The Threat of Another War Of The (MAGA) Posers

Update: Thank you again to Batocchio at Crooks & Liars for including this article at Mike's Blog Round-Up! Please leave a comment here! Also, go back to the Round-Up and leave a tip, y'all.

Now that the House Republicans are entrenched in Congress, the crazy talk has gotten worse. The fearmongers among the MAGA caucus are openly talking "National Divorce" to separate the Red States from the Blue States. Where Marjorie Taylor Greene (aka MTG (or Empty G)) is happily pushing the idea that there should be permanent division between the states, even as we try to pretend to still be a United States of America as a nation.

There are layers to this bullshit. For the most part, this is Greene basically virtue vice signaling to her insurrectionist MAGA allies that their Culture War "owning the libs" is ongoing. Actual secession - as I and others have noted already - is a goddamn pipe dream that could never work.

But on the other hand, Greene is treading on dangerous ground: She is openly calling for an act of national division that historically leads to violence - every civil war that humanity ever inflicted on itself regardless of nation - and will likely trigger bloodshed no matter how she and her cohorts try to shill this.

Tom Sullivan over at Hullaballoo references what David French at the New York Times thinks of what Greene is calling for, and Sullivan takes a closer look to what the Far Right wingnuts are doing with their rhetoric of division:

French critiques Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s proposed “national divorce” in light of the last attempt at one in the 19th century. Yes, it’s unworkable. And yes, it’s insane. But what’s sanity got to do with it...?

Sullivan quotes French directly:

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.

So my question is not “Is divorce reasonable?” but rather, “Are we susceptible to the unreason that triggered war once before?”

This is where the decades of Far Right Media - hello, Fox Not-News! - actively misinforming and fearmongering towards their conservative audiences, building up the mindset not only that Americans are divided by Left and Right but also the divisions are unreconcilable. Back to Sullivan:

The fever that spawned the Jan. 6 insurrection has not ebbed, French writes. CPAC may be a shadow of its former self, but the froth of the authoritarian fanboys remains. The demographic shifts fueling their hatreds is not going away. Greene may be clownish, but the audience for her nonsense is serious...

Animosity is so entrenched (stoked daily by right-wing media) that I wonder if even an alien invasion could mend our fences...

Just look at how our nation is responding to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Most Americans actually support Ukrainians' efforts to repel Putin's war of empire-building; but the Far Right leadership and media outlets in America are siding with Russia, claiming Ukraine is at fault, and accusing Biden and Western Europe (NATO) of using the conflict as a proxy war to push global liberalism. If the aliens from Independence Day 1996 showed up, the Far Right media would likely call on the aliens to blow up the White House while Biden was still inside it.

This Republican-pushed Culture War is one not based on facts: It is a war based on grievance of privileges lost (or about to lose), based on fear determined by racism and sexism towards ethnic minorities and women. It's a war based on fantasies derived from Atlas Shrugged and Turner Diaries, where "manly Christian men" rise up against emasculating Godless librul elites to destroy the corrupt world in order to build a new Utopia on the ashes of the old.

You can see it in the "Alpha Male" social media bullshit, in the never-ending ragefests at their conservative confabs, in the nightly railings of Far Right pundits shilling nightmare stories based on rumor and conjecture and not a lick of fact.

If there's any good news, it's that a majority of Americans - regardless of the Red or Blue states where they reside - will not succumb to the calls of violence and secession that the Far Right are making. Whatever fantasy MTG has about a "National Divorce," it will not be a clean split by state because even the deepest Red State (okay, maybe not Wyoming) has a Blue urban metropolis (Texas and Florida have several) that would resist and secede themselves to stay with a Blue United States (Think what will happen when Texas tries to leave only to have Houston, San Antonio/Austin, Dallas/Ft. Worth, and El Paso - four of their major tax bases - refuse and demand their own statehoods with the USA).

As the recent poor showing at the CPAC convention this weekend proves, there's not a sustainable audience for Far Right outrage (It didn't help that scandal with the organizers scared half the GOP leadership away). While millions may have voted for donald trump in 2020, only mere thousands showed up for his January 6th Insurrection. Most Americans do not have the desire to inflict violence against their neighbors.

That's the good news. The bad news is that there ARE enough Americans among us who ARE willing to be violent towards their neighbors. As every mass shooting teaches us - almost every day now - all it takes is one wingnut Angry Guy with a military-grade assault rifle to break (or worse, destroy) a community.

