A More Perfect Union

December 28, 2021

Cathedral City, California

     People will tell you the country is deeply divided, politically and culturally.  I won't dispute this.  Probably at no time since the Civil War has one political party in the United States been so unalterably opposed to the views and values of the other as today.  In fact, I'm not sure the Democrats and Republicans at the beginning of the Civil War were as predictably divided as they are now.  After all, there were Northern Democrats who, while not condoning slavery in their own states, and believing in the preservation of the Union, still supported the right of the Southerners (Democrats one and all) to have slaves if they wanted to.  Today the ideological viewpoints of the two parties have pretty much flipped, but the dividing lines are even brighter and less capable of being crossed than they were then.  

     The modern Republican Party comprises two basic types of people.  The first are wealthy folks who don't wish to pay taxes and who wish to be able to conduct businesses of all kinds without having the government interfere in any way with how they treat their workers, but do expect the government to help them get richer.  They also wish to be able to pollute the earth at will and ignore the current and coming changes to the world's climate.  The second are poorer, more ignorant folks, who suffer under a huge variety of delusions.  They imagine that being wealthy is an inherent virtue, and many of them think they'll be wealthy some day, so they don't want the government to interfere with the wealthy.  They profess to respect unbridled capitalism, yet they complain when they don't get enough money from the government.  They want welfare for themselves, but begrudge it to anyone who doesn't look like they do.  Both the rich and the poor folks are, predominately, white, racist, homophobic, xenophobic, excessively patriotic and religious, and backward-looking.  Most of all they are fearful.  They feel threatened by everyone and everything that isn't exactly like they are, or that portends change.  This harkening back to a nonexistent time when things were better is the real allure of the Republican Party, and the antidote to their fear.  Oh, and the stupid ones also believe that Trump had the election stolen from him in 2020 and that it's not necessary to take any precautions against the spread of COVID, or else they doubt that there is such thing as COVID, and even if COVID exists, they're afraid of the vaccine.  Fear, fear, fear.

     The modern Democratic Party comprises people in all income brackets who believe, more or less, in sharing wealth with the less fortunate, welcoming newcomers, paying their fair share of taxes, conserving our natural resources, curbing pollution, trying (however vainly) to combat climate change, and extending more rights and privileges to people who don't carry with them the automatic privilege of being white, male, heterosexual, and affluent.   If they're religious they tend to belong to religions that teach tolerance, forgiveness, and inclusiveness rather than vengeance, condemnation, and punishment.  And they believe that Joe Biden won the election fair and square, and they try to curb the spread of COVID through vaccinations and the wearing of masks.  Courage and caution, but no fear.  

     Republicans and Democrats are scattered all over the place, it's true, but in terms of which states are reliably "red" and which are reliably "blue," there's really no dispute.  There are a small handful of states that might be termed "purple" swing states in an election, too, and whose electoral votes are sufficient in number to make a difference.  These states are fiercely fought over by the two parties.  During the most recent presidential election, these swing states included Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and, surprisingly, Arizona and Georgia.  In 2016 all those states went for Trump, whereas in 2020 they all went for Biden.  But beware of assuming where they'll go in 2024.

     Okay, everybody who might be reading this already knows all this, so what's my point?  Well, I have a modest proposal.  Because the blue states and the red states differ so greatly in their political, social, philosophical, and moral perspectives, and because these differences are unlikely ever to resolve themselves, why not have another civil war between the states?  Nah, just kidding.  Anyway, that would be a waste of time, energy, and lives, and besides, the blue states would win because they're smarter, more technologically advanced, and mostly because they outnumber the red states in population, which were pretty much all the reasons why the North beat the South the last time.  Assuming the two sides don't nuke one another, it would be just a matter of time before the war would be over and the outcome would be the same as it was after the other Civil War--victory for the good guys and perpetual refusal to accept loss by the bad guys.  I mean, hell, if the Trumpers couldn't accept that Biden beat him by 74 electoral votes and seven million popular votes, how could you expect them to acknowledge having lost a civil war?  

     So let's just skip the bloodletting and simply divide into two countries.  Back when the Civil War was being fought the North had a lot to lose by letting the South become a different country.  Most of the lucrative agriculture in the country was located in the South, and England and France and other wealthy countries were poised to back the Confederacy if it would guarantee a supply of cheap cotton, and the U.S. wasn't the world power that it is today.  Take away the South, and we were basically Canada under a different flag.  I'm not forgetting the most important issue, slavery, which lots of Northerners opposed, and not just in their own back yards, but in general.

     Everybody talks about how great it was that the North won and got the South back into the Union.  But look how much the North was able to accomplish during and immediately after the secession of the South from the country!  They got the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments passed, abolishing slavery, granting citizenship to Blacks, guaranteeing the Bill of Rights to all citizens at the state level, and giving Blacks (well, Black men at least) the right to vote.  These major accomplishments happened either during the Civil War or immediately afterwards, when the South was being run by occupation Reconstruction governments.  Had the country stayed together, none of those amendments would have been passed, because the Southern senators, and the Southern state legislatures, wouldn't have allowed it.  These three amendments--the most important ones of the 19th century--were accomplished when the white South was either a different country or a disenfranchised bunch of losers, and while their original congressional members and senators were prohibited from participating in the governmental process in Washington.  That's my point, and the one I'm leading up to in this posting: good things got done when the South was not part of the U.S., but once the country got reunited and the Northern occupation of the South ended, the Southerners did their best to ignore those three amendments, rather successfully, for the next hundred or more years.  And they got their political power back in Congress, where they were able to obstruct progress for many years to come--all the way to the present day, in fact.  Most insulting of all was the fact that, after freedom and citizenship were granted to formerly-enslaved Black people, the South got even more power than it previously had in the House of Representatives, because it was able to count all the former slaves for purposes of how many congressional seats it was entitled to, instead of the three-fifths it had previously been allowed, while still keeping those former slaves from exercising their legal right to vote and, basically, while continuing to treat them like slaves, only without having to feed, clothe, and house them.

