The dis-United States of America

A couple of commenters had an interesting exchange in the thread to Scott’s post about running somebody against Joni The Undertaker Ernst in next year’s election. I’m reproducing it here because in my view both commenters make compelling points, that are diametrically opposed to each other.

First, the Bathawk2L:

It’s worth taking a step back and looking at how absurd this whole situation is. We’re going into our sixth straight election cycle (2016-2026) where democracy itself is a ballot question (in addition to basic competence, economics, healthcare etc.), and while we’ve narrowly won some of those elections, the Republican primary base just keeps getting more insane, while the “national” median voter is if anything getting dumber, the media environment ever-shittier, and the Wisdom of the Framers more Wise (after 2030, Dems will need to win combinations of red states to have a shot at the EC). So the stakes just keep getting higher, while the terrain gets more difficult, because we are forced to compete in places like fucking Iowa where the insane plus the merely dumb are a crushing supermajority.

And while I’m “elite” and politically obsessive enough to articulate this in detail, lots of what I will call moderately-informed people on the ground feel the same general way–this cannot go on.

The first elected Democrat on the state or federal level to break the taboo and say “maybe we should do a negotiated split of the country” out loud is going to be an overnight star.

This is Christopher Bird’s reply:

And while I’m “elite” and politically obsessive enough to articulate this in detail, lots of what I will call moderately-informed people on the ground feel the same general way–this cannot go on.The first elected Democrat on the state or federal level to break the taboo and say “maybe we should do a negotiated split of the country” out loud is going to be an overnight star.

Okay. This belief is remarkably like what people think caused the Civil War, in that people who know very little about history say “slavery,” people who know a little about history say “states’ rights” or shit like that, and people who know a lot about history say “slavery.”By this I mean that “moderately informed” people know enough to know that the very simple answer of “America can’t break up! we’re America!” isn’t really enough understanding of the problem, so they decide that the answer is something else, but the thing is, if you’re very informed, you know the answer is “America can’t break up because breaking up would be worse.”I mean, let’s stick a pin in the issue that you’re proposing something that would make the partition of India/Pakistan – one of the great human-caused disasters of the twentieth century! – look like a game of Scrabble. We’re just going to set that aside for a bit, and focus on the following issues:- the cultural divide in America is largely an urban/rural divide, so how exactly do you partition land anyway- take a look at what’s happening in India/Pakistan over Kashmir, which is the source of most of their conflict because Pakistan relies on the Indus River as a major source of water and whenever India gets pissy they threaten to dam it upstream. Now assume that applies to, at minimum, the Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Wabash, Snake, Willamette, Rio Grande, Gila, Pee Dee and Colorado rivers. You have just identified the flashpoints of any major future war between the Remaining States of America and the New Confederacy (or whatever). And that’s the most likely thing to happen, because these are two countries forming because they hate each other (or, at least, one side hates the other and the other side is just so fucking tired of putting up with it).- speaking of the countries being rivals-to-enemies, that’s going to happen because one country will be filled with relatively rational people and the other will be filled with insane bigots who believe crackpot theories. What do you think happens when those crackpot theories fail and their country is on the brink of collapse? Do you think they will rationally address the crackpot theories? Or do you think they will decide that the country they hate the most, the one with all the people they decided hated them so much they were sabotaging Old America despite all evidence to the contrary, is to blame? I think they will pick the second one and start a war, because that’s what they actually want to do anyway!- speaking of war, who gets what weapons in the breakup? you can’t just apportion it by “where do the soldiers want to go,” you need to apportion weapons, especially nuclear weapons, in a way that both new countries would accept. Did we mention these two new countries are going to be basically somewhere between rivals and enemies right off the bat? How do you think those negotiations are gonna go? How do you think any negotiations are gonna go? You think Insane America is going to say “sure, we’ll take our share of the existing national debt?” Of course not! That’s Blue America’s fault and they will refuse to take any of it!And then we go back to the original problem, which is that partition would inevitably be a humanitarian disaster which would traumatize more than a hundred million people, and that is the best case scenario. Which is why if you’ve really thought about this a lot and studied the issue, you realize that a split is what people propose when they’ve only given it a slight amount of thought.

Why I find this compelling is that the argument that we can’t go on like this feels very powerful at the moment. The conclusion that the obvious or best or only real solution to this is some sort of managed dissolution is for that reason quite attractive on some level.

On the other hand the practical obstacles to this seem, when laid out this cogently, pretty much insuperable.

There are a couple of ways of dealing with this conundrum. One is simply denial: things just aren’t that bad, this country has always been full of stupid lunatics of various stripes and hey things have worked out before and will again. Nine years ago this was pretty much the overwhelming response among all Serious People to the initial election of Trump — yeah it was bad but let’s not get hysterical, like Connie at the end of the first Godfather film, because you know how women/liberals are.

It’s safe to say that take has aged really poorly, to the point where even hardcore reactionary moderates like David Brooks are now sounding the alarm that we can’t keep going on like this.

Another response is to say yeah it’s a huge fucking disaster, the crazies and the morons are now actually in control in a way they’ve never been before, and we just have to hope and pray that Trump’s retirement (or death) will reveal that he is more cause than symptom, and we can get back to standard moronic craziness rather than the current Right Wing Death Cult: Electric Boogaloo.

Sometimes this seems like a semi-reasonable hope to me, while other times I’m more inclined to feel that crying won’t help us, praying won’t do us no good.

Yet a third response is that non-fascists have to get radicalized before the levee breaks any further. How that is supposed to happen I don’t know, but that’s what LGM’s comments section is for.