Might the US break up before this is over?

Politics & Elections
1

As I type the title it sounds weird but this country is not destined to stay in it’s present form forever. When you look at the Soviet Union, there were decades of things that led to the break up, but when it happened, it happened very quickly.

Trump has now put out the idea of quarantining New York and New Jersey and Connecticut, and Cuomo is saying it is unconstitutional and it can’t be done, NY needs interstate commerce.

I think the best estimates of when we will get to no new cases is in July*. But what if that doesnt happen? What if, by then NY and NJ and CT have no new cases, but other states do. If the worst case scenario happens, where hospitals are overwhelmed with far too few beds for the sick, which as I understand is going to happen no matter what we do, who gets the very limited number of masks, ventilators, etc.?

It will be state vs. state, all states fighting for the things they need. Let’s say that the Northeast, or California, gets down to no new cases, but neighboring states do not. Might those northeastern states close off their borders, with the exception of trucks bringing in food. You live in a state where the virus is not under control, sorry, you can’t drive or fly over our state border.

What if, by June, countrywide, we are down to no new cases. But it will crop up again, in cities around the country. Do we then shut down those cities, and who decides? We obvioulsy have no coordinateated national plan even now, will we have one six months from now. And even if we do, will all the individual states go along with it? Every single state might have a different policy.

*COVID-19

2

Why would states that can’t get assistance from states that have gone through it with the full assistance of the nation be willing or able to ship truckloads of food and supplies into those areas? What would the NE/Cal regions do with all the ventilators and portable hospitals after they have no need for them?

I would expect any current quarantine will be limited to no outgoing flights, ships, or trains. As testing becomes more widespread with quicker results, possibly roadblocks on the major roadways with those failing to be put into regional FEMA camps. Any empty Walmart stores available??

3

If the US were to break up, I’d bet almost all my money on its breaking up from a dysfunctional level of partisanship, which (I think) is deeply rooted in such things as growing class divides, income inequality, the displacing effects of technology, and globalization. That this virus tends to elicit split reactions along partisan lines (roughly, economy vs compassion), you might have some traction there. But for real state vs state conflict, I think the nation would have to be much more fractured than it is now (like the edges of civil war), the federal government much weaker, and the crisis much greater (tweak the pathogen numbers a bit, R_0 of 4, 15% death rate).

4

I am wondering if the “dysfunctional level of partisanship” might reach the proverbial boiling point. That all of those things will be exaggerated with this crisis. That the 50 states realize they don’t all have a lot in common. I live in NJ just across the river from NYC, grew up in southwest Virginia (Go Hokies!) and the way of life and the political beliefs are so different, we may as well be in different countries.

I think the nation is now as fractured as it was before the Civil War. Trump still has a 90% approval rating among Republicans. All the red states will continue to support him, and therefore, any Republican President. How is this country ever going to come together as one?

It never will, I think someday it is inevitable that this country breaks apart. Will this be what causes it?

5

The problem is the true divide is urban vs rural. And breaking up along those lines isn’t easy. In Kentucky and Alabama the urban areas are blue and the rural areas are red. In California and Oregon its the same thing. Oregon’s state democracy is starting to face serious issues because the elected representatives from the rural areas won’t cooperate with the reps from the urban areas. If states break up along red or blue lines, the issue will still be there since its an urban/rural divide and not a red/blue state divide.

A problem though is that the urban areas make up 2/3 of the economy, which means they pay 2/3 or more of the tax revenue. The rural areas aren’t going to give that up easily since their standard of living will decline. I think the average per capita GDP in urban areas is technically about 2x as high as it is in rural areas.

If anything, I think the true push for divide, if it does come to an urban vs rural divide, will come from the urban areas that are tired of paying the bills but living in a democracy that underrepresents them for various reasons (gerrymandering, a cap on representatives, 2 senators per state, electoral college, voter suppression, etc). I don’t think the red areas will be as willing to give up the economic and cultural benefits of the urban areas. At leasts that my biased opinion.

6

You’d have to be ridiculously optimistic, naive, and have your head in your ass not to believe the US is in serious danger of a national political crisis, which could ultimately lead to calls for secession and insurrection. Just in the last 24 hours, we’ve observed with our own eyes the head of state ostensibly not inviting the opposition party to ceremonial signing of what might be the most important fiscal stimulus in the last 100 years. And if that’s not enough, he’s literally calling for Pence to punish “blue” states during a time of existential national crisis simply for perceived slights like not showing enough appreciation, whatever the hell that means.

The United States has been through many crises before, but not since the Civil War have we been through something like this and had literally two different versions of cultural and political reality. I get that the Vietnam and Civil Rights protests were intense, but the difference is this: the head of state generally believed in the rule of law and didn’t attempt to punish opposition politicians and their voters for failing to demonstrate loyalty.

Donald Trump is worse than the worst president in American history; he is a sociopath, and he leads a party of racist sociopaths who believe that the federal government is the billionaire class’s ATM machine.

The warning sign I will be looking for is individual state leaders in blue states threatening to lead secessionist movements. The moment I see one, I’ll know it’s time to consider leaving the United States, because I will know that the United States that I have known is gone, and once gone, it won’t come back.