This is not going to end well. At best, we need to remove the insurrectionists and secessionists from office as soon as possible. We still need to prepare ourselves for the violence that's sure to follow when those secessionist decide to make their bloody fantasy their reality.

Gods help us.

We're Over the Cliff. This Is Now a Matter of How Steep the Fall Will Be

So this thought has popped up again:

I think I've argued before about the unlikely scenario of the United States splitting into civil war, especially the disastrous economic implications of such an event. Very few states can stand on their own, and too many Red states - the likely culprits in a secession movement - are too dependent on federal aid to pull it off. Back in 2009, this kind of argument didn't make any sense to me.

But the thought is still out there, we ARE as a nation in the middle of an Honest-to-God Constitutional Crisis, and as the signs of irrevocable differences among Americans are growing this is getting too serious to ignore.

Just yesterday, Balloon Juice had two different articles about this issue, and as I take the commentary there serious then these arguments need to be considered. First, to Anne Laurie marking the Twitter war between Megan McArdle and Reality:

I tweeted McArdle back directly after that "twee cosmopolitan" putdown:

As Sam Houston and William Sherman tried to warn the hard Conservative wingnuts that were pressing for a regressive and racially-motivated war in 1860, the more Liberal left-wingers that made up the Union side of things had the numbers and the willpower to save the nation, give it a month or give it five years. Those same Liberal-leaning types - urban surely, educated most likely - may look weak or indecisive but in truth they have conviction and patriotic devotion (they're just trying to remain polite about it).

Ahem. Back to BJ:

Megan's thinking of "letting go" would be easy to understand except for the facts that 1) our cultural divisions are not geographic ones (even Texas and Florida and Alabama and yes South Carolina will be split internally by Right and Left factions), 2) such "letting go" will not resolve half the arguments we have, and 3) The side spoiling for a fight (hint: it's the pro-gun anti-gay racist trumpshirts) won't let it go and will turn violent no matter what.

And now Adam L. Silverman's piece, with analysis and insight (aptly titled Megan McArdle Knows Absolutely Nothing About Any Form Of War And Wouldn’t Even If A Member Of The Military Bit Her!):

What McArdle doesn’t understand, because she knows nothing about war – theoretically, conceptually, and/or experientially (sic) – is that there has been a low level insurgency in the US going back decades. We sometimes call this the Culture War. Sometimes it’s referred to as the Southern Strategy, but it involves one of the two major political parties and its supporting movements, including religious movements, in the US refusing to accept the legitimacy of any other ones. It includes frequent use of dehumanizing language and threats of violence ranging from legislatively and regulatorily (sic) directing the power of the state, utilizing lawfare, and actually threatening and sometimes undertaking violence against their opponents or the objects of their dehumanization campaigns when the insurgents don’t get their way. And these people – elected, appointed, voters, supporters, pundits, etc – are McArdle’s fellow travelers! They are part of the larger political, ideological, dogmatic religious, and sub-cultural groups and movements that McArdle has been marinating in since she was an undergraduate.

They also make the mistake that they are the only ones that get to define patriotism and to actually care about the US and its ideals. They have convinced themselves that they are the only ones who can properly interpret the Constitution when in fact they are the poorest of linguistic and political historians of the late 18th Century, which leads to constantly misunderstanding and misapplying the Constitution. And they have deluded themselves into thinking that because their opponents believe in civility that their opponents are also unwilling to actually defend themselves in the political, ideological, social, religious, economic, and/or legal arenas. And those delusions include the mistaken belief that they don’t have the means to do so.

Right now the US is experiencing one of its periodic bouts of growing pains. As was the case in the 1780s and 1790s, the 1830s and 1840s, the 1860s, the late 1870s through the 1890s, during WW I, in the mid to late 1930s, and in the middle 1960s through the early 1970s, a period of imperfect progress is being met with a backlash against it. It is ugly. It is unpleasant. It is damaging. People who do not deserve to be hurt are being hurt. The real question that McArdle should have asked, yet is incapable because she is as the one who does not know how to ask, is what does it really mean to form a more perfect union? And what are the best ways to go about perfecting the union? Those are the real questions of American civic life. Not whether Democrats in urban areas know how to use guns...

With all that as my background, what's MY take on the current downward spiral?

This all depends on the response to the most likely trigger to cause the "civil war": Mueller's investigation into trump's criminal ties to Russia and to Russia's interference with the 2016 elections.

