National Divorce
The lunatic fringe idea is both appealing and unworkable.
In his NYT column, David French urges us to “Take Threats of ‘National Divorce’ Seriously.” He begins with the obvious:
About two weeks ago, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia kicked off a conversation about a “national divorce,” and it hasn’t really stopped. Greene says she doesn’t mean a true national division, but rather an extreme form of federalism, in which red and blue states essentially lived under completely different economic and constitutional structures while maintaining a nominal national union.
The very idea is absurd. It’s incompatible with the Constitution. It’s dangerous. It’s unworkable. It would destroy the economy, dislocate millions of Americans and destabilize the globe. Even in the absence of a civil war — it’s beyond unlikely that vast American armies would clash the way they did from 1861 to 1865 — national separation would almost certainly be a violent mess. There is only one way to describe an actual American divorce: an unmitigated disaster, for America and the world.
Then shifts to a point I have made before in various “civil war” discussions:
It could also happen. It’s not likely, but it’s possible, and we should take that possibility seriously.
To be clear, it’s not because secession makes sense. As my colleague Jamelle Bouie noted in an eloquent column last month, the very idea that red states or blue states represent ideologically coherent communities is completely wrong. Every red state has bright blue counties or cities, and every blue state has red precincts as well. How do you split up a nation when red and blue are so thoroughly intertwined?
Take my home state, Tennessee, for example. In 2020, Donald Trump won the state by 23 percentage points. Yet Davidson County, home of Nashville, voted for Joe Biden by a 32-point margin, and Shelby County, home of Memphis, voted for Biden by 30 points. Every other county in the state (with the exception of tiny Haywood County) was red.
Does the concept of national divorce allow for a divided Tennessee? Or is the answer simply that the red parts of Tennessee would rule the blue? When you think about the concept of national divorce for more than five minutes, it collapses. No reasonable person would believe it’s the proper way to handle our national divisions.
The heart of the essay, though, is this:
But why should we think that reason will win the day? I’m haunted by James McPherson’s account of the prewar period in his seminal work, “Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era.” Describing the South in the run-up to secession and war, he says it was possessed by an “unreasoning fury.” The immediate cause was Northern celebration of John Brown, the abolitionist who attempted to provoke a slave rebellion by seizing the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry.
In McPherson’s account, Northern support for Brown’s cause “provoked a paroxysm of anger more intense than the original reaction to the raid.” Southern paranoia was so profound that Texas’ secession declaration even included claims that Northern “emissaries” were distributing “poison” to slaves for the purpose of killing white citizens.
The South separated from the North and started a ruinous and futile war not because of calm deliberation, but rather because of hysteria and fear — including hysteria and fear whipped up by the partisan press.
Which, of course, is quite similar to what’s happening today. We have a lot of irrational anger whipped up by a partisan press. Mostly, it’s Fox News and its ilk fanning the flames of hysteria over “wokeness,” “critical race theory,” “grooming,” and the like. But even the elite press, which aims for “objectivity,” contributes by its constant highlighting of division and, indeed, cementing tropes like Red States and Blue States into our consciousness.
French goes perhaps a bit too far here:
America’s recent history makes me worry, and if we doubt that concern one need only point back to Jan. 6, 2021, and indulge in a single, simple thought experiment: What if Mike Pence had said yes?
What if Vice President Pence had done exactly what Trump demanded, and the Trump lawyer John Eastman said he had the power to do: block the certification of the 2020 election or even overturn the result entirely and purport to award the presidency to Trump?
In that moment, American peace and unity depended on the force of will of one single person, a man who stood up to a president, to the lawmakers in his own party who challenged the election, and to the howling mob that was crying out for his head.
It’s true that things would have been even worse had Pence gone along. But he hardly deserves hero status for doing the very least that he was required to do to fulfill his oath to the Constitution.
Regardless, the key takeaway is this:
Even worse, in the immediate aftermath of the attack on the Capitol, Pence’s approval rating with Republicans collapsed, not Trump’s. The G.O.P.’s “unreasoning fury” turned on a man who was loyal to Trump every moment of his presidency, right until the moment when Trump demanded a coup.
Despite zero evidence that the election was illegitimate, Republicans overwhelmingly believed a bizarre lie: that Republican election officials in places like Georgia and Pennsylvania for some odd reason stole the election for Democrat Joe Biden. And, while that belief has faded a bit over time, it’s still the predominant view.
