Breaking up the Union, part 2

[next_migration]

Before I comment on three “weird states,” I want to double back and put up the second half of my chapter on the possible future breakup of the United States, whose first half is here. This will inform why I would be leery of advising anyone to move to those states. I also wish to post a digression into my views of the recent election. Suffice it to say for now that I think, for the most part, that its results were compatible with the possibility of the future regional divisions I have envisioned as possible. I am also inclined to think that we may have more than two years before a full-scale civil war breaks out ... but, contrarily, that a breakup may well be the best outcome many of us can hope for.

 

 

Americans have started thinking of themselves as divided just into Red and Blue factions, which are tribes that couldn’t peaceably be divided along geographic lines without mass migration because largely Blue cities and towns can’t form a cohesive landmass separated from surrounding Red rural areas. As Hopkins (2021) and Wilkinson (2021) have noted, there is a dramatic recent trend in that direction due to the “Southernification” of rural areas. Historically, though, our divisions are far more complex, and regional as well as urban vs. rural. “Southernification” has largely been created artificially through mass culture and various forms of electronic propaganda. The fact is that white ruralites in Maine and Arizona or North Dakota and Alabama have little more in common, except for shared language, than ruralites in France and Germany, who certainly do not view themselves as part of the same tribe. Several authors have analyzed the distribution of regional cultures in North America, which may give some insight into our political divisions.

A seminal early work was Joel Garreau’s Nine Nations of North America (1981). In it, Garreau recognized nine distinct cultural “nations” within North America. These were: New England (including parts of eastern Canada); Quebec; The Foundry (the Rust Belt, Great Lakes region, extending to Chicago and the D.C. suburbs); Dixie (extending through southern Indiana, Illinois and Missouri to east Texas); The Islands (the Caribbean, including the southernmost tip of Florida); The Breadbasket (the best farming states, from north Texas to central Illinois, north through south-central Canada); Mexamerica (the heavily Latino southwestern border areas, with at least some of Mexico); Ecotopia (the wet coastal strip from mid-California through Alaska); and The Empty Quarter (the harsh, dry remainder of the West, including most of Alaska and western Canada).

State borders, Garreau said, were largely irrelevant to the distribution of these “nations”, and their borders commonly did not coincide with state borders, instead following ecological or cultural discontinuities. Northern California, for instance, is quite different from southern California culturally, as is northern Illinois from southern Illinois; it makes perfect sense that their residents would have different regional affiliations. Garreau’s view of our cultural divides, if still relevant in the present day, provide a hint of how we might break up the Union.

However, it doesn’t provide a blueprint. First, at least one of the included “nations” couldn’t be self-supporting. New England, with a very small land area, some large cities, a short growing season, and poor soil, would scarcely be able to feed itself, and Ecotopia might have a tough time as well. Second, because of the amount of power held by state governments in our political system, any breakup into new confederations that was not preceded by total collapse of government would almost certainly be done state-by-state. State governments would have good reasons not to want to cede portions of their territory to neighboring nations. If the fringe areas that might want to be ceded were productive agricultural areas, ceding them could amount to the central urban population’s letting themselves be walled into a reservation too small to feed them. If the fringe areas were urban, since urban areas are the primary producers of wealth, the central rural administration might be unwilling to let them go even if it wasn’t too fond of much of the population.

In the late 1990s a Russian analyst named Igor Panarin proposed that the U.S. was nearing the point of collapse and breakup into multiple successor nations. He expected this to happen by 2010, so his predictive abilities were less than perfect. A map of his predictions published by The Atlantic depicted the continental U.S. as forming four geographically contiguous nations. (Alaska and Hawai’i would be separate, perhaps allying with or being taken over by Russia and an Asian power respectively.) “Atlantic America” in Panarin’s vision would include all the eastern seaboard states from New England south to South Carolina, plus Kentucky and Tennessee. The “Texas Republic” would include the Deep South west to Texas and Oklahoma, plus New Mexico. The “Californian Republic” would extend from Washington and Idaho to California and Arizona, while the “Central North-American Republic” would include everything else, from Montana to Colorado in the west, east to Missouri, Michigan, and Ohio.

Panarin evidently thought all four of these “republics” might either join or be dominated or influenced by existing powers: respectively the E.U., Mexico, China, and Canada. It’s a tidy arrangement, offering conveniently shaped successor nations, although Atlantic America might have trouble feeding itself. However, I question how well he really understood America. Many of the states in his map seem very strangely placed indeed, and boundaries like these would be more likely to inspire warfare than prevent it.