The Far Right (pro-trump) have clearly marked out their line in the sand that Mueller's work is "illegal" and part of a "spygate" conspiracy hatched by the Obama-Hillary Left to steal the election (which, logically, meant Obama-Hillary should have done a better job of actually stealing it back when they needed to). If Mueller completes his Special Counsel investigations finding serious charges - serious enough to warrant directly arresting trump (which would mean breaking a gentleman's agreement to not arrest sitting Presidents Losers of the Popular Vote) - this side will freak out and rage against the "Deep State" that makes up the federal government.

The other side - made up of Never-trumpers, "Rule of Law" conservatives and moderates, progressives, essentially the 65 million who voted Hillary and believe Russia stole enough states to fuck with the Electoral College - have marked out their line: Anything trump does to shut down Mueller's work is full-on Obstruction and that the entire Republican Party will be guilty of selling the nation out to Putin.

From where we're at right now, Mueller and other investigators have found so much criminal misdeeds before, during AND after the 2016 campaigns that trump is going to shut it down as best he can: However, he's noticeably run out of legal means of doing so and he's bound to simply break existing laws to complete his journey to complete Obstruction and dismantling of the Rule of Law.

This all depends entirely on how the Federal agencies and how the U.S. Military responds.

Right now, most of the agencies - getting shredded by trump's corruption and mismanagement - are likely going to oppose trump right out of the gate. The Intel communities in particular - fully aware of how badly Russia hacked us and hurt us - will refuse to back any attempt by trump to shut down Mueller or the Justice Department.

The military is the big wild card here. Granted, most soldiers and officers are personally conservative: However, they are trained and expected to abide by the Constitution and Rule of Law (that is, they answer to their oaths to defend the nation, they do not take loyalty oaths to any one man the way trump expects). The military is also one of our more diverse institutions, with a lot of soldiers and officers made of the minorities - Black, Latino, women, and now LGBT - that would suffer under a trump rule that's unbound by Constitutional limits. If trump does go full Authoritarian by shutting down Mueller and violating the Rule of Law, there is a good chance the military will refuse to obey any further orders from that White House. At which point shit gets really real.

This is where the wingnut fantasies of their pro-gun militias taking out Army units come into play. This is also where those fantasies will get taken out pretty quickly because 1) those Far Right militias do not have the numbers, 2) those Far Right militias do not have air support, 3) we've seen these Far Right militias in action before, and they are so disorganized it's laughable. They only lasted as long as they did during their hissy fits because the Feds wanted to avoid another Waco tragedy.

Still, the military is expected to answer to the presidency as Commander-in-Chief. They could just as easily side with him as the "lesser of two evils" and just wait him out for "saner" leadership to replace trump (he's NOT going to live forever). If the military sides with trump and the Far Right, any resistance by the Progressive/Center Left will not last long either.

Congress, being what it is - owned by cowardly Republicans who refuse to rein in trump's worst behaviors - will likely collapse into factions when trump acts against Mueller. There are signs of rifts in the House already especially over immigration (and the dawning realization that the replacement Speaker following Ryan will be too wingnut even for them). If trump tries to play dictator, there's a chance enough Republicans will flip to Independent/Democrat to give Dems control of the House (and even the Senate): At that point, trump will be the one in serious trouble. If the GOP remains united, then trump remains unchallenged and key Democratic figures - Pelosi, Schumer, Harris, Warren - will find themselves targets of arrests.

If things do break down into civil war, the dividing lines are going to be messy, mixed-up, and all over the map. Where the first civil war was easier to map out with clear North-South boundaries, this coming fight isn't as geographically fixed. Yes, there may be solid Red (conservative) states and solid Blue (liberal) states, but within each state there are splits between the urban, suburban, and rural areas. Big states like Texas and Florida may be dominated politically by Far Right Republicans, but they've only achieved that thanks to rigged gerrymandering that ignored actual demographics. Any attempt to secede (if trump fails to stop Mueller) or to enforce their rule (if trump succeeds) will cause mass protests and chaos across every major city and then some. On the same argument, any attempt by California or Illinois or New York to secede (if trump wins) or enforce (if trump fails) will get rioting from the Red parts of their states in the rural and suburban regions (such as New York's Long Island or California's southern coastal Far Right communities).

