This is a “what if” blog, addressing the issue of incompatible differences which are rather dramatically reflected in that red-blue map of the United States and the severe polarization reflected in our election process. And there is a question whether voters can de jure or de facto vote to change our form of government into an autocracy? The choices may go beyond symbolic colors, but we do seem have broken into partisan parts. Today, red leans towards a centralized authority; blue leans towards diversity in leadership. We have blue in (i) Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and Illinois (the “blue wall”), (ii) California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Colorado, Arizona (?), Hawaii and New Mexico (some call it “Cascadia”) and (iii) New England south to Virginia (excepting West Virginia), or the “East Coast.” Red would be (i) Texas (maybe with Oklahoma) and (ii) the deep South plus the Midwestern plains states.
There is a complication as we move forward. With a few exceptions – like Fort Worth, Texas and Oklahoma City – most major cities in the United States, even those in red states, are amazingly blue. Like Austin, Dallas, Houston, New Orleans, Atlanta, Miami, Raleigh-Durham, etc. And the United States is increasingly urbanized. It was 94% agricultural in 1789, a number that is heading for a total flip in the near term. That’s why you can look at a red-blue map of the US and see the searing amount of red that belies the transition. Cities are simply concentrated; rural regions are obviously not. The traditional white majority is destined to minority status, particularly in urban reaches. The presidential election is profoundly illustrative of this transition.
Younger Americans, better educated as a whole with no emotional or historical revulsion to “socialism” – instead focused on student debt, unaffordable housing, healthcare, job opportunities and pay levels as well as climate change – are destined to amplify blue values over red. Those young white Americans left behind by educational and opportunity barriers may remain red, but they are on the wrong side of an obvious historical trend. This is part of another obvious transition reflected in this election.
How about Alaska? Good question, but if it were not accepted into one of the other regions, there is a very real possibility that Russia would reclaim that land, by force if necessary. Russia has always maintained that “Seward’s Folly” was an illegal transaction between the Tsar and the United States. Russia needed money, and in 1867, US Secretary of State William Seward bought out Russia for $7 million. Both the communist and post-communist regimes have maintained that the land was not the Tsar’s to sell.
There are so many additional issues, most prominently how the current configuration we call the United States actually would decide to divide into component states in a break-up. Violent revolution with a negotiated settlement (noting that in red states there are strong pockets of blue, especially in the bigger cities, and vice versa looking at rural communities in blue states)? A referendum? Is there any constitutional basis for such a vote or would that in itself require a constitutional amendment to permit such a vote? Other?
And if there were a true breaking apart, what would happen to the military, nuclear weapons and top-secret military intelligence, satellites and hardware? How would the national debt be dealt with? What would the going-forward currency(currencies) look like and how would it be valued or placed into international exchange? Bitcoins? The Federal Reserve? Our judicial system? What would happen to our military and diplomatic installations overseas? Treaties? What would the relationships be vis-à-vis the newly formed states and those in newly configured nations?
We’ve watched the Soviet Union dissolve, initially into ten individual members of the Commonwealth of Independent States, which then broke into separate nations with varying degrees of autonomy from the central Russian Federation. It took time, but Vladimir Putin seems intent on recapturing much of those newly formed nation states. If the United States were to fracture into component parts, there is a possibility of a parallel structure. However, if it is the intensity of the differences that broke us apart, that degree of operating under an overall umbrella would seem unlikely.
What would be a sensible division of the United States? Ignoring the big demographic transitions. Just focusing on the polarization that has brought this nation into pockets of mutual hatred and derision. My thought is that new nations would be formed from based primarily on commonality of political values and proximity (mostly contiguous land mass). The three blue areas above could each become a separate nation, perhaps united under a treaty umbrella, much like the configuration of the European Union under Maastricht.
I think Texas is too independent to accept being just part of another giant red country, so my guess is that they would probably go it alone, perhaps taking Oklahoma along for the ride. It would not surprise me if, in a few years after the break-up, Texas opted to become a member of that east-west treaty organization. Low-lying Florida, facing massive land mass loss from vast coastal erosion, is in a tough spot. Southern Florida, where the destruction would be most significant is more blue than red, but the northern part of the state is bright red. I think Florida just gets sucked into that massive, “big red vortex.”
For those in the new arrogant east and west coast configurations, each capable of generating lots of their own natural resources anyway, that they would share borders with Canada suggests that whatever they might lack in resources could easily be obtained from their northern neighbor. With few exceptions – e.g., the Research Triangle Park biotech oasis in central North Carolina or parts of Georgia (Atlanta) – educational excellence and high-tech development, research, production and values are more heavily concentrated in the blue areas and Texas.
This suggests that that new red South/Midwest configuration would have to find its own way to upgrade to a more competitive, non-agriculturally based advantage. This would increase economic pressure on the pockets of productivity (North Carolina, Georgia and Florida) to support the less economically charged regions of that new nation, another reason why Texas might not want to be part of that configuration. The concentrations of wealth and capital in the east-west states give them a strategic advantage that might prompt violence as the break-up path for that big red swath.
Without reunification, given the obvious mobility driven by economic opportunity over the years, families would be ripped apart. Corporations would have to scramble to pick headquarters, protect assets, and operate under very different economic and legal parameters. Patents, copyrights and trademarks would hang in limbo until those basic values were properly sorted out. One might expect that the existing legal system would apply at least temporarily, pending replacement with a new constitution for each new nation and laws consistent with that founding document.
Lest we take what we have for granted, as we seem to have done, we should know that civil wars are particularly nasty. And nothing tells us that foreign powers might not jump into the fray to gain power and influence… perhaps even land. Our own Civil War created more deaths, more casualties for this nation than any other conflict in our history.
“The Civil War was America's bloodiest conflict. The unprecedented violence of battles such as Shiloh, Antietam, Stones River, and Gettysburg shocked citizens and international observers alike. Nearly as many men died in captivity during the Civil War as were killed in the whole of the Vietnam War. Hundreds of thousands died of disease. Roughly 2% of the population, an estimated 620,000 men [other estimates go as high as 850,000], lost their lives in the line of duty. Taken as a percentage of today's population, the toll would have risen as high as 6 million souls… The human cost of the Civil War was beyond anybody's expectations. The young nation experienced bloodshed of a magnitude that has not been equaled since by any other American conflict.” Battlefiend.org.
But gruesome casualties, not just deaths, and massively devastating (and uninsured) property destruction could well be the price we pay for intolerance, an unwillingness to compromise and insistence on “my way is the only way.” One body of militia mounting a bloody attack could trigger it all. At the end of this reality is the one constant: change. And that change will penetrate every corner of our great land, no matter how the borders are configured, no matter how many of us want to stop the clock or return to yesteryear. That never, never, happens!
I’m Peter Dekom, and for those who say, “it can’t happen here,” they need to be reminded that it can, and it did.
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