Might the US break itself up into separate states in the near future?
May 5, 2020 7:24 AM   Subscribe

Writer Dmitry Orlov, who witnessed firsthand the collapse of the Soviet Union, gave a lecture (in 2006) "Closing the ‘Collapse Gap’: the USSR was better prepared for collapse than the US". His message is perhaps more prescient now than ever.
Orlov previously on Metafilter, including his article Social Collapse Best Practices
His Wikipedia.
Via mltshp
posted by growabrain (114 comments total) 38 users marked this as a favorite
 
If anyone is interested in what Orlov has had to say more recently, he's been posting fairly regularly RE: COVID-19 and was recently on the Hermitix podcast talking about "The coronavirus, economics and culture".

Often find him a little glib and self-satisfied, but he also has some worthwhile points, esp. RE: American economic and cultural blindspots.
posted by ryanshepard at 7:35 AM on May 5, 2020 [3 favorites]


Hmm, is this unvarnished truth, fevered satire, or PysOps shenanigans? In any event, I enjoyed the cheerful tone.
posted by Don.Kinsayder at 7:36 AM on May 5, 2020 [1 favorite]


The past few years have caught me thinking this thought on a frequent basis: Wow, I never would have seen that coming.. followed by Hmm.. Kind of obvious in hindsight.

I think we are starting to see these past few generations in North America for what it is: a somewhat anomalous blip of stability? And all the signs of instability have simply been concealed by myth, relative wealth, and in the very best cases a veneer of civility that stemmed from a belief that large, complicated societies can work and a majority of people can live decently. Anyone else feel that slipping away?
posted by elkevelvet at 7:41 AM on May 5, 2020 [29 favorites]


Betteridge's law holds.
posted by sammyo at 7:42 AM on May 5, 2020 [34 favorites]




I think we are starting to see these past few generations in North America for what it is: a somewhat anomalous blip of stability?

While it's true that postwar America was so dominant precisely because the rest of the world was bombed all to hell and/or poor, leaving America as one of the only industrialized nations left that was relatively intact with a large population and diverse supplies of natural resources, postwar global stability was built through a complex and interconnecting series of diplomatic mechanisms and treaties. The story of the last 30 years has been--absent the (largely created by capitalist countries) threat of the Soviet Union and global communism, what are all these agreements for, exactly?

"The good of all humankind" has so far not been a satisfactory answer because there's no money in it.
posted by Automocar at 7:50 AM on May 5, 2020 [21 favorites]


I don't enjoy the tone of this, but I've been convinced of the imminent dissolution of the states since the 2016 election. At some point, California will not pay taxes to the rogues in DC. I'm not saying this is a good thing, but it's feeling like an inevitable thing.
posted by latkes at 7:56 AM on May 5, 2020 [27 favorites]


Capitalism, imperialism, and a large United States go together like peanut butter, strawberry jam, and Wonder Bread. It's too helpful to Big Money to have a massive federal state like the U.S., with its unprecedented taxation power, for them to let it go without a huge fight. I don't see this happening.
posted by Sheydem-tants at 7:56 AM on May 5, 2020 [9 favorites]


I'm always keen on doomsday predictions, because eventually they do after all come true, in one form or another, but the current situation doesn't seem to meet the criteria Orlov puts forward in his "Social Collapse Best Practices" talk:
The theory states that the United States and the Soviet Union will have collapsed for the same reasons, namely: a severe and chronic shortfall in the production of crude oil (that magic addictive elixir of industrial economies), a severe and worsening foreign trade deficit, a runaway military budget, and ballooning foreign debt.
In particular, there's no shortfall in the production of crude oil—quite the opposite. We have a glut of crude so vast that we're running out of places to store the stuff; you literally can't give it away. This creates its own problems for petro-states, but it's different from having a shortfall in production vs. what was planned.

I'm also not sure about his assumption, or really what he even means, in stating that the US has a "largely depleted resource base". The US is a resource-rich nation. Setting aside fracking-derived oil products, the US has a tremendous amount of natural and manmade resources which we don't exploit—perhaps to our benefit or to our loss—because it's cheaper to trade for them from elsewhere. (The American West is covered with mines that are idled because they're not economical to mine when you can pay someone in Africa to do it without pesky safety or environmental standards, but they're not mined out by any means. Copper, tin, rare earths, we have them—if the price is right.) The US could probably function as a pretty good autarky if we wanted to. We'd have to reindustrialize, but it's not like heavy industry and First World living standards are incompatible—the Germans manage to have quite a bit of primary industry and do so safely and in a generally environmentally responsible manner. You just can't do it on the cheap.