There are very few regions that are decidedly in favor of one side over the other. If I had to say it, the only solid Red states that would ally with trump if he goes Full Dictator would be West Virginia, Idaho, Oklahoma, and maybe one of the Dakotas. The rest would have serious internal strife issues (yes, even South Carolina and Utah and Alaska). If there were any solid Blue states that would oppose trump, I'd go with Hawaii, Delaware, Rhode Island, Vermont.

There will be no true safe havens. We will find that out right quick.

Actual civil war will be messy at the street level. Pro-trump forces - being gun-nuts evangelicals - will target what they hate most: Minorities, women, health clinics, gays, schools and colleges. They won't hit military sites - in some respects they won't even really fight to protect trump - because they'll know that's suicide: Instead they'll hit civilians the same way all terrorists would. THIS is why they don't want to give up the military-grade firepower they currently have to wipe out entire unarmed gatherings.

Pro-Constitutional forces - being legal-minded - will target the ones backing trump: Every Far Right media talking head and deep-pocket SuperPAC funder. Given how much of trump's support is based on lying and media manipulation, shutting down the likes of Fox Not-News, Hannity, O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Drudge, Jones, Coulter, and others would be a necessity. After that, targeting every goddamned coal-roller truck in the nation. Eliminating trump's base of support because honestly there are few places trump can truly hide.

Changes to our nation's habits will be immediate. The electrical grid is vulnerable, our communication network is vulnerable, our transportation systems - highway, trains, airports - are vulnerable. Either side will disrupt each of these things to their advantages. Our schools will close, most places of business may close due to supply cutoffs, most of our common resources available through utilities will be shut down. Not every location will be hit hard - some states and cities obviously will be hurt more than others - but everyone will feel some kind of pinch.

Even the rich will be affected. Our financial systems and markets would have early days of downturn as chaos makes things unpredictable. Foreign trade and business deals will suffer at first, maybe prolonged by any drawn-out fighting. Breakdown of intrastate trade definitely will hurt local and regional business.

If the U.S. divides into civil war, our foreign allies - and enemies - will get disrupted themselves. Without trump to hold them back, Western European nations may reform NATO into a more aggressive front against Putin's meddling into Eastern Europe. Asia will likely slide further under China's influence. Israel may suddenly find that a distracted and divided United States leaves them alone with few allies just as their war against Gaza Palestinians and Iran/Syria gets serious.

All of the problems that led to this moment - immigration, trade, global terrorism - will remain unresolved or actually worsen.

If there's any good news in a trump-fueled civil war, it's that his overseas properties will fall completely to shit and file for bankruptcy.

Everything else will be a bloody mess, and none of us will be able to avoid it.

I thought once we could, that we were going to evolve past the cultural divisions pushed by an increasingly angry Far Right, that we were going to listen to the better angels of our nature.

But the goddamn Far Right doubled down on their madness, dug deeper into their re-enforced Narrative, and rallied around a person in trump who brought them a fake victory, ignoring all the signs that trump is NOT someone you want leading your war effort.

I have been saying for the past few years this was not going to end well. We're at Phase Two of the madness right now, and from what I see - what too many other people are starting to see - the end is more and more looking to be bloody and crazy and terrifying.

This is already out of control. And we will be lucky to live through this. But not all of us are that lucky...

Another Florida Folly

Even with all the general weirdness and madness of a last-minute campaign run for a hotly-contested gubertorial race here in the Sunshine State, we've got this going on as a distraction:

This map is from a coalition operating out of the City of South Miami.  City officials want to split off the southern half of the state so they can form their own, one that would do something about the climate change/flooding doom facing the coastline:

...(Vice Mayor) Harris told the commission that Tallahassee isn't providing South Florida with proper representation or addressing its concerns when it comes to sea-level rising.

"We have to be able to deal directly with this environmental concern and we can’t really get it done in Tallahassee," Harris said. "I don’t care what people think -- it’s not a matter of electing the right people."

The solution isn't that simple, crew.

I think I've argued in other articles about secession that the logistics of such a move - either to become an independent nation or a separate state - would be self-defeating.  While the move to become a state won't be as risky - the federal government is still there providing a foundation - there are still massive issues over revenue sources, property rights, and bureaucratic snafus.