Colin Woodard’s recent American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America (2012) presents a far more complicated map than Garreau’s of the distribution of American cultural “nations,” based on his perception that the cultural differences among colonial groups persisted in their descendants, spread as the colonized areas spread, and continue to influence present-day populations. Some of Woodard’s main groupings are similar to Garreau’s, e.g., New France for Quebec, El Norte for a differently delimited Mexamerica, The Left Coast for Ecotopia, and The Far West for the majority of the Empty Quarter, with most of central and northern Canada separated as First Nation. Woodard’s equivalent of Dixie, the Deep South, is much more geographically restricted, excluding southern Florida as well as southern Louisiana, which forms a second outpost of New France.

The rest of the eastern U.S., in Woodard’s estimation, is far more complicated. To him, eastern South Carolina and southeastern North Carolina reflects a unique Tidewater culture. From Tidewater west and southwest to northern and central Texas, including the southern parts of Ohio through Illinois and the northern edges of Alabama and Georgia, is Greater Appalachia. Yankeedom includes not only New England and most of New York State, but a swathe directly westward around and west of the Great Lakes: primarily Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, with a bit of Ohio and the northern edge of Illinois. New Netherland is the New York City, northern New Jersey, and surrounding bits of New York and Connecticut that were colonized first mainly by the Dutch.

The remainder is the Midlands nation, which Woodard sees as the most quintessentially American region. It has a bizarre, gerrymanderlike shape, with a center of gravity in Iowa, northern Missouri, eastern Nebraska, and northeastern Kansas and three narrow arms: one short, extending south then west to north Texas; one east to the Atlantic coast to separate Yankeedom from Greater Appalachia and Tidewater; and one to the north, separating Yankeedom from the Far West, then wrapping around the Canadian northern border of the Great Lakes.

Woodard sees some of these cultural nations as reliable allies, others as historical opponents, and others, like the Midlands, as swing voters. Greater Appalachia, Tidewater, and the Deep South, in particular, form a consistent alliance. Most of the cultural units recognized do not follow state boundaries, and some are so tiny that they could hardly survive as independent nations. The distinctions seen, like Garreau’s, therefore don’t predict the likely shape of successor nations, but may have some indirect influence on the fate of certain states.

 

“Okay, so where would the dividing lines be?”

Unfortunately, I don’t know—and they might be influenced by the destination choices of people who move into the border states in the coming years, or move within them. (I suggest later that residents of the biggest, most disenfranchised cities in certain swing states could do both themselves, and later their states, a big favor by dispersing from those concentrated populations.) One sure thing is that many dividing lines can’t follow those described by Garreau or Woodard, because the units being redistributed will almost certainly be entire states, unless the country so completely collapsed into chaos that state governments were lost. Following natural cultural or ecological boundaries would require many states to be split apart, which in most cases would mean loss for some state without corresponding gain, so that the state government would vigorously resist it. Therefore polities incorporating multiple subcultures will likely continue to exist.

A well-thought-out new book by journalist and novelist Stephen Marche, The Next Civil War, explores the possible descent of the U.S. into civil war—which he considers highly likely at this point—by use of both copious facts and fictional scenarios. His vision of how the U.S. might ultimately break up seems like a useful starting point for discussion. Marche envisions four successor nations in the continental United States. Texas would become an independent nation, while California, Oregon and California would form Cascadia. A group of Northeastern states, including New England through Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia; Michigan; and Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Illinois, would form “the United States,” incorporating as it would most of the original 13 states. All the remainder would form what he labeled “the Republic of the United States”: all the remaining western and Great Plains states, all of the southeast up to North Carolina, as well as Iowa, Indiana, Ohio, and West Virginia.

Since the Republic in particular would not be culturally, economically, or ecologically cohesive, evidently Marche presumes that the divisions between the latter two nations will be based on whether states are majority Red Tribe or Blue Tribe, and that all Red-dominated states or regions, except Texas, would choose to form a union. I am not sure he is correct about this. Though most of those states are GOP-dominated, they have diverse political cultures, the Southeast being more evangelical and the West more libertarian. The Southeast might form a revived Confederacy that the populations of some increasingly Blue and Hispanic southwestern states (Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona) would not wish to join. Even within the mountain West, the fairly Blue Colorado electorate might not be eager to join a republic centered on anti-environmental conservatism. It would seem to me that at least two segregate nations might better be formed from this broad geographic majority of the Continental U.S., and maybe three. However, it is also a consideration that some of those states currently have higher populations than they can possibly support long-term, so that some people will have to leave, and they may not support political decisions that could put militarized borders between them and a reasonable place of refuge.