Anyway, I think his prescription for more economic resilience and a shift away from our terrible fascination with just-in-time / no-inventory business models is probably a good one. But I question some of his premises.
posted by Kadin2048 at 7:58 AM on May 5, 2020 [18 favorites]


Absent genuine world-shaking change, and corona ain't it, the dollar as world reserve currency - and the "full faith and credit of the US govt" (i.e. Army) is a helluva drug. The USA staying "intact" is part of this package.

Once the Renminbi is allowed to float/competes "freely"* with the US, then all bets are off. Till then, or the end of capitalism, we ride this sucker to the end.

* yes, I know
posted by lalochezia at 7:58 AM on May 5, 2020 [7 favorites]


This is because when times get really bad, as they did when the Soviet Union collapsed, lots of people just completely lose it. Men, especially. Successful, middle-aged men, breadwinners, bastions of society, turn out to be especially vulnerable. And when they just completely lose it, they become very tedious company.

YUP.
posted by EatTheWeek at 8:08 AM on May 5, 2020 [44 favorites]


Putin & his useful idiots would love to see the breakup of the US. To be honest I still can’t see it happening, but this is the first time in my lifetime that I have ever thought, “I could see a path to the breakup of the U.S.A. from here: People in the future might point to this time as the beginning of the end”. This is not something I ever expected to be thinking.
posted by pharm at 8:18 AM on May 5, 2020 [18 favorites]


I hope not. Utah (and surrounding areas) would immediately become the theocratic state of Deseret and would mean the persecution / flight of many people.
posted by msbutah at 8:31 AM on May 5, 2020 [7 favorites]


A much earlier and somewhat more positive take on the general idea was Joel Garreau's The Nine Nations of North America.
posted by PhineasGage at 8:32 AM on May 5, 2020 [6 favorites]


I keep wondering whether the US will fall apart, perhaps over corona virus policy. On the other hand, I can't see a clear path to that happening, and the US is much more firmly glued together than they USSR. It's not as though Russia fell apart.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 8:33 AM on May 5, 2020 [4 favorites]


Once the Renminbi is allowed to float/competes "freely"* with the US, then all bets are off. Till then, or the end of capitalism, we ride this sucker to the end.

The EU will remain a technocratic bastion of neoliberalism until the continent erupts in WW3. The whole thing is layered in indirect abstraction over indirect abstraction specifically so that a lot of people who shouldn’t be let near the levers of power are kept away from the levers if power. Conversely, it means that people who could do good work with those same levers are kept from them. As long as France and Germany remain in rough alignment this shouldn’t happen but who knows.

The question is whether the EU wants the position of economic hegemony. It’s like the economic equivalent of heroin and they know it.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 8:34 AM on May 5, 2020 [3 favorites]


While it's true that postwar America was so dominant precisely because the rest of the world was bombed all to hell and/or poor, leaving America as one of the only industrialized nations left that was relatively intact with a large population and diverse supplies of natural resources, postwar global stability was built through a complex and interconnecting series of diplomatic mechanisms and treaties.

I'd also add that the post-War stability was bolstered by some pre-War "big government" programs - namely, FDR's New Deal. Scholars point to the outbreak of World War II as the thing that finally killed the Great Depression (largely because the military suppliers got to ramp up production and that was a big boost), but the programs FDR put into place throughout the 1930s did a lot to stabilize the economy and society overall prior. Many of the programs put in place under the New Deal didn't end until the 1950s or 60s, and some even exist today -
Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC): a Hoover agency expanded under Jesse Holman Jones to make large loans to big business. Ended in 1954.

Abandonment of gold standard, 1933: gold reserves no longer backed currency; still exists.

Glass–Steagall Act: regulates investment banking; two provisions changed in 1999, but still exists.

Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), 1933: effort to modernize very poor region (most of Tennessee), centered on dams that generated electricity on the Tennessee River; still exists.

Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC): insures bank deposits and supervises state banks; still exists.

Securities Act of 1933, created the SEC, 1933: codified standards for sale and purchase of stock, required awareness of investments to be accurately disclosed; still exists.

Social Security Act (SSA), 1935: still exists.

National Labor Relations Act (NLRA); Wagner Act, 1935: set up National Labor Relations Board to supervise labor-management relations; In the 1930s, it strongly favored labor unions. Modified by the Taft-Hartley Act (1947); still exists.

Federal Crop Insurance Corporation (FCIC), 1938: insures crops and livestock against loss of production or revenue. Was restructured during the creation of the Risk Management Agency in 1996 but continues to exist.

