The Balkanization of the United States would be more than just a regional civil war IMHO. The USA represents the largest military and economic power in the world. Really in the history of the world. For that to split up into at least two or more ideologically opposed political entities would leave a power vacuum that would have far-reaching consequences around the globe.
just a question…say we do end up with one of those setups where America ends up as 5-6 different countries with a few joining Canada (that RPGs and video games seem to love ))what’s to stop say china Russia or even the un/nato from a unification/peacekeeping force?
I mean china would pretty much have a casus belli simply because we owe them so much money that’s they’d have to invade to keep themselves from collapsing financially
Oh, wonderful, this thread is in the Pit where it belongs, so I can say this without getting in trouble for it:
This is a stupid fucking idea, and you’re a fucking idiot for suggesting it.
Lack of ability for the UN, NATO minus U.S., Russia or China to do this + active ability of even a fractured United States to stop them with nuclear force. That would stop your “peacekeepers” pretty effectively.
As an intellectual exercise it’s hard not to argue that there’s some merit to the United States being split up, the devil is in the details of how it happens. There’s been some more serious speculation about it in political science circles and a scenario much less likely to cause people to hyperbolically assume the world would end is an approach of “maximum Federalism”, the idea being that you cool the temperature off, not heat it up, by making the stakes of national elections lower. The end state would see the United States closer to the EU than to its current form.
In actuality just think the country is likely going to continue on and be fine (I’ve said repeatedly the people who think we’re just going to magic our way into fascism are silly and wrong, and are the same sort of bleaters who were saying that W. Bush would illegally retain power after he lost in 2004, and then later, when his term ended in 2009), and such exotic solutions won’t be necessary.
We already have maps showing red and blue states so we’ve officially divided up the country.
People are free to move if they want to. So if we’re not suggesting that we involuntarily force people to move, then we are already in the process of dividing the country in the matter proposed. If a right wing person is in a blue state and wants to move, they can. And same for the left in red states.
In a sense the proposal in the OP has been ongoing for a long time.
Even taking this idea totally seriously, a big problem with splitting the country is that the USA is increasingly getting less polarized on regional lines. We’re doing the exact opposite of balkanization. The American political culture has been homogenized a lot over the last decades (but especially the last ~8 years), such that it matters much less than it used to whether a voter is from the south or the midwest or the northeast when figuring out how they’re likely to engage with national politics.
That’s speaking from a place of incredible privilege. Most people are living paycheck to paycheck. Some people are leasing apartments for the term of a year. You can’t simply uproot a family to another state willy-nilly.
Absolutely. Of course it’s not my privilege. I sure as hell couldn’t, I’m not wealthy and never have been. My geography has pretty much always been restrained by financial needs. But if I literally hated people I lived around I’d consider going into poverty to hitchhike where I felt like I could live peacefully around like-minded people.
I haven’t done that because I’m not a fucking lunatic who wants to go to war with my neighbors because they vote differently.
Oh also today I heard that Ron DeSantis is openly courting anti-vaxxers to move to Florida. Specifically he was speaking to police and first responders, but I’m sure his pledge that Florida will “treat you better here” if you refuse to be vaccinated is a siren call to all kinds of idiots.
So here is an attempt to draw some of the red into Florida. I know that the anti-vax movement isn’t all just on one side, but I’m also very sure that it’s an extremely ruddy shade of purple.
And people like you are a key component in why we’re watching a slow fascist coup being enacted in front of our very eyes and no one will do anything to stop it. You desperately want to believe that everything is normal, that it can’t happen here, that having an existential threat to democracy in the United States is just implausible, and so you’re in denial and passively allowing it to happen.
We just fucking had a violent mob storm the fucking capital. And they were spurred on to do it by the President of the United States, who claimed that the election that put him out of power was fraudulent, and that his cultists would have to “fight like hell” to keep him in power. And despite seeing an actual fucking attempt at insurrection that came very close to murdering members of congress and the vice president, we still have people so desperate to believe that everything is normal that they act like it was no big deal.
