Would you support splitting the U.S. into two nations?

I would. The right can live in one country and the left in the other. How about it?

 

There would be immense difficulties of all sorts in doing this. But there would also be immense benefits.

There were such difficulties in all of the dozens of cases in which one country became two or more. They don't make for interesting reading -- 'How shall we handle pension obligations?' -- so we don't hear about them. Yet they existed, and were handled. (Lots of work for the lawyers!) We can do it if we want to.

And I think we will want to. Both Left and Right ought to benefit from such a division.

The Left will be free of tens of millions of low-IQ white-privilege racist neo-Nazi Trump supporters, who would otherwise impede its march towards the Just Society Where All Are Equal.

The Right can outlaw all the things it doesn't like about modern society, although I would urge them to guarantee a ten- or twenty-year freeze on such changes to accommodate the Left-leaning people living in the new 'Red America' who may not want to leave.

We could still co operate on many things, including defense, just as Canada does with the US.

Right now, this is a bizarre, eccentric, crazy idea. Almost literally unthinkable. But then, not so long ago, so was the idea of a male who says he's female competing in (and of course winning) women's sports.

So let's start thinking about it. Then it will not be unthnkable.

 

I'm all for it. The left can have open borders, unlimited immigration and welfare for all the immigrants that come. They can put the government in charge of college education and healthcare and outlaw capitalism.

The right can pursue a nation where the interests of its citizens is the first priority.

I'm all for it.

 

Its a nice idea, but your socialist/communist fantasy land simply won't work without the help of ALL American tax payers.

 

You mistake me. I'm going to live with the conservatives. The leftists can make their half into a much bigger ****hole than it is already and do it much faster if conservative America gets out of the way.

 

Be careful what you wish for!

If there are mass population exchanges, as there usually are in such splits, the Left in Blue America will get all the elite college-educated people: the website designers, the lawyers, the social workers, the NGO employees, the government employees who administer welfare programs, marketing managers, Human Resources personnel, feminist anthropology professors, actors and actresses, etc..

Red America will get about 2/3 of current and former military personnel, most of the policemen, auto mechanics, welders, carpenters, truck drivers, engineers, professors of economics, tax-hating entrepreneurs, waitresses, shop assistants, brick layers, farmers, painters and decorators, construction workers, machinists, coal miners, steelworkers ... all the deplorables, in other words.

The really intelligent and creative and sensitive/caring people will be gone from Red America.

It will swiftly face terrible economic crisis. Blue America, on the other hand, will face no shortage of population, as its borders become effectively non-existent. And life will be much kinder there, as welfare payments go up, more and more things are made free, and those policemen who are left are prevented from doing racist things like shooting people like poor Michael Brown who are only trying to take their gun away from them.

Aquinas said that one of the pleasures of those in heaven would be watching the torments of the damned in hell. The only thing that the kinder souls of Red America, without the services of the truly creative, will be able to take pleasure in, is that as they starve to death, they will provide entertainment for Blue America.

 

Ya know who is promoting this idiot idea?

Putin.

Please stop

 

If they just kicked out all the divisive partisan trolls, the normal people could get along just fine.

 

And you'll get 90% of the black population and all of their crime and welfare to go along with it.

White America in red states will do MUCH better without your leftist, socialist governance.

Heck, you can turn your half into what California is TODAY. It has the highest poverty rate per capita of any state in the nation! Just think, you could do that for HALF the country!

 

It's a nice idea. But divorce and splitting everything up at this point is impossible. There's no authority big enough to do that.

No, I'm afraid the only answer is blood running knee deep in the streets.

 

The South tried that already. Didn't work out so well....

 

Bad idea.
You don't even know what you have.

We here in Europe struggle for many decades to become one nation.
To date, it hasn't worked. You are far ahead of us.

 

The left side would have open borders and free stuff. Then when they became overcrowded, broke, and hungry they would migrate (invade) to the right side. Same thing that's happening now on the southern border.

 

Maybe extreme right wingers can have their citadel:

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/The_Citadel

That would make the whole country happy, while keeping the union intact.

 

Geographically, that would be easy. The Northeast from Maine down to and including Virginia. Add the west coast and a couple of island states around the great lakes. Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. The leftist country would look kind of like East and West Pakistan if one is old enough to remember when there was an East and West Pakistan.

I don't think division is necessary. It's the hard core of the left and right instigating the problems with their mindless robot followers. I think this problem could be solved if we all started putting America first instead of political parties. Started listening to each other instead of presenting a deaf ear. The word compromise comes to mind like politics of old. There was a time when Republicans and Democrats, the left and the right respected each other, when each realized they had the same goals, a secure, free and prosperous America. Only each had different paths to get there. Today, each looks on the other as out to destroy this country which only they can save. Each major political sees the other party as this nation's number one enemy. Not Russia, North Korea, Iran, terrorist etc. As long as that remains, perhaps division is the only solution.

 

I haven't seen anyone on the left call for a division of the country, or the division of California, or even the possibility of a physical revolution. It looks to me that the far right is promoting division of this great country.