Surplus Commodities Program (1936): gives away food to poor; still exists as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

Fair Labor Standards Act 1938: established a maximum normal work week of 44 hours and a minimum wage of 40 cents/hour and outlawed most forms of child labor, though it still exists. The working hours have been lowered to 40 over the years, and the minimum wage has climbed to $7.25.

Rural Electrification Administration (REA): one of the federal executive departments of the United States government charged with providing public utilities (electricity, telephone, water, sewer) to rural areas in the U.S. via public-private partnerships. still exists.

Farm Security Administration (FSA): helped poor farmers by a variety of economic and educational programs; some programs still exists as part of the Farmers Home Administration.
However, from the very first the "New Deal" was attacked for being "Communist" and "Socialist", and to this day you will find conservative politicians that criticize FDR's New Deal and make it their mission to remove its protections under the argument that they are "big government."

The fact that we are a big country and may therefore need "big government" does not seem to have occurred to them.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:42 AM on May 5, 2020 [92 favorites]


A much earlier and somewhat more positive take on the general idea was Joel Garreau's The Nine Nations of North America.

I also recommend Colin Woodard's American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America. I found it to be a lucid explanation of American cultural history and its impact on the current day. Very different from the monolith that is portrayed in typical histories.
posted by Otherwise at 8:54 AM on May 5, 2020 [8 favorites]


I maintain that smaller, weaker states is a goal of Trumpy politicians worldwide -- it's easier to bully/dominate small states, and most would rather be the Big Bully Boy of a small state than a bit player in a large federalist system. It's not just the US, it's all over the place. Trump, and the US generally, is merely an unusually stupid exemplar of the mindset, which IMHO frankly extends all the way down to the rank-and-file supporters of populism worldwide.
posted by aramaic at 8:55 AM on May 5, 2020 [13 favorites]


I kinda feel like America might be closer to becoming the next North Korea.
posted by Young Kullervo at 8:57 AM on May 5, 2020 [4 favorites]


The fact that we are a big country and may therefore need "big government" does not seem to have occurred to them.

if it's any consolation, in my comparatively small community, there has been a fairly vocal (and not entirely foolish sounding) individual whose anti-government opinions have held a lot of sway ... at least until the path month or two. Suddenly their screeds have landed as shallow, misinformed, paranoid, wrong. And more to the point, they've been loudly called out for it. And lately, the past couple of weeks, they've been pretty much shut up about it.

this has all played out in one of the local Facebook groups
posted by philip-random at 8:57 AM on May 5, 2020 [24 favorites]


Mod note: One deleted. Folks please be mindful that when you talk about "the red areas" or "the bad states" or whatever, and how they could disappear/etc, real people live there - plenty of your fellow Mefites, plenty of marginalized people on various axes, plenty of people who aren't the jerks you have in mind.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 9:22 AM on May 5, 2020 [38 favorites]


I'm intrigued by the ideas. (Well, except the obvious racism. And some serious misconceptions about China's domestic policies.) But, it misses the fact that most Americans live in reasonably large cities, and have done so for a century. Federal policy is really important, when it comes to immigration, war, national corporations, labor law, and occasionally forcing local idiots to act like reasonable human beings. But. . . that's about it. Only in American television and national politics is the mayor not the most important person in the daily lives of nearly everyone who lives in the country.
posted by eotvos at 9:23 AM on May 5, 2020 [1 favorite]


Who gets the nuclear weapons?
posted by spudsilo at 9:24 AM on May 5, 2020 [5 favorites]


the dollar as world reserve currency

When oil collapses, where does that leave the (oil-backed) petrodollar, and can America keep printing money to pay its debts and military?
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 9:25 AM on May 5, 2020 [3 favorites]


Who gets the nuclear weapons?
posted by spudsilo


I call dibs. I can park the car in the driveway. My garage has room.
posted by Splunge at 9:32 AM on May 5, 2020 [13 favorites]


"Closing the ‘Collapse Gap’: the USSR was better prepared for collapse than the US"

Yes, the US states are way more integrated than the USSR states ever were. It's much harder to prepare for something that is more unthinkable since unwinding all those connections will be darn near impossible.
posted by jmauro at 9:36 AM on May 5, 2020


When oil collapses, where does that leave the (oil-backed) petrodollar, and can America keep printing money to pay its debts and military?

Oil being denominated in USD helps it but the USD is the only currency with the liquidity to be traded in every other currency in the world. If a guy from Pakistan wants to sell to someone in Peru that transaction will hit USD in its journey.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 9:39 AM on May 5, 2020


I'm not sure about the total disintegration of the union, but, most certainly, the reduction of the federal government's responsibilities down to just financing the military, and leaving individual states to take care of themselves in every other way, is a big fever dream among those on the far right.
posted by Thorzdad at 9:50 AM on May 5, 2020 [20 favorites]


Engineers are* terrible at predictions and worse at being aware of that. They don't process complexity well at all. They are often sharp-eyed and good with description, but their mindset is too often "all problems have discrete solutions, and I can discover them."