It had help from the inside. Republicans were giving people “tours” of the capital building that were recon missions. The panic buttons in congressional offices were removed. The security on the capitol was deliberately crippled to try to help the violent mob. Help from the national guard was deliberately held back while the capitol was invaded. This was, 100%, unambiguously, a violent attempt to maintain power by a president who claims that the election results were false, that he’s the real president, and has said in the past that he should be given an unconstitutional third term, and even that we should try electing him president for life, and basically qualifies for every mark on the checklist of what makes a fascist demagogue.
We are still learning that the “rioters” had extensive help from the inside and that Trump’s team had a command center for the effort to deny Biden the presidency.
And what are we doing about it? We’re giving the people who invaded the capitol building a slap on the wrist. The Republican party has proven that they support subverting democracy, denying reality, and are planning to enact such a plan in the future. Even saying something as obvious, simple, and necessary to a democracy like “Joe Biden won the 2020 president election” gets you excommunicated from the Republican party. And we’re still treating them like they’re a normal part of the political discourse. Like “oh sure, denying reality and refusing to acknowledge elections, that’s just normal politics, I’m sure it’s always been this way”
They are setting their people up in positions to control elections all across the country, they are actively trying to suppress the vote, and they’ve spent a year attempting to discredit the idea that an election they lost could possibly be legitimate. They are very clearly going to go to even more extreme efforts to interfere with elections than they did this time around. They haven’t been punished and they are encouraged by that and increasing their efforts.
I generally like you as a poster, I think you’re pretty reasonable, but you are completely, dangerously wrong on this. We are not in normal times. The Republican party of GWB’s day would never have elected Donald Trump, but now they are completely beholden to his cult. I can see you denying reality and insisting that everything is normal right up until the very end. Next year, when we see widespread sabotage in elections by the republican plants, refusal to acknowledge the results of the election, and violence endorsed and facilitated by the Republican party, I’m sure you’ll be insisting that everyone who thinks we’re watching an obvious fascist coup in front of us is just an alarmist claiming that somehow we’re going to “magic into fascism.” Maybe when a violent mob is murdering Congress, you’ll still be posting on here about “hey, relax, you’re the same kind of people that thought GWB was going to try a takeover of government!”
In the history books, people are going to ask how the US let itself lose any semblance of democracy when it was so slow and obvious and out in the open and about half the answer is going to be people like you insisting that everything is fine and normal and it can’t happen here even though every event of the last 5 years screams that none of this is normal.
Also, in the world as we know it… what country wins if we ( the US) spits up?
And as for the leadership of the Know-Nothing Party, when we turn over enough stones, why do strong financial ties to Oligarchs of that same country keep turning up?
Why its almost as if this “break up” was the end goal that was desired and paid for all along.
.
“Good News, Comrade! We can roll into Alaska and take it back with just one division.”
“Ah… life is Good, Alexei…!”
Yup.
Invoking the idea of magicking into fascism is an odd in this context. How nations slide into facism is well known, there are any number of historical examples. And it happens when countries go down a path that the US is tentatively edging down right now. There is no need to involve magic.
Invoking magic as you do is ironic in this context because there is a kind of magical thinking involved with countries that have really admirable and peaceful democratic government - everyone (or at least the overwhelming majority) buys into the legitimacy of the system, and by doing so, creates a legitimate system. It is actually a loss of that magical thinking that results in erosion of functioning democracy. A slide into facism doesn’t occur by magic, it occurs by cynical exercise of selfish power.
The ultimate concern of the “bleaters” about Bush did not come to pass. I didn’t think he would illegally retain power but I was concerned at the fringe elements in his mileau who floated the idea. Because even floating the idea is to move the Overton window, just a teensy bit. Trump didn’t just float the idea he actively pursued it, as SenorBeef points out - he gave the Overton window a massive shove in the wrong direction.
Two steps in one direction do not by any means amount to an unstoppable trend. But they are cause for concern.
Also, this:
Throughout the Trump years, I kept holding on to hope that the GOP would come to their senses. As the events on January 6th played out on national television, it appeared to me that Republicans were having a come to Jesus moment finally realizing just how destructive the monster they created could be. I think Trump even suspected he finally went too far. But, alas, it wasn’t to last, and the Republicans as a whole didn’t just deny the severity of the event but blamed outside forces. When the president can send a mob to stop the counting of electors, when the mob can threaten violence, when that same mob specifically threatens the vice president with seeming no repercussions I have to agree with you that things aren’t normal. The GOP has gone off the rails and they’re very, very scary.
