Is the US going to break up?
Hi tildos. I am curious on your thoughts on the stability of the US in the short-medium term. What I'm worried about is the combo of a majority of Republicans having beliefs divorced from reality due to a sophisticated propaganda network, increasing "othering"/hatred of non-repubs, fascism becoming more popular among young people and the brazen mask-off takeover of the govt.
From my understanding these sorts of things (civil war, country breaking up) tend to happen very slowly, then all at once. I am very worried we are approaching the "all at once" stage. Is this reasonable? Is a civil war likely? Balkanization of the US? Something else?
What could be done to prepare? I have European-immigrant parents, so would getting citizenship in their country be prudent? Learning other languages? (I know english, mediocre grasp of birth-language, poor/middling spanish). Buying a rifle?
I am starting to regret choosing to attend a university in Texas haha with these prospects.
IDK if the US will actually break up. I believe that it wants to, but the way the sides are divided, I don't really see any clear way to split up the country w/o a lot of relocating ... plus, almost every Repub state is effectively a welfare state, receiving far more tax benefits from the Federal govt than they pay in, being subsidized by the wealthier and more productive Dem states ... and I don't see the Repubs giving that up.
That said, I do believe things there will continue to get worse for many years, before they start to get better. Maybe that means an actual shooting war, maybe not (frankly, probably not).
FWIW, I got my EU citizenship and moved to Europe right after Trump was elected, and I do recommend anyone else do the same, who has the means. Or at least, get your EU citizenship now, if/while you can. But you know, things don't look a whole lot rosier over here. We're only 1-2 more sanctions away from an EU war with Russia ... so moving here could be one of those "frying pan --> fire" kinda things.
Nutshell: the whole world is looking kinda dark these days. Not sure if anyplace can offer real safety or security.
You think so? Who do you think would do so, and how the hell would they even begin to hope to gain anything from it? I don't see that happening at all. Putin is completely tied up in Ukraine, he can't risk a war with the EU, let alone NATO. Even if he mobilizes completely, I don't think there's enough there.
(E: Also, there's barely a way for Putin to start a war with the EU that doesn't involve NATO from the get-go. That would be sweden or finland. That window is closing rapidly, and I think it'll close before troops can leave Ukraine. The highest tensions are probably in the Kaliningrad region currently, which would involve NATO countries with active US (and other) deployments. There is no way in hell Putin thinks (rationality permitting) that he can get away with that without a major NATO intervention. There's also (imo) no way Russia is currently capable of actually cutting off the baltics. Remember for how long that invasion force into the Ukraine telegraphed and the US intelligence was warning everyone? You think NATO is just going to sit on their ass while Putin masses troops against its weakest point?
Unless Putin completely loses the plot... no. Like, so completely loses the plot some other silovik with more sense left than him will polonium him.)
Okay, so yeah, that was definitely an exaggeration on my part. However, just because it doesn't make sense to us doesn't mean Putin won't do it. I don't believe he is literally crazy, but more and more, his actions surrounding Ukraine do not seem like the behavior of a rational leader ... and it's also worth noting that Putin does a lot of stuff to play to internal Russian politics, and what might seem suicidal from the outside might make good sense to him domestically, primarily to stay in power, regardless of what it actually does to the state of Russia or the world.
And yes, I do believe that, sooner or later, Russian leadership is going to revert back to the old USSR-era method of forcibly retiring (one way or another) the current leader.
Boy am I trying.
Any suggestions?
If you find work in Belgium and continuously live here for five years you will get citizenship.
Most eu countries have similar programs. I know five years is a long time, but the second best time to start is today. If you end up in Belgium, say hi!
Every country is different. Just research the country(ies) you have ancestors from.
It won't break up. There is a lot said about there being "two Americas" culturally, but the fact is that not only is the economic interdependence too deep, but the divisions are between people participating in areas with diverse and functioning economies and areas without, it's not really geographic. That's not a great basis for fracturing. The hardline conservative regions are woefully dependent on Federal spending and would completely economically collapse without it.
This map of the 2016 election results makes it clear the division is not so stark. What we actually have is a radical minority faction that punches way above its weight. More maps if you're interested.
So no, it's going to be a long-simmering internal struggle that mostly revolves around domestic terrorism and political violence but there will still be a single state over it all.