*Yes, a generalization.
posted by sensate at 9:53 AM on May 5, 2020 [23 favorites]


Every empire seems destined to last forever until it's suddenly not there any more. The collapse only ever looks inevitable in hindsight. I spent a lot of my commutes (remember those?) listening to the Fall of Rome podcast, and it really drove that idea home. I personally don't think the American Empire is in its "inevitable collapse" stage yet, but even if it was none of us would know it.
posted by tobascodagama at 10:16 AM on May 5, 2020 [19 favorites]


Isn't saying the USSR was better prepared for collapse also saying that it was more prone to collapse? It is strange to suggest that the USSR collapse was random like a virus, in order to make the case that a random virus can cause it. On that note, many have predicted the Southern states would secede again, but today that would include all rural states, who enjoy more power as is.
posted by Brian B. at 10:21 AM on May 5, 2020 [3 favorites]


I spent a lot of my commutes (remember those?) listening to the Fall of Rome podcast, and it really drove that idea home. I personally don't think the American Empire is in its "inevitable collapse" stage yet, but even if it was none of us would know it.

You'll be glad to read this article from Patrick Wyman then.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 10:23 AM on May 5, 2020 [3 favorites]


I enjoyed Orlov's book, even though I'm not sure victory gardens and sailboat merchants would be a scalable prescription for instability in this country. (Although I can see myself cruising my secret gunkhole gardens behind the mangroves, fulfilling digital orders while avoiding the Coast Force)

I'm not sure where we are in the collapse cycle, but I will note that a company that provides private security to the president's campaign has executed a failed coup attempt in Venezuela and it is barely making headlines
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 10:39 AM on May 5, 2020 [14 favorites]


It seems ironic that the federal structures built to safeguard the smaller states (the Senate, Electoral College) are being used to dismantle the very government that takes money from wealthier states and provides it to them.
posted by meowzilla at 11:08 AM on May 5, 2020 [15 favorites]


American Nations is a great read, really opened my eyes to why we keep having the fights we have—we have completely different ideas of what government is for.

If we didn't have one of the dumbest, greediest thugs on the planet in charge, we might be faring better. But for some reason we've wrapped our entire government apparatus around pleasing a would-be king and his worldview. It doesn't have to be this way. At all.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 11:15 AM on May 5, 2020 [7 favorites]


The fundamental divide in America isn't between red and blue states or even regions, it's between blue cities/college towns and red suburban/rural areas. Metro Atlanta and Salt Lake City are more liberal than eastern Oregon or downstate Illinois. Some states just have enough Democratic strongholds to outweigh the Republican hinterlands. Any clever scheme to split the US into smaller pieces is unlikely to solve this problem.
posted by Rhaomi at 11:29 AM on May 5, 2020 [50 favorites]


When armed lunatics are storming state capitals for their "right" to spread a deadly contagion is openly endorsed by a lunatic president and his party — there are no guarantees that "America" continues.

Our economic position, our resource base, our military. None of these things guarantee any future at all at this point. If they ever really did.

What ensured that America existed at all was an agreement between a delicately balanced proportion of its establishment power elite and its citizens that we all wanted generally the same things, and agreed upon reality in a certain fundamental way, and a majority believed that this reality served them. That is over.

We have hit or are soon to hit a tipping point where there are too many people whose values and interests are in direct conflict and we can't agree on a reality framework to fix this conflict. Too many people of both political spectrums are willing to sacrifice their own self interests in a revanchist cultural suicide cycle to support either a dysfunctional reality or delusional future reality.

And there is a proportion of leadership that deliberately or through incompetence and corruption exacerbates this conflict and the traditional mechanism of governance cannot compensate and people won't participate at needed levels to force it to compensate.

It's total hubris to believe everything is just going to keep going like this. It's not. We are breaking apart right now.
posted by Everyone Expects The Spanish Influenza at 11:44 AM on May 5, 2020 [18 favorites]


I personally don't think the American Empire is in its "inevitable collapse" stage yet, but even if it was none of us would know it.

reminds me of a mostly forgettable Michael Moorcock story, the final line of which I doubt I'll ever forget. Something along the lines of:

"Meanwhile off in the distance, Rome was still burning, as it had been for hundreds of years."

