Breaking up the Union - a liberal's perspective

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In addition to the widespread urban-rural divide in America, there are, historically, conflicts among regions whose differing environments, economies, and cultures would lead them to favor different political policies. At the moment, these regions are strongly tied together by mass fossil-fueled transport of people and goods and by electronic communications. (Surely TV and the Internet are main drivers of the Southernification of rural areas.) However, the continental U.S. “homeland” alone is extraordinarily large by the standards of pre-fossil fuel empires. Several authors have noted that, under the façade of shared consumer culture, the United States contains multiple regions that are as different in culture and environment as neighboring nations on other continents might be. At some point, long-distance travel and shipping and possibly even communications will be reduced by declining energy supplies, infrastructure, and wealth, possibly coupled with extremist violence. As a result, some have suggested, the breakup of the United States might follow naturally, perhaps even peacefully.

 

There are many civil war proponents, noted previously, whose dream is not to separate from the faction(s) identified as Others, but to massacre or subjugate them in every state of the Union. I hope they are too small a minority to succeed, but because millions of them have gone far enough to get combat training and acquire substantial weaponry, the “Others” would be wise to take them seriously and prepare to respond appropriately. Other proponents merely dream of dividing the Union into multiple nations to remove limits imposed by voters from other regions on their ability to rule their region as they wish. This is now a minority fantasy, but there are hints that it might get increasing public buy-in as time goes on.

Bright Line Watch in 2021 polled Americans about their interest in a breakup scheme that would divide the continental U.S. into five countries, which had very questionable borders that would be unlikely in any voluntary breakup. Nevertheless, a quarter to a third of respondents in each of the pollster-defined regions said they would support the scheme presented. Usually, Republicans were most in favor, though in the Northeast and Pacific areas Democrats were most in favor. Very few Democrats favored it in the other three regions, probably because those respondents could foresee losing at best preferred social policies, and at worst basic civil rights and liberties, if they were placed in conservative-dominated segregate nations without the protection of the U.S. Constitution. (To put it more pointedly, they envisioned a serious risk of ending up living in New Gilead.)

Of course, it’s easy to express your rage at the status quo by telling a pollster you’d support breakup when there’s no real imminent possibility of such a huge and frightening change. But as we decline, we might get to the point where a majority would express support, and even vote for it out of anger and frustration, as a majority of British voters chose to take the U.K. out of the European Union. If divisive propaganda continues, as the world gets bigger again, more Americans might feel that they have little in common with people from the opposite end of the U.S. As the economy shrinks or even collapses, more Americans might believe that they would benefit from a breakup that would remove the burden of federal laws, regulations, and taxes. Additionally, making the U.S. cease to exist might be seen as a good way to get rid of the U.S. federal debt, which is already so large that it would be politically almost impossible to pay off except through hyperinflation—that is, deliberately destroying the value of our own currency.

It is also relevant that the people whom the government would be counting on to forcibly suppress secessionist movements are among those bearing the heaviest costs of decline. The Washington Post reported that National Guard members, reservists, and their families, because of frequent deployments during the pandemic and meager or delayed payments for service, were twice as likely to be food-insecure as other Americans in early 2021. While military spokesmen said that they had not heard complaints of hunger, an advocacy organization pointed out to the Post’s reporter that known financial problems can cost a soldier a promotion or security clearance, creating a strong incentive to pay bills instead of buying groceries. Is it to a nation’s long-term benefit if the guys who are given heavy weaponry with which to maintain the status-quo order (the National Guard being frequently called out to police or terrorize Black Lives Matter demonstrations) can’t afford to feed their kids? Might they start noticing that the status quo isn’t so great for them?

Because current “boogaloo” or civil-war supporters are mostly white supremacists or nationalists, some may assume that breakup of the Union is and will remain a right-wing desire, driven solely by regions whose citizens or ruling classes want the freedom to impose overtly Christian nationalist government or to seize federal lands and Native Americans’ freshwater for free use by white ranchers and farmers. We should not presume that this will remain the case. Arguably, more liberal regions have just as much reason as conservative regions to think they might profit from breakup, provided that borders are drawn so that they retain enough farmland to permit their residents to survive without immediately going to war to obtain more land.

Primarily, federal redistribution of wealth favors rural states. Nine of the ten states most dependent on federal funding are “red”, as are eight of the ten states where per-capita federal spending most greatly exceeds federal taxes paid [Edit: Updated figures now report eight of ten and seven of ten respectively], whereas eight of the ten states that get back the smallest fraction of what they pay in taxes are “blue”. Much of this disparity is only logical. Large rural states need more highway dollars per capita and more spending on federal land management; large military bases are not placed in densely populated areas. Much of the rest consists of transfers of wealth from wealthier to poorer areas, which any government that cares about its citizens’ well-being ought to do. However, when blue-state urbanites see red-state politicians refuse to spend tax dollars on city residents’ needs because they are “not Real Americans,” they might reasonably say: “If you don’t see us as citizens of the same country, why are we paying for your infrastructure? Without you, our taxes would be lower.”