Thanks for those links.
The issue is clearly not geographic on a regional scale. Even those interior swaths with no blue dots still house significant blue populations.
There is, however, very much a (sub)urban <-> exurban/rural divide, a serious racial* divide, a serious class divide, and serious religious divide. Sometimes these factions line up and sometimes not, and sometimes weird.
An example is southern black folks. Hardly a monolith, but there is a significant group whose ideas mostly line up. They are dem voting mostly, pro-affirmative action and gov't services, but anti-abortion, gay-wary, and environmental indifferent. Many of them are fundamentalist, evangeleical Christian.
There's suburbanites. Within a certain radius from city senter, mostly vote dem. But are environmental in name only, mostly pro-choice, pro-affirmative action but also pro-segregation**. Outside the radius, racism increases, votes are repub (mostly for economic issues), religiosity increases. Unless it's a rural, southern, black belt, this trend increases as you move to the exurbs and true rural communities (if there are any left).***
I don't have a solution, but I know I feel, and strongly suspect many feel, that I wish I could isolate myself with like-minded folks (I'm basically a cosmopolitan, socialist, radical environmentalist, pseudo-intellectual epicurian).
But as you suggested there's some fierce interdependence, and strong legacies. Even if I have the skill and emotional wherewithal to live on a farm full-time, I still need machinery and external materials. And many of those are only available through groups and individuals with opposing ideologies.
*I consider race a cultural construct. That said, the dominant culture makes moves along those dividing lines, so it's useful to acknowledge them even as we work to erase the whole concept.
**Judging on the policies they support, not the ideas they espouse. In particular, much suburban zoning works extremely well to exclude anyone outside a narrow cultural band. "Sure, it's OK to be black, so long as you have an acceptable attire, haircut, car, etc. I better not hear any African drumming after 7:00! And don't make it too wild. It makes me uncomfortable when you people "get the holy ghost." Also keep your son away from daughter." See also, Rodney Dangerfield and Jackie Mason's characters in Caddyshack/II.
***The issue is finally getting some visibility, if not any meaningful traction, that the geographical division of political power is increaingly causing concentration in the hands of fewer and fewer people. We still have a voting district solution based on a manual labor driven agricultural landscape. But, population is significantly reduced in truly rural communities. If there is ongoing agriculture left, the population consists largely of managers of large agricultural conglomerates, a few large landowners (who lease to the conglomerates mostly), and some disenfranchised folks whose parents might have made it on a their own small farm or working as labor on a larger farm, and who for one reason or another don't leave for the city, together with undocumented migrant workers for the labor that can't be accomplished by machine.
Yes, but much of said regions don't have any cognition of that and percieve taxation as theft and government subsidies are something only lazy urban black people use so they can spend their days doing drugs.
I wish I was joking or being hyperbolic.
That's a great basis for a civil disobedience type movement. I imagine strikes, protests of all sorts, that kind of thing. If properly organized (and people are getting quite motivated to do something right about now), those could shift the power dynamics quite quickly.
E: Do you happen to know how I can find statistics on net-payer or net-receiver states in the US? I seem to lack the terminology there.
Is this what you're looking for? https://www.moneygeek.com/living/states-most-reliant-federal-government/
Yeah, pretty much that. I was also looking for how much they contribute to the federal budget. Which I suppose is tied up in that GDP figure somewhat, but not perfectly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_tax_revenue_by_state
And I also found this site:
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/donor-states
Whose primary source is this report, which may interest you:
https://rockinst.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/2021-Balance-of-Payments-Report-web.pdf
You know what's annoying? That those funds are probably well invested in the generally economically worse-off states. In a functioning democracy, you'd want to take federal funds and invest it into the poorer states, to get them to the same level as the rest of the country by investing in their infrastructure and education.
The problem of course is that with the state of US "democracy", the democratic control just isn't there over where that money ends up.
Also curious in the Rockefeller report: (1) they put an awful lot of emphasis on the absolute deficit of NY, when per capita is just the objectively better metric here. Also (2): looking at page 14, it's interesting that the net-paying states are basically all part of the NYC metro area (Yes, I'm count Mass. too here) Meanwhile CA is basically revenue-neutral. That surprises me a good bit.