     So let's cut the bullshit and divide into the Liberal States of America and the Conservative States of America, or whatever we might wish to name ourselves.  The red states, after all, don't really want to be part of the liberal U.S., nor do the blue states want to be lumped in with the backwater likes of Alabama and South Carolina.  I mean, it's downright embarrassing to be in a country that contains states like Texas, and West Virginia, and, for Christ's sake, Idaho.  Embarrassing and costly, since we have to carry their weight when natural disasters strike or COVID overwhelms them, because they're mostly too stupid to take the necessary precautions. 

     Now, doing this would make for a physically divided country, especially the blue part.  When you look at the blue-red map, what you see is three reliably blue states along the west coast, plus Hawaii, Nevada, Colorado, and New Mexico.  Then, heading east, a vast amount of solid red, in the middle and throughout the south all the way to the Atlantic Ocean, with a little cluster of blue in the upper Midwest (Minnesota, Illinois, and maybe Wisconsin and Michigan), and then another area of solid blue in New England, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia.  Pennsylvania, well, who knows?  The chopped up blue country would be reminiscent of East and West Pakistan after the partition of the Indian subcontinent when the Brits pulled out.  But hey, today such geographic divisions aren't as serious as they once were, due to better air and sea travel.    

     Of course the blue states have more industrial, educational, and technological strength by far than do the red states.  And as for natural resources and agriculture, I think we could hold our own.  We'd have Minnesota and Illinois in the corn belt, and California, Oregon, and Washington for just about every kind of crop you can think of.  As for petrochemicals, California and Nevada are net producers of oil and gas, not to mention the capacity for lots of solar and wind power, and Illinois has a bunch of coal, should it come to that.  Minnesota mines iron, Colorado and Nevada mine silver, and California still has gold.  And the Pacific northwest has most of the harvestable lumber.  Besides, the blues will be much wealthier and could buy what they don't have from overseas, or for that matter, from the reds, if we deign to do so.

     This is what they call a win-win situation.  Neither side can stand the other anyway.  Mississippians would be tickled pink not to have to be part of what they see as the mongrelized Yankee/Jewish conspiracy to deprive us of our freedoms.  And Californians and New Yorkers and New Englanders could continue to ignore the existence of all those inbred red-state hicks.  Sure, there would be issues to work out, like a time line, and a moment of decision by the purple states.  Maybe we could have a two-year decision window, wherein each state votes by referendum as to whether it wishes to be part of the Liberal States of America or the Conservative States of America.  That way the dumb fucks in places like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, who don't seem to know what's good for them, could make up their minds.  And after those boundaries are set, we could give folks another two years to migrate to or from whichever country they do or don't want to live in, before the two become absolutely separate.  I'd hate to leave the nonwhite people of the deep south stuck where they know damn well they'll be even less enfranchised than they are now.  And should states like Michigan vote to go blue, the hillbillies in those states (of whom there are many) could hightail it for Indiana or Ohio or West Virginia.  Fuck 'em.  

     During the transition period, the two future countries could decide whether they'll allow travel to and from (and over) one another.  Each country would develop its own constitution and decide on its own immigration policies.  The blues could decide not to have a Second Amendment, for example, or to ban capital punishment, or to make abortion on demand fully legal.  Both countries would have the advantage of having lived under a constitution that, despite its shortcomings, could be a model for its future governance.

     Naturally there will be many, many other issues to work through, such as the minting of money, the distribution of nukes (presently located, I believe, in both blue and red states in sufficient quantities to assure mutual destruction), the maintenance of armies, and the two countries' places on the world stage.  We can learn a few things from the successes and mistakes resulting from the breakup of the Soviet Union.  My guess is that most countries will want to cozy up to the blues, since our more progressive political philosophy would mesh better with those of the advanced nations of the western world, who today remain mystified by the strange behaviors of the red states.  And the other large, nonwestern countries would wish to trade with us, too, because we will have more money.  Canada will favor the blues.  Mexico, which is fundamentally undemocratic and corrupt, will probably take a more neutral wait and see posture.  The reds, because of their historically low wages and anti-union beliefs, might even become a place where more advanced nations will wish to have things manufactured, and might by that token become a net exporter of comparatively cheap goods and natural resources, sort of a redneck version of China, minus China's innate efficiency.  And if the reds reflect the attitude of their most cherished recent leader, they will probably wish to remain politically isolated from the rest of the world, which they will consider to be distinctly inferior, but they'll suck up to Russia just in case. 

     The biggest payoff to the blue nation will be an opportunity to fulfill some of the cherished dreams of the Democratic party--cheaper higher education, more government medical care, gun control, pollution control, racial justice, and justice for the native peoples, to name just a few.  The red nation never did care much for higher education, except as a backdrop for college football, and its medical care has always been rudimentary, at best.  If the nonwhites are able to get out of the red nation while the getting's good, the reds will have fulfilled another of their cherished dreams--pure, unadulterated, Jesus-loving whiteness.  Who they'll get to wait on them, slaughter their animals, cook their food, and shovel their shit will be anybody's guess.  Probably they'll let more Mexicans in.

     And so, onward toward a More Perfect Union.  Bind up the nation's wounds?  Sorry Abe, but hell, no.  This time we amputate!