I'm sure I got part/most of it wrong, but the sentiment remains. History's oft-times hard to notice when you're stuck in the middle of it.
posted by philip-random at 11:46 AM on May 5, 2020 [5 favorites]


In retrospect we'll all wonder how none of us saw the USA's rapid and decisive annexation by Canada coming.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 11:54 AM on May 5, 2020 [2 favorites]


In retrospect we'll all wonder how none of us saw the USA's rapid and decisive annexation by Canada coming.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 11:54 AM on May 5 [+] [!]


That would be like an (already surly and argumentative) family of four deciding to kidnap all the (heavily armed and infighting) members of the 40 person family compound next door.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 12:10 PM on May 5, 2020 [12 favorites]


I guess that'd be one way to take back the NHL.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 12:11 PM on May 5, 2020 [12 favorites]


cruising my secret gunkhole gardens behind the mangroves, fulfilling digital orders while avoiding the Coast Force

Snow Crash 2: Gig Economy
posted by allegedly at 12:28 PM on May 5, 2020 [9 favorites]


That would be like an (already surly and argumentative) family of four deciding to kidnap all the (heavily armed and infighting) members of the 40 person family compound next door.

Also, it'd be like the time Porsche tried to acquire Volkswagen, but then fucked up and ended up themselves just becoming a piece of Volkswagen instead.
posted by sideshow at 12:39 PM on May 5, 2020 [2 favorites]


In retrospect we'll all wonder how none of us saw the USA's rapid and decisive annexation by Canada coming.

I dunno. I think a wall on our southern border might be a better policy than annexation of the USA right now.

(And we'll make the Americans pay for it of course, as such things are done).
posted by fimbulvetr at 1:24 PM on May 5, 2020 [7 favorites]


The theory states that the United States and the Soviet Union will have collapsed for the same reasons, namely: a severe and chronic shortfall in the production of crude oil

That's...completely wrong? The Soviet Union collapsed because they relied to some extent on oil as a revenue stream; the oil glut of the mid-80's, which saw prices fall to around twelve dollars a barrel, largely eliminated that revenue stream (and that supposedly came about because Reagan went to the Saudis and got them to agree to ramp up production in exchange for aid and military hardware). The USA is facing the same problem, in that the Saudi/Russian price war is going to wipe out a lot of US tight oil producers; once the price rebounds (which it will eventually) there will be significant economic pain in the USA since so much of the American way of life is predicated on cheap oil (and a lot of US production by then will be shut in and possibly uneconomic to restart).
posted by Pseudonymous Cognomen at 1:31 PM on May 5, 2020 [7 favorites]


When armed lunatics are storming state capitals for their "right" to spread a deadly contagion is openly endorsed by a lunatic president and his party

Some variant of this has been happening regularly for my entire middle-aged life; infuriatingly frequently. Idiotic, sad, frustrating, and potentially dangerous, but not necessarily a bellwether.

All things end, and the US might be in the process of ending. Anything beyond that is at least partially astrology for millenarians.
posted by aspersioncast at 1:34 PM on May 5, 2020 [3 favorites]


Coronavirus Is Straining the Concept of Federalism

As somebody pointed out, in relation to the recent inter-state pacts and alliances, the US is in the process of reinventing the Holy Roman Empire.
posted by acb at 2:00 PM on May 5, 2020 [5 favorites]


I just went to his blog. His last couple of posts can be summed up as "Coronavirus is no big deal, the death rate isn't so high, we should just aim for herd immunity, especially since Sweden has done so well and it's essentially over there." This makes me question his thinking in general.
posted by rednikki at 2:06 PM on May 5, 2020 [22 favorites]


City-states, more like it. I actually see a United City-States of America vs the United Red-burbs of Amurika.
posted by JJ86 at 2:25 PM on May 5, 2020 [1 favorite]


Add to that a delusional self-image, an inflexible ideology, and an unresponsive political system.

More and more, this seems to summarize a lot of what is going on in the US. Everything else is just more description. And there are enough cynical bad actors who are taking full advantage that the End of US narrative is far from speculative fiction.
posted by elkevelvet at 2:45 PM on May 5, 2020 [2 favorites]


I don't think the US will be around forever, but I do want to say as one collapse-watcher to another: I do think its too tempting to take what you are an expert of or know more about, and kind of distorting and cutting it to fit another situation or country. Like, I knew a little more about the end of the Qing Dynasty, and I would look at things and start applying them to the US. For example, the current US are and late era Qing China were both arrogant in foreign affairs and had a large and unresponsive bureaucracy. Or how both have mass anti-foreigner movements, or fought and lost wars on multiple fronts within their perceived sphere of influence, or how both have an opium addiction problem.


