number of thermonuclear warheads and nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers and maybe someone would win a coin toss and get to keep the name United States and the US Dollar and Washington DC (although I think the red states will be happy to part with that last item).

Now there is one other outcome that I haven’t listed.  And that is where one side or the other wins a complete victory on the battle field and forces the losing side to live under the conditions that the winning side dictates.  And to be honest I don’t think that for both sides would want that outcome.  If the red states won an all-out war, I think they would use the victory to force a separation into two states.  Of course, being on the winning side, I could imagine it would be a division that favored their side pretty generously but, in any case, I think they would be glad to extricate themselves from the union with the blue states.  On the other hand, I think the blue states do want to dominate the red states and if they won a military victory, they would use the situation to force their ideology on the red states.

So, this is a pretty bleak prognosis.  But I think it is accurate.  I guess the most optimistic scenario is that after a very brief and relatively minor war the two sides decide to stay together under a looser confederation.  This is actually my hope.  What do you think?

Devolution

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The world I live in has been changing at a rapid rate for the last four years.  The COVID and George Floyd strategies combined with the Biden administration’s green revolution, Ukraine war, the opening of the border to all illegal aliens and finally the intelligence agencies use of extreme surveillance and control over the social media platforms have truly changed the way of life in the United States in a fundamental way.  I guess this is what Barack Obama meant when he talked about fundamental change.  He meant destroying the middle class and eliminating law and order.

But we’re still here.  Where could we go?  Europe has been similarly wrecked.  There is no other place.

So, I often wonder how life will adapt under these new conditions.  What was the saying back when everyone thought overpopulation would be our downfall?  “We’ll all be a little hungrier by and by.”  Well, that sounds likely.  Both here and in Europe the powers that be are eliminating farmland, making farming more expensive and making things like fuel and fertilizer much more expensive.  So, let’s assume the hungrier idea is likely.  Of course, many would note that currently obesity is running rampant so how could we be going hungry?  On the contrary, obesity and malnutrition can certainly coexist.  Junk food can be pretty cheap.  But it means shorter life and ill health.  So healthy food will be scarce, unless you count crickets.

We already know that energy in all its uses will be very expensive.  This means homes will be less comfortable, travel will be less frequent, work will be closer to home and all goods that have to be shipped will be more expensive.

Jobs will be harder to find and professional work will be scarce.  Learning trades will once again be a very important avenue for employment.  Colleges will fail on a grand scale.

And the existence of law and order will be on a case-by-case basis depending on who is in power in the local area.

Put all those things together and what kind of a place will we be living in.  First off, I don’t it will be one place.  We’re already seeing different areas of the country diverging from each other.  California and other areas that encourage the importation of large numbers of illegal aliens are already becoming very third world with large homeless encampments, very high crime, high taxes and businesses fleeing to safer areas.  Whereas places like Florida that discourage crime, illegal aliens and high taxes are booming and attracting new businesses.

What this means is that there will continue to be a polarization between the red and blue states and this will cause issues where the blue states will use their control of the federal government to try to outlaw the red state practices that give them advantages over their blue “neighbors.”  How this resolves itself over time is an open question.  If the red states successfully defend their sane policies eventually the blue states will become moribund and they will even lose their control of the Congress and White House due to population loss.

But if the federal government uses force to compel the red states to comply with the blue state practices, then we will be headed for the Brazilification of the United States.  And at that point it truly will not matter where you live.  At that point.  We might as well be in Mexico City, Entebbe or Soweto.  Our lives will be nasty, brutish and short.  And probably better so.

Well, a lot is riding on this upcoming election.  Here we go again.

Pick a Province, Any Province

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The United States of America is not the Roman Empire.  I repeat, it is not the Roman Empire.  Regardless of iconography, colonnades in front of classically designed buildings and a Latin phrase or two on our currency this is a different empire.  Of course, that doesn’t mean that parallels can’t be drawn.  I’m sure if I consulted Gibbons, I could find several emperors that were old, depraved, demented and soiled themselves in public like our current commander in chief.

And one of those parallels is that in a declining empire, the uniformity of institutions and way of life begins to break down.  Famously, the Eastern Roman Empire managed to avoid the downfall that overwhelmed the West in the 5th century A.D.  There were various reasons for these differences in fate.  The eastern provinces were for the most part shielded by distance from the full brunt of the Germanic incursions.  The climate itself might have been somewhat responsible.  German tribesmen probably would have found the weather in Egypt and Judea a trifle warm and dry for cattle herding.