7

Same thing in Virginia. Northern Virgina, blue. The rest of the state, red. Really, northern Virginia should be part of Maryland and the rest of Virginia should be combined with West Virginia. I don’t know where North Carolina belongs, voted for Obama but then Trump.

Just occurs to me. The Republican states are red. Red means commie. Is that ironic, or a am I Alanis Morrisette misunderstanding the useage of the word?

8

In the past it was the red states that wanted to succeed. Texas mostly, but it was bullshit posturing, but now I think it would be the blue states that would want to.

But if it happens, you say you would want to leave the country. Where do you live? If in a blue state, would you not want to be part of a new, blue, country? If in a red state, I would understand.

9

Just so as to stop me making a prejudiced wild-arsed guess Mike Mabes how much time have you spent outside the Lower 48? Or continental North America? Or NJ+NYC?

10

ETA. I have had the feeling for a long time that I should get out of this country before it is too late. Even before all this, I thought we were in the decline and fall.

You can live very well in Argentina, where half of my company’s workers live. Or in Costa Rico, or in Italy. Or Spain. You can get apartments the size of my apartment across the river from NYC for a quarter of the price.

11

Given the US has survived a civil war, I really can’t see a breakup occurring over general disillusionment with your current political masters. It isn’t as if the current political reality (the nature of the incumbent policy brokers and string pullers on either side) is all that entrenched.

12

Outside the lower 48? None.

I lived the first 30 years of my life in Radford, Virginia. Near Blacksburgh, near Roanoke. Lived in DC for a couple of years. Spent a week in New Orleans, the year after Katrina. Want to go back, and a week in St Louis. The one with the arch, the “real” St. Louis. Ventured across the river to East St. Louis, which is in Illinois. The tittie bars there are amazing. Topless and bottomless. Oh and on a vacation when I was a kid, we went all the way down south to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. We went to Nashville once. Long live Elvis!

I’m not sure why any of this is relevant.

13

Communism fell a decade before the parties were (inadvertently) permanently linked to particular colors by the media.

14

so it is even more ironic. The conservatives get associated with a color that represents communism, when that was inadvertantly applied. I’ll take your word for that, but my head hurts

15

But I think it is that entrenced. As much as it was before the Civil War. We are only the country that we are because the North went to war with the South to preserve the Union.

The War of Northern Agression. Some people in the south still see it that way.

16

Donald Trump married two Communist sex workers, so you’ve got that going for your theory.

17

Well I guess I was being so unpardonably unworldly that I thought that the point might have been taken unstated.
But it seems the bleedingly obvious question needs to be explicitly asked.

“If you have never been to another country, indeed based on the experience of a couple of weeks of a life away from the East Coast ye even in amazing tittie bars, how do you know that NYC and NJ feel like different countries?”

These chasms of cultural, political, ethnographic traits of which you speak are really monolithic, unscaleable, immutable? Are there, in your experience, no bleeding hearted libruls in Jersey? No Trumpistas in the Big Apple? Or vice versa?

On the off-chance you’d take two bits of notice of a genuine higgnorant furriner, I’d recommend getting definitions from a dictionary. The Poms have a real good one in their Oxford Dictionary. Would take Funk and Wagnalls at a pinch.

18

The USSR survived a genocidal war imposed on it. Not the rot of the 1980’s.
Now I don’t think the US will break up but pointing to an event from 150 years ago as an example of why it won’t happen is misplaces.

19

I did not say that life in NJ and NY are different, I said that life in NY and Va are different. I lived 30 years in Virginia, the last 37 in New York City and Rhode Island and New Jersey and Washington DC. I put in that little bit extra about St Loo and New Orlean just for fun. You wanted to know where I have lived, I told you. Again, what does have to do with my OP?

My comment on irony was ironic, commenting on a song about irony that had no irony.

Re “two bits of notice of a genuine higgnorant furriner”, well good on you, I had to look up “higgorant furriner”, I still don’t know what you mean by it. And was the “H” in higgnorant deliberate or did you just misspell? Higgnorant is not a word. Are you going all Mark Twain with the phoenetic spelling? Major flaw in HUcklebbery Finn IMO and BTW. I had to read some of Jim’s sentences several times before I knew what he was saying.

The same for this-

Your words - "These chasms of cultural, political, ethnographic traits of which you speak are really monolithic, unscaleable, immutable? "

Well hell, I am impressed by that sentence.

You again - Are there, in your experience, no bleeding hearted libruls in Jersey? No Trumpistas in the Big Apple? Or vice versa?

Of course there are. What does that have to do with my OP? I did not say that the US should, or should not, break up. I asked a question. So far, you are the only one who has not contributed a relevant answer.

20

Only in the respect that the divide itself is mostly rhetorical. Materially, the majority of people in rural areas are not that different from the majority of people in urban areas. This “divide” is a fabrication of political discourse, exploited by certain interests, but which the media love and stoke, because they always like a “fight” for their ratings.

There really is no tangible basis for “breaking up”–there’s no real “divide.” It’s all just talk radio drama.