And because of that temptation, I would be skeptical of anyone claiming that the collapse of the Roman Empire/USSR/Qing China/whatever-other-empire is going to explain how the US collapses.
posted by FJT at 3:17 PM on May 5, 2020 [9 favorites]


The Federal government decided that medical workers in my state were less worthy of life than medical workers elsewhere, despite my state being a coronavirus hot spot. My governor mounted a covert operation to replace the medical gear that was stolen from us.

Millions of people around the US are okay with this. I no longer want to share a flag and a passport with them. At this point, the preservation of the Union will take affirmative action. Inertia is not on the Union's side any more≥
posted by ocschwar at 3:18 PM on May 5, 2020 [11 favorites]


I just went to his blog. His last couple of posts can be summed up as "Coronavirus is no big deal, the death rate isn't so high, we should just aim for herd immunity, especially since Sweden has done so well and it's essentially over there." This makes me question his thinking in general.

Interestingly, Kunstler, another "doomer" often mentioned in the same breath as Orlov, is also a "corona-skeptic" (and appears to be a pretty ride-or-die Trump fan now).

In general, I think they both make some decent points about the fragility and long-term inviability of the modern American obsession with systems that maximize growth and short-term comfort at the expense of robustness and resilience. These include suburbs, just-in-time supply chain management, jettisoning entire parts of our economy because of lower labor prices abroad, etc. I also think Orlov is smart to observe that informal social connections protect you much more during a catastrophe than say, owning a cabin or a bunker and a lot of firearms, which is the more typical American prepper disaster fantasy.

But there's something about their overall worldview that I just find a little too cleverly contrarian, a little too smugly in love with cleansing fire and toughening up and ideas about degenerate empires -- and personally I think this is also where their predictions get into trouble. Chronically disagreeable people tend to overestimate their own intelligence, and I think once you get into the mindset that everyone else is an idiot (especially professional experts) you start to become immune to evidence.
posted by en forme de poire at 3:30 PM on May 5, 2020 [11 favorites]


At this point, the preservation of the Union will take affirmative action. Inertia is not on the Union's side any more

That's the problem with starting a country with people who hate each other only slightly less than an English tyrant.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 3:36 PM on May 5, 2020 [5 favorites]


In other words, even though this pandemic might seem to vindicate a lot of what the doomers have been saying about the hidden fragility of the American economy and lifestyle, and would even bring us closer to Orlov-style preparedness for an actual collapse, I think the doomer worldview is so nihilistic about the possible value of technology, expertise, and human life that they can't accept that: 1. the evidence suggests that the coronavirus is much more dangerous than flu; 2. listening to experts could help us prevent at least hundreds of thousands of deaths; and/or perhaps even 3. it is worth trying to prevent the large-scale needless loss of human life in the first place.
posted by en forme de poire at 3:43 PM on May 5, 2020 [1 favorite]


(Maybe I should walk part of that back, though: now that I'm re-reading it, Kunstler's blog doesn't seem as skeptical about Covid as I remember.)
posted by en forme de poire at 4:03 PM on May 5, 2020


It's the Jackpot, yo.
posted by valkane at 4:26 PM on May 5, 2020 [6 favorites]


Many people in this thread appear to be within the US. From outside it really does look like the US is coming apart, just appears SO divided; the many groups/states/cities which have been groomed to have such hateful views of each other (or willingly cultivated - I can't tell).

The corrupt so-called christians (they don't deserve a C) who go with anything the trumpists do as long as they hate on gays/poc/foreigners/science. The entrenched racism and hatred of nature is appalling - the southern wall's destruction of wilderness is doing both. I expect when they get to the ends they'll head north up both coasts

There's a fringe of culture, science and fairness but very fragmented and mainly (in my experience) coastal. The whole thing looks like an endlessly-nested gated community. The US used to have a psychic premium (altho' only for the un-bombed), now it really looks like a killing machine that is also in its death throes. I wish it was not so.
posted by unearthed at 4:39 PM on May 5, 2020 [16 favorites]


IMNSHO the United States is not breaking up any time soon. Even a real time traveler, John Titor, said it happened years ago. So we are in divergent timelines.

But seriously, what we will have to deal with is the people in every state separating. The Nazis and the intelligent folk. The anti-vax fuckwads and the scientists. The Trumpets and the rest of the people with common sense.

