I’ve been thinking about our recent post about how 52% of Republicans and 41% of Democrats to want dissolve the union, with the red states and the blue states forming different countries. How would that work? What would those two new countries look like?
The Blue Country would consist of the Northeast coast, some of the northernmost states plus Illinois, the West coast, and some of the Southwest. The Red Country would be the southern states, the inland West, and much of the Midwest. Without the progressive states having to defer to or compromise with the conservative states, and vice versa, each nation could pursue its ideology to the hilt.
Who would retain the name “United States of America”? Though, of course, the states would no longer be united, I assume that the new groupings of states would at least be united with each other. Presumably the Red States, with all of their patriotism, would want to keep the name. This way the Blue States, which would be the ones who seceded, could have a reset from America’s history, which so many progressives believe is tainted. Their new country would have no legacy of slavery, mistreatment of native Americans, colonialism, wars, or other historical embarrassments.
But what would the new Blue nation be called? Left-leaning regimes have been favoring the “People’s Republic” formula. “The People’s Republic of America”? That would work, except that the word “America” comes from Amerigo Vespucci, another white colonialist. Historically, some people wanted to call the new country “Columbia,” after the more consequential Italian explorer–hence, our nation’s capital being in the “District of Columbia”–but that wouldn’t fly today. The new country could be named after a person, perhaps a woman or person of color. What would you suggest?
How would the economy work? The Blues would have the major seaports, though the Reds would have the Gulf and south Atlantic ports. The Blues would have the biggest industrial base, but the Reds would have the most agriculture. Maybe the two could form a free trade agreement, or, since they probably can’t agree, just join Mexico and Canada in the new NAFTA agreement.
The Blues would have the financial sector, but they might probably tax their abundance of rich people so much that they would flee to the Reds.
Who would get the military? Probably the Red country. Most volunteers, according to what I’ve heard, come from the South. Besides progressives tend towards pacifism. Then again, conservatives tend towards isolationism. Maybe we wouldn’t need a military. Any foreign power that wanted to conquer us would probably find both countries easy pickings any way.
The reality is, mutually secession wouldn’t work. What would happen with the Purple States, the ones that sometimes vote for the Democrat and sometimes vote for the Republican? Would they have to be a third country? What would be their ideology?
The biggest problem is that our divisions are not just between states. They cut right through every state, each of which has Red countries and Blue countries, conservative citizens and liberal citizens. Even families are polarized politically. And some individuals don’t know what they believe.
And even the ideologies are polarized. Each of the new nations would form a two-party system of their own. In the Red States, free market conservatives would fight with Trumpian conservatives. In the Blue States, the radical leftists would fight with the New Deal liberals.
So maybe we’ll have to just find a way to make the U.S.A. work.
Illustration: Last 2 Election Red States and Blue States and Purple States.png by BobWyatt07, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
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