On top of that, some of Utah’s Latter-Day Saints dream of creating an independent racialized theocracy, and certain other regions have many white nationalists who would object to any nation-state large enough to include cultural diversity such as that found in the Southwest. However, small ethnostates with no coastal access and meager water supplies would face a future of grinding poverty (comparable to that inflicted on Native American reservations with the same geographic characters). Political decisions made by Western states will depend upon the demographics and mood of the population at the time. Here I do not try to make predictions for the Western states, since I propose that people need to be moving out of that entire region, regardless of its political future.

The northeastern “United States” of Marche’s vision is relatively small compared to the number of people who already live there, much less those who would hope to move there, and would be divided into three portions. One of those would have no land connection to the other two, which themselves would be connected only by the Mackinac Bridge connecting Mackinaw City, Michigan to that state’s Upper Peninsula. That seems challenging, but since water transport will be cheaper than land transport anyway after the fossil fuel era, it might not be devastating.

Three of the largest included states, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, all of northeastern cultural affiliations, are under minority rule [Edit: After January 2023, not all will be] with the GOP holding most legislative seats and sometimes even enjoying a veto-proof supermajority. Those legislatures have enacted right-wing ideological priorities against most citizens’ wishes and interests, so the fear might exist that they would force their states to join the Red union. This would be catastrophic for all involved: there would be immediate, widespread uprisings in those states, while the remainder of the Northeast would form small, geographically isolated territories, with New England probably facing the choice of immediate war for land or starvation. This might not happen even today. Since the prolonged violence that would follow would be entirely predictable, such choices would likely indicate a decision to pursue a campaign of ethnic cleansing within the state. They might hesitate to go that route, or a Constitutional amendment passed to institute or permit a peaceful breakup could specify that states’ fates must be decided by referendum. However, if residents have the time and ability to distribute themselves in such a way as to make the legislatures more representative (which I discuss later), it could certainly be avoided.

These states of Marche’s core “United States” could likely feed themselves now if they had to, but it is also necessary to consider the distribution of the millions of people who will sooner or later seek to flee the western and coastal areas being devastated by climate change. Most of the people who are likely to leave soonest, while they still can, are urban, therefore mostly Blue. Most of these would probably prefer to go to the region where multiracial, secular democracy seems likely to persist. That region, as strictly defined by Marche, might not have the capacity to absorb so many people without skyrocketing costs of living today, and might find it quite difficult to produce food for the resulting populations if breakup prevented import of food from Breadbasket states.

It is therefore worth considering whether the boundaries of the Northeastern nation might plausibly be a little larger than Marche predicts. When dense populations in one place make life too expensive or difficult, people commonly start to move to peripheral areas nearby. If there are supposedly Red states bordering Marche’s limited Northeast whose populations might actually, for whatever reason, be on or near the fence regarding their preferred future, and that now offer cheaper housing and likelier employment, some current or would-be Northeastern residents might consider it worth the risk of living there rather than in the “core” Northeastern states. In my opinion, there are several such states.

Three of the Southeastern states are now, if the population’s preferences are considered, purple or sometimes light blue states, although that might not mean that they would turn their backs on longstanding cultural ties to Dixie. These are Virginia and North Carolina, which the Schwarzenegger Institute highlights as among the worst-gerrymandered states (although Virginia recently had a Democratic-led government), and Georgia, whose Senate races went blue by a hair-thin margin in 2020 despite massive voter roll purges. If the GOP was in power when the Union broke up, residents would probably not be allowed to vote on their fate unless there was an enforced federal mandate to that effect. (The continuing conflict over Kashmir, forced by elites to remain in India while most of its people would have preferred to be part of Pakistan, shows that that is a tragically short-sighted approach.) As Georgians would be geographically embedded within a future Confederacy, it is doubtful whether they would join a geographically distant Northeast. Virginia and North Carolina would more likely look north. However, as I note later, the availability of affordable housing and jobs in sustainable and potentially welcoming areas is limited in these states.