So, it should be expected that the intentional destruction of the American nation by its mad rulers will have a disparate effect on different regions and states.  For instance, California has embraced the self-destructive agenda of the Left with great gusto.  Look at how they’ve dismantled their electrical generation infrastructure and the water reservoir system that they depend on for agriculture and human consumption.  They have willingly dismantled their criminal justice system and sanctioned dysfunctional lifestyles like drug addiction and homelessness.  With such an incredible head start few other areas of the country will be able to disappear into neolithic conditions as quickly as California.  Eventually a large part of the state will return to a pre-human state with Western Diamondback Rattlesnakes becoming the dominant lifeform.

But other areas, maybe the Midwest or the South may endeavor to hold onto the forms and trappings of the past.  Just as the Byzantines long maintained Latin as the court language and calling themselves Romans in Constantinople long after their “empire” was just the Hellenized provinces of Asia Minor and Greece, so too these areas may maintain the polite fiction that America still exists long after many of the regions begin to diverge into their new cultures and ways of governing.

For someone looking ahead to what their family will be faced with in the next decade or two, there is real importance in either figuring out ahead of time which areas will provide the best places to live or alternatively, adopting a way of life that will allow you to “jump” successfully when the time comes to make that move.

Personally, I think making a choice of where to live is probably the best way.  Not that I have a foolproof method for picking the winner.  But I think I have a pretty good idea where the losing areas will be.  As stated above, California looks like ground zero for catastrophe.  Similarly, I think the east coast is also a bad bet.  Perhaps looking for places where population density is low and where natural resources like plentiful water, forest cover and a decent climate might be a winning strategy.  As far as population density, I wouldn’t count out a whole state just because there happened to be a large city in that state.  As long as the distance to where you planned to live was several hundred miles away it might make perfect sense.  After all, state boundaries won’t mean much in the future.  Geographic boundaries like rivers and mountains will.  Western New York has very little to do with New York City.  Northern Nevada and Las Vegas are a world apart.

Who knows!  Possibly an unexpected victory by patriots will completely reverse the current decline and fall of the American Empire.  And then places like New York City and Philadelphia will once again become great centers of culture and commerce instead of squalid dung heaps filled with murderous savages.  But in the meantime, consider choosing where you want your family to build their lives.  Choose carefully.

People’s Republic – A Book Review

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Kurt Schlichter’s novel, “People’s Republic – A Novel” is an action-adventure story set in a near future where the United States has fractured into two separate countries.  The People’s Republic of North America encompasses the west coast and the Great Lakes and east coast down to about half of Virginia.  The remaining states are still called the United States of America.  There was at least some combat between the two groups of states but at the time of the story it has settled into a bickering of guerillas at the borders.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

Now the story is not about the civil war or the current relations between the two countries.  Rather it is an adventure story about an undercover operation by a family to rescue a woman who foolishly defected to the People’s Republic.  The main protagonist is a former special forces soldier who earns his living by smuggling people across the closed border from the People’s Republic to the United States.

Together with the woman’s brother who is also a veteran they go on an odyssey to reach Los Angeles and rescue the girl and also carry back a data base full of the names of spies currently working in the United States.  Along the way we see the results of the radical progressive agenda in the People’s Republic and the growing discontent with the extreme economic hardships that exist there.

The book is liberally seasoned with fights, gun fights and escapes.  This is solidly in the action/adventure genre and provides a fast paced and well-written story.  There is a fair bit of progressive bashing built into the plot but being a progressive-basher myself I enjoyed it pretty consistently.  I would happily recommend this book to anyone on the right side of the political divide who enjoys action-adventure.  Progressives will definitely not enjoy how the Left is characterized.  Oh well.

Great Caesar’s Ghost!

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Long ago, there was a tv show called the Adventures of Superman. Perry White, was played by the well-known character actor John Hamilton. And in one episode, after all of his reporters run out of the room before he can tell them what he wants them to do, he sits there staring into the space in front of him and says, “I know people say you’re crazy when you talk to yourself, but by Great Caesar’s Ghost, there’s no one else around here sane enough to talk to!”

Well, now I’m in the same situation. I’m talking to myself in order to use this program that Microsoft has on Windows called Voice Typing.  It works quite well. But what I notice is that it’s difficult for me to get used to the fact that I’m talking to myself.  I mean, when I type typically, I guess I’m silently talking to myself but this is a completely different thing. Uh, you have to think on the fly. Because I can speak a lot more quickly than I can type. So, I don’t have enough time to think of what I want to say.  If you see what I mean.

So, look at those last few sentences.  They’re pretty stilted.  That was me trying to dictate to the computer.  It’s not pretty.  And so, I’ll have to see if this works for me.  I’m guessing I’ll have to practice with it until I can think comfortably at the speed of my speech instead of at the speed of my typing.