We may very well see riots. We have already. But maybe now, bigger riots. But when the next president is in power, and I truly believe this, a nervous truce may be possible. One where the Nazis once again fear the light of day. Not because of some (well deserved) vengeance. But because we, the majority, the smart people hold power again. And we use the rule of law to fix this damn country.
posted by Splunge at 4:55 PM on May 5, 2020 [5 favorites]


Um... uh... Anyone need a slightly used soap box?
posted by Splunge at 4:57 PM on May 5, 2020 [3 favorites]


I haven't been able to take Orlov seriously since he recommended his clunky house/sailboat as a way to survive collapse, somehow, and designed a new alphabet (looks like one of our elementary school codes) to help children learn to read English. After which they would still have to learn to read English.
posted by Botanizer at 4:58 PM on May 5, 2020 [4 favorites]


Some variant of this has been happening regularly for my entire middle-aged life;

No it hasn't. I'm sorry but that is nonsense. Just nonsense.

Armed civilians have not stormed a state capitol with the endorsement of the President in my entire life.

And any example you attempt to draw from will be a total false equivalence.

I am 57. This has never happened. It is unprecedented in my life.
posted by Everyone Expects The Spanish Influenza at 5:12 PM on May 5, 2020 [25 favorites]


I don’t think the USA will breakup anytime soon but O do think the defining challenges of the next 59 years will be how the country comes to terms with its decline in prominence relative to China. There will come a moment for the US like the Suez crisis was in 1956 for France and Britain. After the crisis was over it was suddenly clear to the UK and France that they were no longer peers of the USA and Russia. This loss of status along with the impacts of climate change will result in a long period of humbling for the USA
posted by interogative mood at 5:22 PM on May 5, 2020 [8 favorites]


Increasingly I think that the only way we'll survive as a species will be if the US splits up into smaller nations, with all the red state idiots going off to Jesus-stan and all the people with any sense banding together to actually get shit done and try to save the planet before it's too late. In that scenario it's not hard to imagine the Jesustaniacs getting very sick from the diseases they refused to wear masks to protect themselves from, getting their homes destroyed by all the climate change they denied would ever happen, etc., and maybe bombing other countries and each other. If they were all isolated together and allowed to go as crazy as they liked, shit could get GRIM.

But that may be what it takes for us to survive. American conservatives have become a cancer in this world, and if we don't remove them in time we're all fucking doomed. They've shown that even when the literal plague comes they'll dismiss it as libtard lies, huff in our faces to spite us and wave their little guns around while they holler about freedom. We've reached a point of division where you have half the country voting for an unapolgetic nationalist/misogynist/racist/sexual predator/et fucking al, and there's every reason to think Trump will try to rig the next election. If you think his first term was shitty, imagine him emboldened, convinced he has a "mandate."

We've already got a soft secession, with the states having to work together to do all the vital shit the feds are supposed to do but just aren't doing. If Trump gets in again I think vast swaths of the country will quickly become new countries, in all but name. If Biden gets in, we will get some of the change we need. Not enough, but some. With a few lucky breaks, the nation may endure. If Trump gets in, America is probably finished and we can only pray that something better rises up to take its place. The conservatives find the whole idea of government disgusting, they refuse to govern, so if they're just gonna finger paint the walls with blood and poop somebody's gotta be the grown up.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 5:36 PM on May 5, 2020 [6 favorites]


I always see this speculation about the US breaking up, but never any coherent ideas about the *mechanism* for the break up.

The reality is, the proposition was tested in 1861 and it failed. The US will not break up. It will get more and more divided politically, though...

I think the only way through is via democracy reform (ending gerrymandering, increasing access to voting, etc.), direct economic help to those without economic opportunity, and liberalization of zoning laws (housing prices are such a ghastly to cost to so many people, and the existing status quo transfers more and more wealth to the wealthy, while blocking people from moving to cities where good jobs exist).
posted by lewedswiver at 5:47 PM on May 5, 2020 [3 favorites]


If Trump gets in again I think vast swaths of the country will quickly become new countries, in all but name.

This. It's already happening. We just keep adjusting to the new normal.

Nobody knows the shape of the end result. Or if we can put it back together in some, new or better form or not. I don't think there are models or historical precedents that help us visualize all that well. Therefor it's easy for people to dismiss.

But to argue this isn't a slow motion dissolution of what we once, just eight years ago, thought America was, is simply a denial of what is happening before our very eyes.

Most of us here no longer have any relationship to the upside down vision or values that over 30% of America now increasingly openly embrace. And that 30% is running things. that 30% has the power and the guns and the will. And they WANT our vision and future to fall apart.
posted by Everyone Expects The Spanish Influenza at 5:55 PM on May 5, 2020 [6 favorites]


The US will not break up. It will get more and more divided politically, though...

This is functionally the same thing.
posted by Everyone Expects The Spanish Influenza at 5:56 PM on May 5, 2020 [1 favorite]


separate this discussion into 2 things:

1) secession of states into self-governing entities apart from Fedreral government

2) the ability to provide essential services & security on a local level
posted by ovvl at 6:09 PM on May 5, 2020 [5 favorites]


People think this all about some big dramatic break up with tanks and battles and new borders being drawn and new names for new countries. But that's not what is happening. It's way more subtle, but just as consequential.