The Capitol Riot was literally a nothing burger. One rioter died. A cop had a heart attack. Read about the New York Draft Riots, or even some of the organized labor riots in the early 20th century.
The main issue with the Capitol Riot is we had almost no meaningful security around the Capitol, which was stupid and as far as I can tell almost entirely due to malfeasance by the Capitol Police leadership.
But what actually happened? A bunch of dumb rednecks vandalized a building. The legal certification of Biden as the electoral college winner was never at serious risk. The constitution doesn’t work the magical way some people in Trumpland thought it did, where if they disrupted the proceedings somehow Trump gets to stay President.
You guys say this but can provide almost no meaningful evidence of a “slide into fascism”, you have nonsense talking points. A few thousand idiots breaking things isn’t fascism. Election integrity laws that will not meaningfully prevent anyone from voting, and which will still see the democratically elected candidate win is not fascism. Gerrymandering if it is fascism we’ve been fascist since 1789.
We used to not let black people vote in this country even though the constitution said they could. We used to have public ballots where you got beat up if you voted the wrong way. We used to have election violence where entire ballot boxes would be stolen by armed vigilantes and destroyed.
You guys need to read less Mother Jones and Salon and actually understand a little better how our country’s government works.
The big divide, as far as I can tell, is urban vs. rural. In most states, the rural areas are super-red, and the urban areas are super-blue.
Here’s a series of maps showing the various balances of red vs. blue nationally in the 2016 Presidential election.
Thank you both for these substantive replies. I’ll only say that, whether Trump supporters are mentally lacking, badly deceived, poor at critical thinking or simply enmeshed in their own biases, the end result is the same – they say moronic things, support criminal and treasonous deeds and are all too eager to destroy the country to support their alternative reality.
For all the impact that logic and reason have on them, they may as well be idiots.
I generally agree, but aren’t we going a little Chicken Little here?
Since Jan 6 we have had two federal elections - the two GA seats - and the GOP lost them both.
Trump-supported candidates have won some primaries and lost some primaries.
Democrats control both houses of Congress, and hold the Presidency for the next 3 years. In both the run-up to and the aftermath of the next mid-term and Presidential elections the DOJ will be run by a Democratic-appointed Attorney Genera. DOD will be run by a Democrat-appointed SecDef.
One can certainly look to the past (Weimar Germany, for the most commonly-used example) to find liberal democracies undermined by propagandist parties and large portions of the population being well-armed and disgruntled with the state of affairs. But that example only goes so far - it’s not like we have the military being effectively outside the chain of command or the Government being led by MAGA-sympathizers just waiting to turn over the reins of power (or take them for themselves). Joe Biden is not Hindenburg or von Papen.
So I guess I’m with @Martin_Hyde on this - maybe take a few deep breaths, fight to win the next few elections, and have a bit of faith that the guard-rails of our democracy will hold up.
Coming back to this:
You wouldn’t need to split the country, either. It would be massively easier, cause hugely less trouble, and even be entirely legal, to have enough blue people move from the overwhelmingly blue states to enough of the relatively narrowly red ones to tip the scales. Why not call for doing that instead?
Can you seriously not think of any means of political resistance that involve neither violence nor secession?
WTF?
Yeah, this country has survived shit in the past. We survived the Civil War. Doesn’t mean it’s a fucking good idea to go there again.
Quoted for truth.
It isn’t force of governmental arms that holds the country together. It certainly isn’t an over-200-year-old piece of paper. What holds the country together is the force of nearly everyone believing that it exists – including that the results of elections are recognized by those who lost them. To challenge that is to court disaster.
We need to take deep breaths, fight to win the next few elections, and have a bit of hope that the guard-rails of our democracy will hold up.
But we need to do so with the urgency that comes from recognizing that those guard-rails are in no way guaranteed to hold; and from recognizing that there are people actively doing their best to dismantle them. And part of the process of dismantling is claiming that it’s no big deal if the ex-POTUS tries to stage a coup. Because one of the biggest such guard rails, ever since George Washington, has been that when those in office lose an election they acknowledge it.