And where are we now? Has the fever passed? Not by a long shot. America is in the grips of a simply staggering amount of partisan animosity. As I wrote in my newsletter last week, overwhelming majorities of Republicans and Democrats believe that their opponents are “hateful,” “racist,” “brainwashed” and “arrogant.” Half of the respondents to a 2022 University of California Davis survey agreed that “in the next several years, there will be civil war in the United States,” and roughly 20 percent agreed that political violence was “at least sometimes justifiable.” A recent Rasmussen Reports poll found that 34 percent of likely voters (including a plurality of Republicans) think red and blue states need a national divorce.
The extreme positions are still extreme. Still, even a fifth of Americans thinking violence an acceptable way to settle domestic political disputes and a third calling for divorce is dangerous.
This is not a new concern for me. In 2020, I published a book arguing that political polarization had grown so extreme that it was time to be concerned about our national union. The second sentence stated the thesis: “At this moment in history, there is not a single important cultural, religious, political or social force that is pulling Americans together more than it is pushing us apart.”
That statement was true then, and it is true now. If anything, partisan anger has only grown. I finished the book before the spring riots that ripped through American cities in 2020 and before the insurrection of Jan. 6. Those wounds have not fully healed.
Animosity is the enemy of American liberty. It is hard to muster the will to defend the rights of people you despise. But it’s also the ultimate enemy of American unity. Hatred and fear are the foundation of “unreasoning fury,” and the fury that divided us once before may well do so again.
As has been the case for several years now, I simply don’t see a way out of this situation. Divorce is, for reasons already discussed, not really an option. Even a more robust federalism, wherein the states and localities rather than the central government are in control of the most divisive social issues, is unworkable.
In an ideal world, revelations of how blatantly the Fox News cabal and the Trump enterprise have been conning their followers would burst those bubbles. Thus far, though, people seem to be doubling down on their loyalty.
There’s been a lot of good commentary on this, and one of the points being mad is that the Republicans are pushing laws to the breaking point, where all of America will have to choose to either submit to their minority rule, or violate the law.
Examples are the new law being proposed allowing Florida to snatch kids from their families, even if they live in another state; Or a ruling from a Republican judge making abortion pills across the country illegal; Or a law in Tennessee forcing insurance carriers to stop operations in the state, if they cover trans care anywhere in the nation.
These laws are DESIGNED to be unworkable and provoke court challenges, since they have now a friendly majority on SCOTUS. Combined with the implicit threat of violence and eliminationist rhetoric, the Republicans have embraced a “rule or ruin” strategy, gambling that the majority of americans will meekly acquiesce and allow them a permanent minority rule.
Given that no states are pure red or blue, but varying shades of purple, I’ve often wondered how a civil war would be conducted. Do you get a gun and shoot your next door neighbor with whom you disagree politically?
Marge is a very confused woman. If you listen to her rationale for American Divorce it is based on utter nonsense, and has nothing to do with being a Citizen of the United States. Which leads to the most salient point that can be made. Blue States overwhelmingly support Red States, economically. Is Marge saying she wants all of the benefits that come with being a part of the US, but none of the responsibilities of citizenship;
Because her rhetoric, and her actions, makes it clear she is interested in exactly none of the items in that list.
@CSK:
The most likely scenario is an American version of the Irish Troubles. That is, a low level pattern of assassinations, extrajudicial violence where political parties have an armed militia wing.
tl;dr “states’ rights” or, as it was called before the Civil War, “nullification” returns in a different costume.
Honestly, if Dems were smart they’d appeal to the terrible repub nature on this one. “Oh hey, FL just passed a law that says they can legally snatch your kids from your home in the middle of the night with no proof but saying one’s “trans”. Know that crazy ex of yours fighting for custody? All she has to do is say you’re letting them go to drag shows and strange men with guns will invade your home in the dark and take your children, never to be seen again. You cool with that?”
Laws like that are a custody nightmare waiting to happen. All the kids taken due to an unsupported allegation of just one being exposed to “trans” anything? From anywhere, no questions or proof required? How many parents will abuse this to get the kids the courts have denied them, abusers to get victims back or just bitter exes using the children as a weapon? This will end in blood and tears very quickly, just like the current “alienation” trend has. Snatching kids in the middle of the night is a thriving business but most don’t have to fear it – now all it takes is someone getting FL to be hateful and your family is targeted.
@Chip Daniels:
Some people have blithely suggested that Red people should all move to predominantly Red states and Blue people should all move to predominantly Blue states.