First off, the existing state government has to sign off on this.  Considering South Florida is a major financial, trade, tourist, entertainment metropolis (Miami is one of the major global cities), Tallahassee may be loathe to give up that tax base.  That this coalition wants to grab the next two major metros in Tampa Bay and Orlando - as well as key metros like Ft. Myers/Naples and Lakeland - is going to leave North Florida with just Jacksonville, Pensacola, Tallahassee, Ocala and Gainesville (with J'Ville the only real metro).  Tampa is another major financial hub and seaport... Orlando has Mickey Mouse and global tourism money... South Florida is going to be taking a lot of money off the table and there's no way our current government will give up all of that.

The first thought I had when I saw the makeshift map up there was "why the hell does Miami-Dade want to include all the redneck counties between there and Tampa/Orlando?"  Reading that article helped spell it out: Orlando/Orange County is where Florida manages the water resources that South Florida needs.  But still, the logic of the map eludes me, because there's another thing that the secession types keep overlooking: even with a single state there are cultural and socio-political rivalries that prevent such clean break-ups ever happening.

Florida is not easily divided into two parts.  At best - at the very least - it can be divided into six territories.  If the state of Florida ever fractures it most likely go like this:

• South Florida (Palm Beach, Broward, Miami-Dade, the Keys) - Everything from West Palm Beach down to Homestead is one big metro.  If you've ever read the Dredd comics, where they came up with megacities that engulfed entire states, you might get an idea what South Florida looks like: an uninterrupted chain of highways packed with suburbs, slums, business towers, and sports arenas.  The Keys from Largo to West may not be packed, but it's pretty much joined to the hip to Miami-Dade - literally, it's the only way in or out by car - and part of the same tourism appeal and Caribbean culture.  This might include Martin County, maybe even Saint Lucie...
• Southwest Florida (Ft.Myers-Lee, Collier, Charlotte, inner counties south of Polk) - pretty much the last part of Florida to get suburbanized, and one with a lot of political-religious-social cohesion along the coastline.  The inner counties are mostly farmland and some of the least populated counties.  They'd have to choose between Miami-Broward-Palm Beach (an area they share little with), Tampa Bay/Polk County (same issue), or form their own faction (with Martin/St. Lucie/Okechobee Counties) surrounding the key geographic feature of the area, Lake Okechobee.  Taking their chances with Ft. Myers/Naples metro would be the likeliest move...
• Tampa Bay (Pinellas, Tampa-Hillsborough, Manatee, Sarasota, Polk, Pasco, maybe Hernando Counties) - Defined by one of the key growth markets of the early 1980s that made Florida the 4th most populous state within a decade, not as big a financial market as South Florida but still a major trading port anchored by a coherent media market, healthcare industry, and sports franchises.  They'd get Sarasota County because the city of Sarasota is too close to the southern reach of the metro to split off with Port Charlotte-Ft. Myers-Naples...
• Greater Orlando (Orange, Seminole, Osceola, Brevard, Indian River, Volusia, Lake, maybe Sumter Counties) - the tourist Mecca.  Orlando brings in the people for the amusement parks, Brevard and Volusia brings in the beach tourists eager to visit Daytona and Cocoa Beach.  The South Florida group foolishly cuts off Seminole from Orange, despite the urban reach of Orlando overlapping Seminole as an outlying suburban circle of Purgatory. This faction could conceivably pick up Polk County if they make the right offer (more condos in Haines City!)...
• Northeast Florida/Jacksonville (Jacksonville/Duval, every County east of the Suwanee River) - Where North Florida kinda becomes indistinguishable from the Deep South, and has more in common with Georgia than the urban centers of Central/South Florida.  Jacksonville would be the major seaport and business center, with Gainesville as the cultural/academic center.  There's little else up here except for horse farms and cattle.
• Northwest Florida (Tallahassee, Pensacola, Panama City, sparsely populated Counties west of the Suwanee) - the other half of North Florida, the Panhandle.  Tallahassee is the state capitol and home of two universities (Florida St. the big draw), and then you gotta drive three hours and a time zone to get to Pensacola and that's pretty much it.  There's an airbase where they test UFOs and some decent southern-facing beaches, but that's it.  And if the state goes bonkers and splits up like this, there's a good chance Pensacola might just pack up and merge with Alabama, as that region has more in common with Mobile than Tallahassee...

Even the scenario I've painted here is unlikely: the state could easily fracture into ten parts as much as six, and there's little incentive for the sections to split off (yes, even for South Florida) because the costs of forming a new government - new elected officials, new government buildings, new bureaucracies to manage the graft - are just too damn high.  Mind, South Florida (just Miami-to-Palm Beach alone) might have enough financial muscle to pull it off, but barely.  The other parts of Florida would never afford such a move.