Iowa, the heart of what Colin Woodard recognizes as Midlander culture, could well become the southwestern limit of the Northeast. It has much more in common culturally and economically with Minnesota and Wisconsin than with the Far West, to say nothing of the Deep South. Iowa is conservative but pragmatic in character; it has been known for respect for education, honest politics, and active participatory democracy, though this may be changing. It is still a very white and mostly rural state, so efforts by current Republican leaders to make voting difficult may reflect a fear that the population isn’t really as right-wing as they would like. My own personal wish is to retire to Iowa, which I would not do if I thought that it would end up in the Confederacy.

Two other states that are geographically and, in the past, culturally Northeastern but that now appear to be solidly Red are Indiana and Ohio. These states, to my eyes, have very different circumstances. The majority of Indiana’s population is downstate, and has always been very conservative. Indiana as a whole would likely vote to join the Red union or Confederacy. However, the northern end of Indiana has densely populated Chicago metro-area communities, some of which are largely non-white and inclined to vote Blue. There might be an opportunity for a land swap that would see the Confederacy give the northern end of Indiana to Illinois as a land corridor to downstate Michigan, sacrificing access to Lake Michigan, but receiving in exchange a reliably Red portion of the southern end of Illinois, bringing valuable Mississippi and Ohio River ports. I would not recommend that liberals move to northern Indiana, however, between the unlikelihood of this scenario and the fact that it is kind of a dump. (Sorry, Hoosiers!)

That leaves Ohio, which may be balanced on a knife edge. The southern, “Appalachian” part of the state is geographically smaller, but includes some of the state’s several large metropolitan areas. Ohio has appeared reliably religious-conservative of late, its legislature passing very extreme anti-abortion laws, but it is also heavily gerrymandered. In 2018, when 17 of 33 state senate districts were on the ballot, the GOP won 58.8% of seats with only 47.2% of the votes. It is hard to know which way this state might go if the population had a say in the matter. One cannot assume that even popularly supported Republican rule would lead automatically to a culturally northeastern state’s joining the Confederacy. In terms of economic advantage, Garreau seems correct: this state should naturally flock with Pennsylvania as the center of a revived local manufacturing culture, not with Kentucky. However, I am not confident of that (see further discussion later).

 

“What about Native American reservations?”

Native American reservations, which legally have a nation-like status, are often located on the lands providing the least possible ecosystem services as it is. It’s no secret that white colonists took the best lands, forcing Native Americans onto the poorer and drier land. White populations were far smaller then; America was growing and seemed able to grow forever. No white people really suffer because Native Americans are able to survive on those few meager lands, yet some still manage to find reason to resent their Native neighbors anyway. When resource flows, agricultural productivity, and the economy all start to contract, it’s clear that some rural whites facing crop failures and poverty will look with jealous greed at nearby reservations and feel that if residents have anything at all, a single drop of water or oil, they deserve to take that by force.

In southern Oregon, an L.A. Times podcast reported, Upper Klamath Lake, which supplies water to the Klamath Tribes and to local white farmers, began to dry up in summer 2021 due to the drought. The Klamath must keep some water in the lake or a fish that is economically and culturally important to them could not spawn and would be wiped out. “Every spring the farmers wait to hear from the federal government about how much water they will get,” reporter Anita Chabria explained, and when they get less than they want, they believe that “the government is stealing their water.” Twenty years ago, a group of farmers stole water from the lake when they did not get what they wanted. The tribe has senior rights to the water, so supplies to the farmers were cut off in 2021, following the law. In response, right-wing militia, encouraged by radical leader Ammon Bundy, set up a camp at the lake and threatened to bring in a crane and open gates to take the water for the white farmers by force.

Most Native nations are neither populous nor heavily armed, and most live on land that is hard to defend. If the federal government that sometimes ensures their treaty rights are sort of respected vanishes or abandons that task, Native Americans, especially in the arid west, may be at serious risk and should start considering how to protect their interests. It would be smarter for white people to admit that they have been incapable of managing these lands for long-term survivability and invite the Native peoples, who had recently had a much better track record, to take charge of economic and environmental policies. Don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen! However, Native groups who have managed to preserve some of their traditional knowledge are more likely to survive with some dignity than the majority population, and perhaps some of the majority will be intelligent enough to pay attention and learn from them.