@CSK:
Yes. The pattern exists in local, civilian partisan warfare during both the Revolution and Civil War and various civil wars elsewhere that also had no clear geographic divide. Don’t want to pay your tab to the Loyalist/Unionist shopkeeper, shoot him.
At root this is between followers of FOX and followers of the MSM. The only hope I see is that Rupert, who is 91, goes to his reward and Lachlan proves to be a failson. The other possibilities are that the rest of media recognize FOX for what it is, stop amplifying its nonsense, and debunk its lies. Or that GOP pols develop some sense of shame. But neither of those things is gonna happen.
In America, the civil war would involve the police serving as a de facto army for the right. There’s also the fact that once a deep-fake video is made which depicts (even poorly) an act of violence, any actual evidence of violence will be treated by the right-wing media as a deep-fake. Scary stuff, but we’ve been building to this point even as the arguments become more ridiculous and convoluted.
I am more and more coming to the conclusion that there is no point in discussing the garbage ideas that emerge from the fever swamp known as the Republican Party. As you say, James, no minds will be changed, particularly MTG’s, although who knows what or if she really thinks or is just spouting the Party line.
The thing to do is to defeat them. Call them out for human rights violations. Call them out for their animus against the Constitution. Call them out for their lies.
Discussion is how they waste the time of reasonable people.
@Cheryl Rofer:
This x 1,000.
We need to stop treating these people like they are reasonable people with sensible ideas.
They are not.
Just this weekend Michael Knowles, a RWNJ for the Daily Caller and a speaker at CPAC, said that ‘Transgenderism Must Be Eradicated’
These people are radicals and should be treated as such.
This period in our history, I don’t know where it ends.
The Former Guy concluded his two hour CPAC rant by telling the (forgotten aggrieved permanently victimized) audience, “I am your retribution.”
Perhaps it’s somewhat suggestive of the time of the presidential election of 1876 after which we gave up on Reconstruction, and backslid into decades of retrograde domestic politics. History never repeats exactly, but this time is very depressing. Yes, it can get worse.
If we divorce do blue states still need to send money to red states for alimony?
Steve
@steve:
Perhaps a lump sum.
@CSK: I’ve been reading We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families, which looks at how the Rwandan genocide came to be and, while we’re not there yet (and hopefully won’t ever get there) yes, getting a gun and shooting your neighbor is exactly how it could work. I see that as unlikely but possible. More likely (way too likely, it seems to me) is a world that looks like the road trip through Ameristan section of Neal Stephenson’s Fall.
@Cheryl Rofer:
The only thing they are serious about is attention seeking and monetizing the attention they get. DJT is their “type specimen.”
@steve:
Red states certainly think so but how are they planning to enforce it? For that matter, how are they planning to make the federal government they score pay for anything the feds can’t take with them like military bases? Red states won’t get to keep all the toys, just the buildings and whatever can’t be ripped out of the walls. Then there’s the matter of national companies and their private property being lost behind enemy lines – red states will have to nationalize a ton of utilities, hospitals and other infrastructure in order to survive.
The National Divorce only works as a concept because red states think they can browbeat blue states/ cities to keeping up the cash flow. If it ever really happens, they’ll be broke in a week since blue states & the feds will say eff off.
Also, I believe you all are overreacting, overthinking. Apocalyptic dystopias are for the TV machine, they are not real. Chill out.
@charon:
A lot of people have been saying for the last decade that liberals are “overreacting” to conservative nonsense. We lost Roe because all the people correctly predicting what would happen were poo-poo’d with the slippery slope fallacy.
Apocalyptic dystopias happen all the time, @charon. They’ve just not happened in America in decades. There’s no reason to think it can’t happen here when there’s plenty of evidence people are actively working towards that end. I’m sure the people of Ukraine a few years ago wouldn’t have thought they’d need to shoot at Russians and their pro-Russian neighbors but that’s where they are now. We ignore the uncoming fascist train at our peril.
@KM:
That is not what I am saying, I am quite aware of the aspirations of our domestic Christofascists. (I can see what is going on in Floriduh for example).
@KM:
https://www.pajiba.com/tv_reviews/john-oliver-breaks-down-why-desantis-is-dangerous.php
Link contains a youtube clip. I am trying to download from HBO on demand, nt sure if will be successful.
Also this maybe – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M81-GM0mTc4
I believe they were very aware of that possibility, it’s why they were taking updating their military so seriously.