The other point of this proposed split is that South Florida residents are increasingly worried about the global climate change - the global warming in particular - that's due to flood out most of Dade and Broward Counties by 2020.  The costs of pumping out rising seawater from the sewers and streets are getting higher by the month: flooding is not happening during hurricanes anymore, it's happening during peak moon tides.  The response from Tallahassee has been to basically handle it as an ongoing crisis kept as far away from the news cameras as possible: but sooner rather than later the beaches that the state prides on won't even be there anymore, and boating won't be done on the Intercoastal, it will be done on Hwy 441.

But if South Miami/Florida thinks splitting itself off to form its own government will help matters, it won't by much.  They'll still have to cope with the costs of pumping and reinforcing flood walls, for one thing.  They'll have to contend with the fact our federal government - cough, oil-and-coal-paid-for pols with both parties, cough - is ignoring the problems of climate change altogether, something that a new state still won't be able to overcome.  And considering the map that the South Miami group is pushing, the new state government they'll form is going to include a lot of Republican-leaning red counties (Ft. Myers and Naples, Lakeland and Orlando and the infamous I-4 Corridor, the suburban outlets of Tampa and Pinellas) that might counter the more urban-leaning Democratic areas of South Florida itself (not to mention the conservative Cuban population in Dade/Broward mucking up matters).

Just chalk this up as another pipe dream by a local group of concerned citizens horrified that the leadership in Tall Hassle (the nickname for the corrupt capitol of the Xanth fantasy series whose map mimics Florida's) isn't working to answer their concerns.  A better alternative than wasting time and effort to forge a new state would be focusing on CLEANING UP the political mess of the existing state by voting out the corrupt Republican bastards who are ignoring climate change in the first place.

Alright, I'm off to bed.  Just remember kids, here in Florida we've got Early Voting going on, and you all need to GET THE VOTE OUT and FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON'T VOTE REPUBLICAN.

The Chicken Little Scenario

Not so much along the lines of "The sky is falling" but more along the lines of "OMG the country is falling apart!"

I mean, first off, in the beginning of the year as Obama took his oath of office, we had the Drudge Report and the Wall Street Journal pick up on some obscure Russian professor predicting for the last 10 years that the United States will break apart Balkans-style by 2010. Complete with color-coded map showing just how ridiculous the idea is (Texas will join other states in seceding? HA! South Carolina in the same economic dominion as New England where there are few economic reasons and absolutely NO social and political reasons to do so? Headthump).

Then we got that jackass from NewsMax yapping about the Obama Problem and how a nice clean non-violent military coup would solve everything.

This morning I get on to view The Moderate Voice blog and the top article for the hour was this piece of hysteria titled "Could the U.S. See a Military Coup?":

...Are the nation’s fiscal, economic, military, political and social challenges
setting us up for a Military Coup? Will the U.S. Military Industrial Complex,
acting through our Joint Chiefs of Staff or some other high-level corps of U.S.
Military officers, and supported by a variety of angry business leaders and
extreme conservatives be so resentful of any changes to our national priorities
that they would encourage a complete removal of our elected civilian federal
government, save the Department of Defense?
If the President and Congress decided to actually reduce or freeze Military spending over the next 4 years in real dollars, eliminate some programs to build or acquire various types of military hardware, close more domestic and foreign bases and remove troops from Europe and Asia, and veto any escalation of and start deep reductions in our military presences in Afghanistan and Iraq, will the conservatives in our Military be outraged enough to take action? This consideration might make
President Obama a bit skittish about not following his generals’ current
recommendations to escalate our national and NATO presence in Afghanistan. His
decision on this matter and other domestic issues might be viewed as the
precipitating events for actions that could significantly alter the U.S. and
global history.
If a direct physical removal of civilian government by military force is not in the cards, perhaps some generals and strong military supporters could defeat President Obama and the Democrats in 2010 and 2012. This peaceful mechanism is constitutionally-protected and these political campaigns could be well-financed by the many large international arms manufacturers and other parts of President Eisenhower’s vast military-industrial complex...