Rural states have disproportionate power in the U.S. Senate, which they used, for example, during the Trump administration to hurt urbanites by cutting income tax deductions that primarily made it easier for residents of cities or densely populated (blue) states with high housing costs and state taxes to pay their taxes and obtain housing. There has been liberal media attention recently regarding the even greater power small states will have in future as the population becomes (it is presumed) even more concentrated in urban areas. However, in fact the most populous nine states today have over 50% of the population, and the top 16 states have 67.5% of the population. Thus, more than enough senators to override a presidential veto (68, from 34 states) are already selected by less than one-third of the population (32.5%). As Elie Mystal observed, “More Black people live in the five boroughs of New York City than all of the people who live in the Dakotas ... these Dakotas get four votes in the Senate while Black New York City residents get, like, a 10 percent say in their state’s two senators.”

By no means are all of the populous states “blue,” nor are all of the smallest states “red,” so we do not have a fixed tyranny of the minority in party terms. However, as economic limits tighten, the incentive for small states to better their relative position by squeezing big states harder will surely increase. If this tendency plus the demographics of the major parties created an increasingly conspicuous trend of mostly red regions sticking it to mostly blue regions, the blue regions might well start to think breakup was in their interest.

Additionally, as of this writing, with Roe v. Wade just overturned, the right wing is beginning to pursue laws in some red states that would criminalize blue-staters who “abet” women who left red states because they needed abortions. This is unconstitutional (and reminiscent of the Fugitive Slave Act), but that doesn’t mean this Supreme Court wouldn’t allow it.There’s also a mounting plot to shove a no-exceptions national abortion ban through Congress when the GOP takes power again. Most Americans consider some restrictions on abortion to be reasonable, but a no-exceptions ban is profoundly unpopular in blue regions, including some states that now send mostly Republicans to the House because of gerrymandering and vote suppression.

Then, too, Christian nationalists have other goals: Clarence Thomas’ concurring opinion overturning Roe also called for the reconsideration of “Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell.” Those, if you don’t know, include the Court cases that said states could not throw straight married couples in prison for using birth control, nor gay couples for making love. That proposal, made at that moment, reveals that banning abortion for raped children or ectopic pregnancies is not actually about the “baybee,” because no embryos are harmed when people use contraception or take gay lovers; it’s about theocracy, patriarchy, and making the public live in such a way as to produce as many future Christian soldiers as possible. A significant fraction of the Blue faction may be Christian, but not this kind of Christian. If they can no longer prevent the federal government from turning theocratic, many Blues might be eager to escape it.

At this time, the GOP does have a built-in advantage in the Senate, while a slim majority of the population usually votes Democrat (regardless of that party’s many failings). Consider other possible consequences of escalating extreme partisanship, like that displayed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell when he said that his goal was for President Obama to fail. Or when most of Biden’s nominees for positions such as ambassadorships languish because one GOP senator wishes to entirely shut down his State Department to punish him for not imposing sanctions on an ally, while Republicans prevent the Small Business Administration from both filling positions and conducting committee business. Or when a Republican minority leader threatens to ban telecoms from doing business when the GOP takes over again if they comply with the law during a Democratic administration. Or when the GOP threatens to force a default on the national debt, which increased by over $7 trillion under Trump, and collapse the global economy because that would really stick it to the Democrats. These days these behaviors, which would once have been shocking national news, are so common that they scarcely attract notice.

Suppose that next time the Senate has a Republican majority, its leaders announce that from now on, Democratic presidents will not be allowed, not only to appoint a Supreme Court justice under any circumstances whatsoever, but to have any federal judges, cabinet officers or ambassadors confirmed, as the Constitution expects him or her to do, or to permit any federal agency to function? Suppose that rather than simply failing to effectively combat the next pandemic that hits diverse coastal cities first, a Republican administration actually prohibited blue states from instituting their own public health measures, in the same way that Republican state governments have forbidden densely populated cities full of Democratic voters to mandate mask-wearing during COVID-19 outbreaks?

Again, to be clear, the Democratic Party is not free of destructive partisanship by any means (and the net benefits of all those pandemic-era shutdowns and mask mandates are now being questioned based on legitimate science). However, only the GOP is openly pursuing and implementing policies based on the principle that any opposition to their party is illegitimate. First, as they see it, Democrats should not be allowed to be elected, no matter what the public wants. Second, if they do manage to take office, they should not be allowed to exercise the ordinary powers of that office. Third, so long as they technically hold office, anything possible should be done to inflict punishment on the state, city, or entire nation that elected them. At some point, the many millions of Americans who are effectively disenfranchised by these games may get fed up and think they’d be better off in a separate nation from the states whose politicians were responsible.

And let’s not forget that, as noted elsewhere, an increasing number of Republican elected officials are showing open sympathy to the idea of nullifying an election in the near future by imprisoning if not killing the winners and imposing a right-wing dictator in place of a President. If that happened, the blue states would indeed find it very much in their interests to secede, as many of their residents would be in line for concentration camps or worse under the regime(s) that would likely follow.