Almost certainly not.
This isn't the first time there's been bitter division in the US. The Civil Rights Movements, forced desegregation of the South, the Whiskey Rebellion, the actual Civil War, McCarthyism/red scares, the anti-War movement (Vietnam), and much more had at least equal levels of unrest to what we see today.
US civil life is better understood as a constant struggle against a reactionary minority who from the very beginning had a disproportionate amount of political power. Any sort of imagined "harmony" that existed from the 90s through the 00s is at most a break from the normalcy of conflict, though it might be just an illusion altogether.
Also important to remember: Trump isn't responsible for republicans being conspiracy theorists or for being uniquely terrible. Just from recent memory of the pre-Trump era:
There's a through-line from the past to today. Conservatives weren't principaled statesmen prior to Trump. They were the same hateful, conspiracy-driven religious bigots they've always been.
I always giggle at the term 'Centerist Republican'.
The conservative ideology, at its core, is one rooted in fear of losing power due to change.
There is no centerist, neutral position on injustice.
Since restoring justice neccessitates a rebalance of power...conservatives hate social justice.
Not disagreeing with you, but just wanted to remind everyone that Trump is literally the person who started the "birther" movement, and devoted considerable personal time and effort to advancing it. So, for that one, I still think he deserves much of the credit.
Trump definitely was a major player in birtherism but I think Andy Martin is more directly the person who started it.
Wow. Yes, you're (basically) right ... but I just went down the "birther" rabbit hole and, damn.
My memory of it started with Trump, some op-ed he wrote somewhere, 2010-2011-ish, which is when the conspiracy theory really took off. But it primarily dates back to this Andy Martin guy in 2004, and kinda goes all the way back to 1991.
You can kinda blame Hillary Clinton's election staff (and kinda-maybe even Clinton herself) after she lost her 2008 Senate run ... or go all the way back to 1991 when Obama's literary agency originally published (erroneously) a bio of him stating he was born in Kenya.
Deeper than I'd heard of!
I never spent much time looking into it, but the closest I've seen it tied to Clinton is her campaign manager (Patti Solis Doyle) claiming to fire a volunteer coordinator who forwarded a "birther" email, and a chief strategist (Mark Penn, who apparently went on to kinda be a Trumper) who suggested emphasizing Obama's Indonesian/Hawaiian upbringing to highlight a "lack of American roots".
Out of curiosity, did you find anything besides that?
Politics is a headache with intentionally missing or misleading information so I get having suspicions regardless of what's explicitly out there, but I wanted to ask since the Hillary-started-Birtherism thing has been a right wing talking point (including Trump in 2016 claiming credit for "finishing it" while blaming Hillary for starting it... before going on to pardon Arpaio).
Clinton never explicitly said she believed the "not born in the US" thing, but she did make a couple of weasel-wordy comments in interviews, suggesting there might be some truth to it. Certainly not full-throated support, but enough to fan the flames ... and make her look like a really crap sore loser in hindsight.
The usual targets for a rising fascist state. Gays, "Socialists", non-whites, Atheists, Jews, and Muslims. The targets that are easy to dehumanize to already established bigots.
A guy came up to me when I was wearing a Bernie shirt and started shouting at me like I was burning an effigy of Christ. And I wasn't protesting or anything....I was in line at a convienience store.
I honestly don't believe this is true anymore. It used to be, but somewhere in the Obama era, and even more so under Trump, that "regular people still get along" vibe has disappeared.
Nowadays, "regular people" Republicans and Democrats rarely associate with each other, and when they do (typically only relatives who can't avoid each other), there are either clear-cut pre-established rules of acceptable subject matter, or typical sitcom-style Thanksgiving-esque mayhem.
More and more these days, families are quietly dividing themselves up along political lines, and more or less mutually ghosting "the other side".
I'm not sure anyone's memory for the "good old days" can be trusted (aren't families a lot different from each other?) so I'm wondering how someone would figure this out statistically.
I don't know about the getting along portion, but people definitely are separating themselves from those who think differently. This isn't just a social media phenomenon but a physical one. I read The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart a while back, and the influence of people moving is surprisingly large. One example I remember is that while gerrymandering can create "safe" districts, there's also a trend that districts are becoming safer for one party all on their own. I think this is a trend that we will also see more on a state level with Roe v. Wade gone now.
