Fed Up. Is It Time for Both Americas to Each Go Their Own Way?

Chris Hedges believes America is in a pre-revolutionary state, coming apart at the seams. Hedges is no outlier either.

A report in Newsweek suggests Americans, Blue State and Red State, have just about had it with each other.

A 66 percent majority of Republicans in 13 Southern states including Texas and Florida are in favor of seceding from the union, according to a poll released Wednesday by Bright Line Watch. Half of all independents in the South agreed, while only 20 percent of Southern Democrats were on board.

Support for forming a breakaway country reached 47 percent among Democrats in California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska and Hawaii. One-third of West Coast independents, or 33 percent, were in favor of succession, along with 27 percent of West Coast Republicans.

There's concern that Red State voter suppression legislation could tip America's electoral scales decidedly in favour of white voters.

Over at Northern Reflections, Owen posted about historian Timothy Snyder's view that, in 2024, Republicans are planning to "take power without winning election."

Snyder predicted the January 6th violence and expects 2024 may be far worse.

Recent moves in Republican-controlled state legislatures to suppress the votes of people of color and to give the legislatures control over casting electoral votes “are all working toward the scenario in 2024 where they lose by 10 million votes but they still appoint their guy.”

History also warns of greater violence. “If people are excluded from voting rights, then naturally they’re going to start to think about other options, on the one side,” Snyder said. “But, on the other side, the people who are benefiting because their vote counts for more think of themselves as entitled — and when things don’t go their way, they’re also more likely to be violent.”

In 2012 Chuck Thompson wrote a book, "Better Off Without 'Em:  A Northern Manifesto for Southern Secession."

Thompson, a veteran travel writer, took a couple of years to prowl the American South and take the temperature of the populace.  He wanted to explore what makes the South tick and why the North and South, 150 years after the Civil War still seem incapable of overcoming their differences.

The New York Times was not kind to Thompson in its review:

Mr. Thompson decided to use wishful thinking as his guide. So he took a tour of the Confederate States of America, the country that might be created if the American South seceded from the American North. He imagines a robust tourist industry attracted to the region’s “indigenous society teeming with underappreciated folk wisdom, ancient values and fascinating dialects.” He suggests that “with time, Americans would start thinking of the South as another Mexico, only with an even more corrupt government.”

Even as he lards his book with stinging quips — about lard itself, given the region’s obesity statistics, about “the nauseating smugness of Southern Scripture donkeys” and about the South’s “biscuits-and-boneheads culture” — Mr. Thompson means business. He divides his screed into chapters on religion, politics, race, football, education and economics. He voices alarm at the South’s “conflating Scripture with secular knowledge and legislative process” and fears the Southern evangelical’s “KKKristian” obsession with “End Times.”

“That’s because the millions of Southerners who not only believe the world is going to end on their watch, but can’t wait for it to end on their watch, are a threat to those of us still interested in keeping alive the quivering flame of American optimism,” he says.

“Hyperventilation in the service of falsehood remains the go-to move of Dixie politicians, whose constituents have collectively agreed that hyperbole and lies are the same thing as wisdom and truth.”

Yet he does bring up instances in which Southern politicians do not necessarily act in the best interests of those who elected them, even if his idea of useful debate involves regaling an Obama-hating Southerner with good news about how the president’s green initiatives can help the region’s manufacturing. (The guy’s reaction is so chilly that Mr. Thompson can feel the beer in his own hand getting colder.)

Of course the Times' critical review was written on the book's release - during the Obama years. Its criticisms, plausible in 2012, are blunted by what we have witnessed in America since 2016. Today we see an America perhaps mortally divided across seemingly endless fault lines. Trump was masterful at drawing out the very worst in the American people and their Lord of the Flies tribalism.  The Klan, the Proud Boys, the Boogaloo Boyz, the 3 Per Centers, heavily armed militias that plot to kidnap and kill, the sacking of the Capitol Building, and every other variety of white supremacist and malignant nationalist. A following the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff brands Trump's brownshirts, the Nazis.

Is America really that deeply divided? Part of the answer can be found in Wilkinson and Pickett's book, "The Spirit Level."  The authors, renowned British epidemiologists, looked at inequality, first among all the OECD countries and then among the American states. They explored the link between inequality and social outcomes.  They found that Red State America, the states where inequality is highest, had the worst outcomes on education, health, longevity, venereal diseases, teen pregnancy out of wedlock, pornography, incest, domestic abuse, drug abuse, rates of incarceration and such. This in the area recognized as America's Bible Belt.  

The research reveals these are quite distinct societies with different norms and values.  They're already at odds, each looking for the exits. The question is what will be the breaking point?  Something has to give at some time.