But one interesting thing has come out of this experiment.  I can see now how some of the mistakes I’ve seen on other people’s blogs happen. They’re using a dictation program. That seems apparent.  The machine is mistaking certain similarly sounding words for others that have a completely different meaning.  And then afterwards, when the human edited it, he’s missed some of these problems.

So here we have a technological change.  Dictation replacing typing.  I remember reading that the ancients when they read something, they read it aloud.  I think it was something about Julius Caesar I remember, that he was able to read silently and at the time this was considered a radical departure from normal behavior.  Great Caesar’s Ghost!  Maybe I’m too old and inflexible to change how I produce text.  Maybe my brain is too canalized to change.  Well, it’ll be an experiment.

This has been an interesting week.  All the coverage of the Trump verdicts and the fines has further revealed the clear divide in the United States.  Once again there is no middle ground.  The Left has abandoned all pretense at objectivity.  Any and every attack on Trump is justified and reasonable in their eyes.  Even when the result of this thinking frightens even their allies.  The enormous fine against Trump’s commercial interests and the obvious fictitious nature of the “crime” has frightened other businessmen in New York.  The realization that prosecutors and judges can easily fabricate charges that will basically allow confiscation of all their wealth has panicked many of these ultra-wealthy individuals.  And Governor Hochul reacted by trying to soothe the nerves of the rich.

But if there’s one thing billionaires hate is the threat of confiscation of their wealth.  Recently Elon Musk was denied a huge payment from Tesla because the State of Delaware stepped in and forbade it.  Almost immediately Musk had the incorporation of Tesla moved out of Delaware.  I fully expect to see similar moves by many public and private corporations to preempt any possible chicanery by Letitia James or any of the other bloodsucking ghouls in New York State.

And this is on top of an already desperate fiscal situation in both New York City and New York State.  Things like the feeding and housing of illegal aliens is starting to put a real hole in their budgets.  So, could the lawfare against Trump hasten the unravelling of the Empire State?  Great Caesar’s Ghost!

After the Revolution – Part 2

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So, I’ll skip over to the far-left edge of what might happen after the revolution.  What if the revolution is their revolution?  Meaning, what if the Left wins completely.  Well, this is even simpler.  According to the game plan we’re already following the feds will enforce California-like policies everywhere and all the time.  Fossil fuels will disappear from everyone’s lives (except for the elites) and normalcy will be totally outlawed in all areas of life.  Third world immigrants will be planted in every corner of the nation and we’ll resemble South Africa in almost every way.  Of course, such a place will collapse because of dysfunction eventually, but enough time will elapse before a collapse, so that none of us or our children will ever see anything approaching a livable environment.

Well, I’m sure you know that’s not the option I’m hoping for.

And finally, we reach my revolution.  And it’s one that has some evidence on the ground.  I point to what Governor Abbott is trying to do in Texas.  This revolution consists of the red states pushing back against the unconstitutional policies of the federal government and protecting their citizens from the consequences.  Whether it’s illegal aliens or lunatic energy policies based on “climate,” attacks on constitutional rights or federally sponsored rioting by Antifa and BLM; the individual governors and governments of the red states and hopefully a coalition of these states will adopt policies and strategies to nullify the dysfunction being levied against them.

And the eventual outcome of this movement might be the most positive end case of all.  As we’re seeing with the blue cities suffering under the illegal immigration floods, these blue states begin to understand how disastrous these altruistic sounding policies they’ve signed up for turn out to be in the real world.  Imagine for a minute what it would be like if the red and blue states were allowed to diverge down different paths on something like climate energy polices.  Imagine Blue America has been purged of fossil fuels and Red America hasn’t.  Someone going from Minnesota to, let us say, South Dakota would see his neighbors enjoying a warm home heated by oil or gas, a car that can drive an unlimited distance with refuels that take just a couple of minutes cheap goods due to low transportation costs and delicious meals of red meat from carbon dioxide emitting cattle.  Whereas he eats a cricket burrito while sitting at a frozen electrical charging station waiting for hours for his battery car to charge enough for the next hundred miles of his journey to his home where he’ll wrap himself in layers to survive the environmentally friendly temperature setpoint of fifty-five degrees Fahrenheit.  Now how long do you think those good progressives will endure this while living side by side with their neighboring red state Americans laughing at them?  Exactly, they’ll go berserk and demand their governors adopt the same policies.

Now this could also drive the feds to wage actual war on the red states claiming that climate disaster forced them into it.  But let’s assume this revolution goes our way.  So, what I see is that having a Red America and Blue America side by side might just be the way to win over the Blues.  With all of the awful policies of the Left, having a counterexample to observe in close proximity should be an effective lure to convince them just how stupid they really are.