Same thing definitely happened during the civil rights / Vietnam era ... probably start by looking at that historical period, see how they documented it then. I'm sure the same thing has happened during other rifts in US history, too (definitely leading up to the Civil War), but probably the Vietnam era is best documented.
This is a valid question, but I think the answer comes off as either dismissive or alarmist.
I think we could avoid a fissure of the US if the government does something to reign in the current gutting of longstanding precedent that's happening. Putting aside where you (or anyone else) stands on these issues, most of the recent SCOTUS rulings are a spiderweb of bullshit hiding an agenda. Take yesterday's ruling that the EPA can't effectively regulate carbon emissions. By diminishing the EPA's power and authority, we potentially barrel to a pre-Clean Air/Water Act US. That's not a place I want to live. Maybe the Justices in their old age have forgotten when rivers caught fire and Pittsburgh's buildings were under a layer of black soot. How about the BP oil spill? I haven't forgotten about the damage that did to the Gulf Coast.
But the EPA ruling is a small one compared to the potential affects of the overturning of Roe. Look at the sort of legislation potentially in the pipeline that would ban citizens of one state from (travel.ing to another state where abortion is legal)[https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/29/abortion-state-lines/]. Imagine individual states that try to impose their laws over other states and citizens of other states. That sounds like a Federal government. Either way, it's a massive overreach and is deeply insidious.
So, unless the government tames these things right now, we will absolutely see it get worse. We will probably see it get worse anyway.
If the government continues to do nothing, and states begin passing/enforcing increasingly restrictive laws, and impose those laws on citizens outside their state, AND we have vigilante groups like the Proud Boys enforcing the sentiment of these policies, then we're barrelling toward a violent eruption. My perspective here is rooted in my experience growing up in the South. People there are ready for a civil war. The semi-ironic thing is they are likely the ones who start it. What's worrying to me is the increasing calls for violence in traditionally liberal spaces online that gain traction. When both sides are calling for violence, what's the answer? Should there be two separate United States? Maybe - the South has been resisting the Feds since the Civil War. I like to think that the South isn't a lost cause, and I don't want to leave behind those who would be trapped beneath a draconian, theological government without the means to escape. But the truth is that the South consistently ranks last in observed metrics, and it's increasingly hard to justify propping those states up. The moral argument is aforementioned - we have a duty to the people who don't agree with the laws and can't leave.
The US has been through tense and awful histories (McCarthy-ism and the red scare, Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War) and has made it through. One must remain optimistic that we make it through this, though ignoring the potential for violence is naive.
The question is....should America make it through? Once you branch out past the fairytale telling of American history in US K-12, it becomes quite obvious that America is not some worldwide bastion of liberty and justice.
It's a shrewd war machine which only follows international laws (laws they help create and use against others, mind) insofar that those laws are in its best interest.
While keeping in mind America's flaws, it's also helpful to have a sense of who would and could fill the power vacuum left by a seriously weakened USA. Would that be an EU striving to maintain something resembling the status quo without one of their largest partners? An aggressive Russia emboldened by a vulnerable NATO? A China expanding their reach even further among smaller nations who can't resist unbalanced trade agreements? No major player is without sin, and all will expand to take any power left on the table.
My answer is that I don't know, but I am definitely concerned. I found some time listening to the podcast It Could Happen Here particularly informative. I don't keep up with it anymore, because it has switched to a 5 days a week format, but the initial scripted episodes are very valuable I think. The main driver of the content is Robert Evans, who is both a conflict journalist and a firearms enthusiast leftist, so keep that perspective in mind. Even with that, buying a gun is definitely not his first recommendation.
Probably the most important thing to do is to have an emergency kit. A minimum of 3 days of food and water, with extras of any medications is a good starting point, and is useful in all sorts of situations like the 2021 Texas power grid failures. Depending on your means and risk profile, it could be good to extend this stockpile to a few weeks. Keep in mind that this doesn't all have to be in the form of a designated stockpile, it can be as simple as buying an extra can at the grocery store every week and using your canned goods from oldest to newest. Having this to fall back on puts you in a great position to be helpful to others and avoid making dumb, desperate decisions during an emergency, political or natural.