Facepalm

Nearly everything in those first three paragraphs drip with paranoid freak-out crazy juice. The writer skittishly terrified that if Obama dares jump one way or another on military budget issues (that btw has already happened, anyone notice the outrage over the F-22? *cricket chirp* Thought so...) that the Far Right Wingnuts and their DoD cronies will stage a Seven Days In May takeover, or perform some underhanded vote stealing during the upcoming midterms...

Okay. Everyone take a chill pill and SETTLE. Except, I suppose, from the wingnuts who'll worry said pill is poison. Sigh.

I suppose an effort needs to be made about why there's this anxiety among the Villagers.

The most likely explanation is that all this sound and fury over possible coup attempts is that the Village (no, not THAT one) made up of the DC Beltway elites is feeling, well, unhappy and out of sorts. The Villagers - the ones who keep making all these pronouncements about this scandal and that outrage, and almost always proven wrong or uninformed about how the rest of the nation is really acting - have been spending the last nine months trying to fit the new White House regime into their perfectly easy-to-label ideological plot points, only to keep having said attempts fail. Sometimes with hilarious results. The Villagers in the media circles are watching their newspaper revenues drop to dangerous, might-be-out-of-jobs levels, all the while FOX Not-News' rating go up because they gleefully sell their Obama-Hate to those who scarf it up like candy... even as FOX Not-News gets absolutely EVERYTHING wrong to the point where any day now someone, FINALLY, will sue them for libel/defamation in an airtight case.

That link to the Digby article about Beltway elites itself links to earlier articles written back in the day when Clinton was caught in an affair with Lewinsky. And where the most outrage about it came from that Beltway circle who felt absolutely "betrayed" by a man who turned out to be doing exactly what every other guy in DC was doing (hi, Newt!). It was truly that incident where the Beltway found itself isolated from the rest of the nation: where the Villagers saw criminal action that had to be punished by their own 'righteous' anger, the rest of the country was more willing to forgive, and was actually taking the Villagers themselves to task for overhyping matters to where BLOWJOBS were impeachable offenses (forget the whole 'lying to the public' and 'lying to the civil court' issue. People in the real world know people lie about affairs, and more Americans realized the whole Paula Jones case was an excuse for a 'fishing expedition' than the Villagers did). The Villagers, for what I see, still haven't forgotten or forgiven about the Lewinsky scandal, and still can't understand why A) Clinton survived the impeachment with decent public polling, B) the nation's voters threw out more Republicans during the 1998 midterms when the Villagers believed the GOP would have gained more seats due to the scandal, and C) why people outside of their circles started tuning them out.

So you get this disconnect between the Real World and the Villager World. And inside the Villager World there's apparently truckloads of paranoia about what's going on: what they see as a massive Hate-Obama Fest when in fact it's overhyped staged events led by FOX and mere handfuls of teabaggers; military leaders that live within said Village expressing their 'disgruntled' disagreements with the White House over how to handle Afghanistan, when in fact a majority of actual troops and officers are serious about their oaths of office, will follow orders regarding Afghan/Iraq deployments, and will never engage in a coup; fears that Obama's 'socialist' agenda will anger enough rednecks to have them rioting in the streets, when in fact said rednecks are really few, not fully organized, and under better surveillance by law enforcement than the Villagers expect.

Here's the truth: Obama's polling relatively as well as any other President under these circumstances. If Obama's failing at anything it's failing to make job-creation a higher priority. The majority of Americans WANT health care reform, and there's not going to be rioting in the streets because of it (even if it fails). Our military efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan currently are wobbly, at best, but everyone (even the Generals who AREN'T griping to their fellow Villagers) involved know it's not going to be solved by overreaction, flooding the war zone with more troops we barely have on hand, and prolonging quagmires that can only truly be solved by calmer, more diplomatic efforts.

We're not facing any coups. And if we were, they would be most likely carried out by fanatical misfits so completely out of tune with reality that the reaction against them would be swift, merciless, and painful for all involved.

As for the other thing, this whole 'OMG states are seceding' thing. For starters, that Russian Expert has the worst idea of how America's regions truly operate. Lemme see if I can get that map pasted here:


Like I mentioned earlier, anyone notice anything wrong with how that Russian professor thinks America will break apart?