But even if it doesn’t it would be like North and South Korea.  On one side of the border, poverty and insanity.  On the other prosperity and normalcy.  So, after my revolution we would have the two Americas still formally one country but with completely different lifestyles and cultures.  And to my mind over time the various blue states would begin to slowly migrate into the red model.

The biggest question I have is how much violence and disruption would there be?  How will the federal government react to nullification?  Potentially it could be a war.  But more likely the feds would use intimidation and gestapo tactics to try and break the leadership of the red states.  The crux of it is whether there are strong enough local leaders to overcome the federal intimidation.  I guess I’m still slightly hopeful that this could be done in the immediate future.

So, that is my roundup of the various scenarios for “after the revolution.”  It’s a bizarre range of things.  I left out the option where there is no revolution and we just continue under the same stalemate we currently endure.  I couldn’t see defining the null case as a revolution.

So, what do you think?  Do you disagree?  Did I leave out another version?  Did I get one of the scenarios wrong in some important detail.  Please leave your thoughts in the comments.  And enjoy the revolution comrades!

After the Revolution – Part 1

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One of the ZMan’s favorite phrases during his podcasts seems to be “after the revolution.”  This is usually followed by a comment about some benighted leftist finding out how the guillotine works, up close and personal.  Ouch!

But what seems to be a lot less easy to find is any thoughts about what would be going on after the revolution.  And maybe this is because the more hard-line folks on the Right have truly apocalyptic dreams for the world if things go their own way and it would be unwise to discuss the specifics in the open.  But really it’s because the Right is not a monolithic movement but a coalition of those who want to be free of the Left, there really isn’t one vision of what “after the revolution” would look like.

But I thought it might be interesting to think a little bit about what some of these visions might be and also what I myself would like “after the revolution” to look like.

Let’s start with the wildest visions of the really hard-core cases, something that would closely resemble what the people who made that new movie “Civil War” imagine people on the Right want as the future.

So, in this extreme vision of post-America the country would be divided into a bunch of independent countries that each is based on the regional ethnic make-up and political predilections.  The Northeast and Mid-Atlantic (including Virginia and maybe North Carolina) would be the rump USA nation.  It would be run by the same elite that currently runs the whole country.  I think it would also include the Great Lakes states, the Pacific northwest (with at least a part of California) and Hawaii.  Then the South would be its own country.  The Midwest would be another.  Some people think that Texas and the southwest (with or without all or part of California) would be another.  Maybe Alaska joins up with Canada.

In this setup whole ethnic populations would be swapped between these areas at least partially by force.  What the forms of government for these successor states would be is a subject of wild speculation by those who desire this drastic fate for the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.  But if such a division of the country and its people occurred it’s possible to imagine multiple forms of government.  Perhaps this time around, the Puritans will decide on something more explicitly oligarchic.  Maybe the Midwest will continue on with a representative democracy.  Maybe the South will get a king and the Southwest will decide to join up with Mexico.  Personally, this particular scenario sounds quite bleak to me.  But I hesitate to say that it is completely impossible.

But I think that reaching this scenario will involve maximal violence and destruction.  Millions of people will die and economic and social upheaval will devastate the whole continent.  And in this weakened condition, attack from external threats doesn’t seem far-fetched.

The next in line from most extreme to least would be a 50/50 split of the country between blue and red states.  Blue America would be similar to the Puritan nation from above.  Let’s say New England, Mid-Atlantic states with Virginia and North Carolina, Great Lakes states also including Michigan and Illinois, the whole West Coast, Nevada, New Mexico, possibly Arizona and Hawaii.  Everything else would be Red America.

As far as political systems, Blue America would be California on steroids.  No fossil fuels, no red meat, lots of cricket burgers and all transgender all the time.  Red America might be like what we had in this country before the 1960s.  Maybe it will include an amendment that allows states to secede at will.  I assume that both nations would be highly antagonistic and constantly sniping at each other about all the compromises that would have to be enacted because of the divorce.  They’d even be fighting over who would keep the name USA.  But since Amerigo Vespucci was part of the whole European colonial plot maybe the blue states can find some obscure native American (there’s that name again) term for the real estate.

I could actually see how this arrangement would be an improvement over our present situation.  Getting to this state doesn’t seem to be something that will happen easily or without copious violence.  So even this less drastic alternative isn’t my favorite scenario.  I’m certain there would be open war before the divorce occurred.

Tomorrow I’ll discuss some other scenarios including the one I favor.