@CSK:
The sectional divisions in the 1860s were between free and slave states. But not everyone in the free states was an abolitionist, nor everyone in the slave states opposed abolition.
Then, too, Maryland was a slave state but did not secede. West Virginia seceded from Virginia and was admitted to the Union.
The thing is that most civil wars aren’t held along neat lines of division like the USCW was. Instead you get groups fighting the government and each other for ultimate control. Secession/independence may or may not take place. Most of the armed forces should back the government, but the National Guard does present a complication.
In other words, expect a great big mess.
And then there are nukes.
@Kathy:
”Did not secede” was a pretty near thing though. At least a few times a week I cut through Federal Hill Park here in Baltimore and look down at the beautiful vista that is our Inner Harbor and am always reminded that when the Federal Troops were stationed on top of Fed Hill during the Civil War their cannons pointed into the city, not out towards the bay.
@Roger: Indeed, I think of Stephenson’s Ameristan often. My favorite line, “Their fathers believed that the people in the cities actually gave a sh!t about them. So they put money they didn’t have into stockpiling trillions of rounds and hunkered down waiting for the elites to come confiscate their stuff.”
@daryl and his brother darryl:
The one way to eliminate all transgender people forever is to eradicate all of humanity.
@Kathy: It’ll take some doing, but the GOP sure isn’t trying to prevent that either…
I’d just like to weigh in that as presented above, what MTG is talking about is NOT “national divorce” as much as it is “national (domestic) separation.” That fundamentalists and evangelicals treat this construction as a workable alternative to legal dissolution of a marriage (and therefore the “right,” “moral,” and “biblical” choice) is a point that I will leave hanging for the thread members to consider in the darkness of their own souls.
@Cheryl Rofer:
I don’t see how you defeat them without discussing their ideas and how horrible they would be in practice. Who is “Call them out for human rights violations. Call them out for their animus against the Constitution. Call them out for their lies.” going to convince that aren’t already on the team?
@CSK:
Yes. That’s the inevitable outcome you are meant to reach.
I think Dr. Taylor and others are making a mistake treating a call for “national divorce” literally. It is simply the far right saying “we can’t live with them” which will be followed by “well, we tried to be reasonable” as an excuse for violence.
They know it’s unworkable. Unworkable is the point.
It cannot be taken separately from “eradicate transgenderism.” (Which itself stands on the line using a transparent linguistic ism to differentiate and pretend to be a reasonable middle ground that will be unworkable and require eradicating transgender people)
The crowd at CPAC and the viewers of Tucker Carlson cheer along. The Proud Boys and their ilk cheer, vaguely, but they’re already there, fantasizing about killing some degenerate liberal commie traitors.
@CSK:
No, my next door neighbors are great. Now, 3 doors down….
@Kathy: @MarkedMan: Maryland stayed Union because Lincoln was a good lawyer who knew habeas corpus isn’t some underlying principle of the universe, but law, which had to pass through the courts. He had secession activists arrested illegally and was able to hold them long enough for the crisis to pass.
Missouri was, as the Brits would say, a near run thing. There were pitched battles between the secesh official state militia and an informal Union militia, largely German immigrants from St. Louis.
Kentucky declare itself neutral (like that was going to work). Lincoln had the sense to keep Union troops out. Confederate general Polk did not. His invasion of KY tipped the balance to staying in the Union.
I’d like to live long enough to see the day when Rupert Murdoch moves FOX News – and all its television faces– to a red state like Mississippi or Alaska or Kansas. They would shrivel up and die if they couldn’t live in NYC or Washington or some other urban location with good restaurants.
Seriously, we settled this issue 150+ years ago, even though being us we made a bleep-up of the job after Lincoln died.
I have said for years that if it’s going to happen, it has to happen over policies where regional devolution of power is an alternative. I suggest that dealing with consequences of climate change is going to fall into that category. In a few cases, I could see cross state divisions. Houston and El Paso have very different sets of problems to deal with.
@Michael Cain: Of course, Texas is unique since it can divide into 5 states.
For More Than 150 Years, Texas Has Had the Power to Secede…From Itself
Can totally see a South Texas with San Antonio as the capital (maybe include Austin to ensure an economic powerhouse).
@al Ameda:
Pretty clear statement that the goal, the only platform, is to own the libs.
@gVOR08:
But then shouldn’t Benito be the liberals’ retribution?
I think a possible example of what might happen is India & Pakistan. And people did pack up and move to their teams side of the border. Others stayed and understood that they would be extreme minorities.