 

We tried that once. It didn't go well.

 

Yes, that's one solution, if by that you mean a return to original federalism. Each state can choose for itself: some can make homosexuality illegal, others can make it compulsory.
That's what FH Buckley proposes: https://nypost.com/2020/01/24/how-to-avoid-americas-coming-secession-crisis/

But I don't think Progressive opinion would be happy with that. Progressives want virtue to triumph everywhere: if a Christian baker declines to make a wedding cake for a gay wedding,
he must be bankrupted, or sent to prison. No diversity here!

So the extreme (and not-so-extreme) right wingers will just have to bake those gay wedding cakes, refrain from expressing their opinions if they work the government or any large corporation ... and
generally learn to live as some of my friends in the old Soviet Union lived, before it collapsed: you know the truth, your friends know the truth, but ... you never actually say it out loud.

You communicate by quizzical looks, by ironic smiles, by significant silences. When the bearded, heavily-muscled biological male who says he's really a woman wins the women's athletic contest, you don't laugh out loud. You just applaud with less than total enthusiasm.

When everyone was watching Soviet TV, and the announcer read out the latest "news" about the great advances of Soviet industry, you didn't cry "Bullbleep!" ... you just glanced at each other, made a little moue, and carried on.

We must learn from Soviets.

 

It'll never fly, Orville. After a few years when the people in the left country realize they have been had, they will all move to the right country.

 

Are you suggesting deportation to la-la-land?
Perhaps buying greenland for them?

This is all psychological. The minds on either side are capable of logical thought, but in some cases the person who is supposed to be using that mind is not home.
Lights are on kind but nobody's home of thing.

I think this will eventually change, but it will continue to be a painful thing for some time.
Kind of like the 40-year old looking back at the time he was 16 and knew it all- and realizing what a jackass he made of himself then.

 

Along with civil war — they love their wars and killing Americans that disagree with them apparently...

 

No. Don't like the political split, then fix it. Cutting and running is not an answer.

 

There certainly have been Leftist calls for division of the country -- Google on "Calexit" [ Or see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes_California ].

But that was when it looked like America would remain a conservative-dominated country.

However, no intelligent Leftist will now support such a thing, since the Left is becoming the voting majority, due to generational and tribal demographic changes, and will, within a decade or so, control both branches of Congress, the Presidency, and, eventually, the Supreme Court.

If the latter remains recalcitrant, it will just do what FDR threatened to do, and add another a few progressive judges to the count.

It can speed things up on the way by giving the District of Columbia congressional representation, and making Puerto Rico a state, and doing things to get more people to vote who are likely to vote for the Left -- make welfare payments conditional on registering to vote, for example.

This may seem extreme, but the Democratic Party is changing, and what was once 'extreme' will be considered normal soon.

They say that many people, when told by their doctor of a fatal prognosis, initially go into denial. They don't want to believe they're going to die.

And in general, 'Optimism bias' is a well known human characteristic.

That's what the Right is gripped by at the moment. They believe that the fluke of Donald Trump's election is indicative of the future, instead of being a one-off Constitutional fluke.

They think that the white working class voters who responded to his hints about moving away from Republican devil-take-the-hindmost economic and social policies, and indications about moving away from the endless-foreign-wars, fought for by the children of the Deplorables, policy, will continue to vote Republican when the party returns to business-as-usual. (Free trade, stomp the unions, let the infrastructure crumble, and send your children to fight for liberal democracy in Absurdistan.)

They might be right about that, if the Democrats are too quick to put up in-your-face 'Cultural Progressive' candidates. If they do, a post-Trump Republican Party might hold on for another election or two..

But that will just slow down the slide into the abyss by a few years. An increasing number of Americans desire to experience the joys of socialism and open borders, and they won't be stopped forever.

No, the Left would be fools to advocate anything that will weaken the steady contralization of power in the national government. They won't do it.

The only possible amendment to this prognosis would be if some favored ethnic minority, which dominated in some area of the US, decided it wanted to split away. An 'Aztlan' movement in the Southwest, for example. But I think the economic realities would be against that, and the ethnic separatists would have to be content with being allowed to make Spanish the primary language of government, and similar concessions. (A 'independent' Hisanic Southwest would quickly be taken over by the drug cartels, as Mexico is now well on the way to becoming.)

There are Hawai'ians who would like to leave, but they have been overwhelmed by immigration, and cannot conceivably command a majority in that state for separation -- at least at the moment. Several decades from now, when China has become the dominant world power, the status of a Chinese protectorate might be enticing. At the moment, their only realistic prospects would be for independence for a few islands where natives are the majority.

No. People on the Right had better get used to living under an increasingly Leftist, and increasingly intrusive, government. E Pluribus, Unum is going to take on a whole new meaning.

If, that is, they want to remain within a single country.

 

Suppose that a huge majority of Americans in, say, Idaho, wanted to leave the Union. Peacefully, willing to negotiate all issues of concern, aiming to establish their own nation, with close, friendly relations with the US -- like Canada has.

Would you favor sending in the military and killing those Americans who resisted? Who is the war-lover then?