I think there's a lot of ruin in a nation. The Civil War happened after decades of unrest, for example. Many people are unhappy, but what are you going to do, practically?
I expect we will see more lawlessness, though, and more state-level differences. The Supreme Court seems to be closing the executive action loophole for going around Congress, and Congress rarely acts. This makes it hard for the federal government to do things it's not already doing.
I don't intend to push any sort of western chauvinism or anything, but most countries have progressed past this sort of thing. The ones that haven't have been locked in the same patterns for centuries, even as they've modernized. The US has an exceptionally violent culture, but it's not as immediate and ingrained in the individual. Our expressions of violence are radically different from and significantly more abstracted than the Romans, for example: We don't have city-states going to war with each other. We don't have blood sport. We have "militias" that are "ready for war" after stocking up on ammo and shooting paper targets, not a bunch of people with swords ready for yet another altercation with those guys over there. Even the LARPers are too far away from the violence to quickly carry it out on a large scale.
Further, I think we have too many non-violent pressure release valves to have a full civil war. Social media connects us in a way we've never had before, and many people just take to yelling through that. Back in the day, like the 1860s, you basically had to show up with a gun or guillotine to make a point known.
Counterpoint: We've had larger, more sustained protests than ever before. They've been less effective than ever.
Propaganda has been refined and police has been militarized to an unprecidented degree. The points are already well-known. They are just dismissed and ignored because there are no guns and guillotines.
Last I checked, there was already an armed rebellion by a wannabe dictator, and massive shootings of innocents occur so frequently we've desensitized to it. The masses have been innoculated to not just tolerate a surveillance state, but actively desire it.
Edit: Additional thought bubbled up: If you look at the major progressive movements throughout the 20th century, not even earlier, almost all of them had violent under or overtones. The labor victories before 1950 all came at a heavy loss of life to those opposing the companies and state. The civil rights era following was also punctuated with immense violence throughout, and it's no coincidence that the victories made there have been major points of contention since.
Maybe it's less about the size of the protests and more about the lack of coherent organization? Spontaneous, leaderless movements have their drawbacks. Why should "something bad happened, let's protest" be expected to work?
I wasn't referring to just the Floyd protests. Though, you shouldn't need a persistant decades-long effort of millions to instigate reform of a quite visibly broken and corrupt system. The protesters theee were demonized and more than half of the country responded with 'we support the police.'
The protests against the Iraq war were frequent, organized, and gigantic. They were called traitors by the right, and (accurately) ineffective by the left. The protests began before the invasion, and continued theoughout the whole decade. Pretty much accomplished nothing.
The Keystone XL pipeline had long sustained protests for over a decade. It's one of the success stories....but large swaths of the right still support its construction and view it as a legitimate way to lowet cost of gas (it's not), blaming Biden for killing it.
The protests against Trump's Muslim ban. Temporarily stayed by a court order, but was mostly efdective through the entirety of his presidency.
It isn't going to break up and it isn't going to be a civil war, either. We're overdue for a repudiation of the current political false dichotomy/corporate oligarchy in favor of... well, something else, though what form it'll take remains to be seen. We'll have riots and strikes and violence as labor wakes up and fights back. Think back to the 50s-70s reform movements. They'll be back, and they'll go much further this time. All the way to another 'new deal' package, I expect.
Interesting times, sure. Hardly the end of the Union.
You should do this regardless, having EU citizenship is awesome. Start looking into it now, the process is going to take a very long time.
I honestly can't imagine that happening without something in the order of half a century of standard of living (from the US's current state, I know the New Deal Era already ended half a century ago) and population decline like what's predicted in the worst climate catastrophe projections preceding it. Even then the US would need at least 2 well-armed factions for a more classic military conflict (stuff like The Troubles in the US is pretty plausible already) that won't just be vanquished by the largest military that has ever existed or to have the losing side (the left-of-center because of second amendment opposition and very low number of socialists compared to right-wing fascist militias). Maybe the Military itself could split but the US Government is highly commited to it's army so the US armed forces going to ruin so angry civilians can do most of the bloodying eachother isn't an option. I find the GOP couping (gradually or not) the government and the Democrats just watching it happen much more likely than any military conflict.