• For starters, he has Texas going along with other states under a 'Texas Republic' banner. Bull. Texas is large enough population-wise and economically to completely break away as its own nation-state, and in fact that's how Texas started. It didn't become a state until annexed by John Tyler (yes, that jerkoff), and that's one of the reasons why Texas has a noticeably large secession movement. And the other thing? None of those other states - I can guarantee you Florida for certain - would want to join those damn arrogant Texans in ANYTHING.
• He's got an Atlantic-Coast merger that has South Carolina joining the New England states, mostly by his arguments for economic reasons. Um, no: there are very few economic reasons for SC to hang around with the Northeastern states (seaports/trading is the only thing I can think of). And there is no way, given South Carolina's history, that they would even consider being allied with those damn Yankees.
• Even if we do consider that the United States could break apart due to massive economic collapse (which seems to be how he's dividing this map), the paradox is that the states right now are facing bankruptcy and near-financial collapse themselves and can't even think about removing themselves from a more solvent Federal government. Just look at California! Without that stimulus package from the Federal government earlier this year, half of the states would be completely failed right now. They'd be in no condition to attempt secessions in the first place.

The more likely scenario for secession right now is mostly social-political: if enough wingnut crazies took over any state/local governments to force the issue. If that does happen, the more likely scenarios are that:

• The largest states - Texas obviously, California, New York and Florida next possibles - will break off to form their own nation-states. But given the current economic crisis in California, expect that state to balkanize even further into metro regions (San Francisco and the Northern Cali, Los Angeles, Orange County/San Diego, all other points in-between) due to that state's inability to resolve their tax code issues and the near-certain strife that will erupt between the DFHs and the Prop-13 worshipers.
• The states that made up the sides of the Civil War to basically divide along the same lines, but with variations. Because New York will divide the NE corridor, the New England states will form their own coalition and forced to cater to Massachussetts' power structure. The MidAtlantic states from Pennsylvania to Virginia, or maybe even North Carolina (which may finally shake of the old political dominance of South Carolina due to their growing and more diversified population) would forge their own power structure.
• South Carolina would probably WANT to form their own, but won't have the economic or political strength to pull it off, and will merge with George, Alabama, Mississippi and possibly Tennessee into their own group. It could well include Louisiana and Arkansas (making it, sans Florida, the SEC made political). North Carolina could join if it can't fit into the MidAtlantic structure.
• Kentucky would most likely go with the Great Lakes states, throwing in with Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota. West Virginia could go in if it feels more in common with Ohio than Pennsylvania/Maryland/Virginia, but unlikely.
• The Midwest would comprise of Oklahoma up to the Dakotas, with Missouri added to the mix. Arkansas and Louisiana could go along with this powerset, mostly if to keep control of the Mississippi River as a trading route/source of income. This is why Arkansas and Louisiana are true wild cards in this: the Grain States and the SEC States will vie for those two unlike any other states in the potential breakup.
• The mountain states will revolve mostly around Colorado as Denver is the most dominant metro in the region. They can pull to them Montana, New Mexico, and Wyoming. Utah and Idaho, both dominated by Mormons socially and/or politically, could be part of this group but could also separate and form their own Mormon nation-state (very unlikely though). Arizona could become part of this faction, but it all depends on how Nevada reacts to California.
• Nevada will be in a huge pickle. Their largest metro, Las Vegas, is tied to Cali as a major tourist attraction (remember all the wingnut complaints about high-speed rail between LA and Vegas?). Given the otherwise sparse nature of their state, they may be compeled to join in with California... depending on if Cali can solve their tax issues and don't fall into their own civil war. If Nevada falls in with California, so too would Arizona.
• That leaves the Northwest. Washington and Oregon would have little choice anyway but to merge forces. Odds are very good, however, that they could pull Northern Cali to them especially if that state falls into chaos. They could also include Alaska, but don't be surprised if Alaska and Hawaii - physically separated from the continental states - go their own ways (probably the only thing that professor gets right, although Alaska would make serious efforts to come under Canada's sphere of influence to prevent the Russians from gaining influence).

Now. Take a long good look at everything I just wrote. See how I've divided things up? See how *wrong* I can be on absolutely nearly every point? And yet my reasonings/explanations/theories on secession could be just as valid as that Russian professor's... and given how Texas and South Carolina would act/react, I'm probably more accurate.

And here's the thing: I'm STILL WRONG. Secession in the United States won't happen, certainly not now: too much pride regarding the matter, for one. The historical resolution of the matter back in the 1860s, for another.

So will EVERYONE calm down? We are NOT dying as a nation. We are NOT at each others' throats no matter how much the wingnuts WANT us to be. EVERYONE CHILL!

...Yeah, I thought so...

Facepalm