What is happening is the federal government is becoming mostly an inert stage for performative liberal frustrations for Democrats; and a corrupt power channel to funnel wealth into the hands of the wealthy for the Republicans to fund their asymmetric culture war so an angry minority of white people can stay in power. The states are morphing into pseudo-self-governing vassal entities that generate just enough money to keep it all going.

The rest is a big military budget to salute to that pretends to hold it all together.

And it can stay that way for decades. It IS a break-up in every other sense. It's some in-between period without an obvious name that will last until it doesn't.
posted by Everyone Expects The Spanish Influenza at 6:26 PM on May 5, 2020 [16 favorites]


Cascadia flag design discussions are IN.
posted by Twang at 6:30 PM on May 5, 2020


We've talked about how Cascadia is a white supremacist thing, right? Because it's definitely a white supremacist thing.
posted by schmod at 6:41 PM on May 5, 2020 [2 favorites]


Pick two regions similar in distance to the capitol, say Wyoming and Chechnya. One petitioned a century ago by vote, peacefully, to become a state. The other was forcefully assimilated, kinda never happy, and got out as soon as the armies of the capitol showed weakness.

Just the first though that popped into my head.

I remember chats with smart non-americans around 2016 where I assured them if Trump tried to have a third term, no one, not the SC, congress or the military would allow that unless the full process of a new amendment were ratified by 3/4's of the states and that just would not be happening.

There is a reality to being "an American citizen" as disagreeable as a lot of us can be and bickering like the worst of family members, a deep total understanding that the most remote Mainer is the same in certain way as the most urban denizen from the center of Los Angeles and the crunchiest Seattlite to any Florida man.

You're a crazy dude but get out the vote.
posted by sammyo at 7:02 PM on May 5, 2020 [6 favorites]


A few hundred morons with retro-tastic beards (because they think it makes them look like in-country CIA and Delta operatives doing liaison with the hill tribes, natch) show up in their cosplay outfits to strut and stroke their manliest of manly man gear and suddenly everyone is convinced the world is going to end.

Man, if I knew people were gonna be this easily frightened I'd have launched my coup a couple decades ago.
posted by aramaic at 7:33 PM on May 5, 2020 [4 favorites]




We've talked about how Cascadia is a white supremacist thing, right? Because it's definitely a white supremacist thing.

I'm in British Columbia and though I've never really taken the Cascadia idea seriously, this is the first I've heard that it's "... definitely a white supremacist thing." I mean, that would be news to a few friends, at least one of whom is definitively not white, none of whom I can recall spouting what I'd call racist crap.

I think you may be thinking of the Northwest Territorial Imperative
posted by philip-random at 8:40 PM on May 5, 2020 [4 favorites]


I really still like the good of all humankind and trying to make it happen.
posted by lauranesson at 9:41 PM on May 5, 2020 [2 favorites]


There's not going to be a breakup. The Feds have tanks, and that's that, and we're not turning an American city into a walled prison, and we're not going to get a Purge inspired federal holiday, either, and it's interesting how these three fantasies are linked, but if you absolutely must hang your hat on a dystopian future, I'd say some mix of THX1138 and Soylent Green might be waiting for our great great great great grandchildren if we don't start making inroads on environmentalism and human rights.
posted by Beholder at 10:12 PM on May 5, 2020 [1 favorite]


Armed civilians have not stormed a state capitol with the endorsement of the President in my entire life.

Mmmm, yeah, sorry if that seemed to be pointed at you specifically. The endorsement of the president part is fucking terrifying, although I'd argue that it was at least tacit with the second amendment wingnuts for decades.

Protesters show up at state capitols with guns all the time though. The earliest example I could find in the late 20th was the Panthers doing it in 67, but if you dig a little you can find examples for every decade, and like . . . pretty sure I didn't just invent those memories. Those Tea Party fuckers continually showed up at state capitols with guns, and everyone made a big conciliatory show of respecting their rights.
posted by aspersioncast at 10:56 PM on May 5, 2020 [1 favorite]


I picked this when kur05hin.org was still around. I posted it, someone dinged me for being unrealistic, and yet here we are...
posted by awfurby at 11:00 PM on May 5, 2020 [1 favorite]


Increasingly I think that the only way we'll survive as a species will be if the US splits up into smaller nations, with all the red state idiots going off to Jesus-stan

A lot of women and gay people will be murder victims from this secession. They will die in this civil war fantasy. That's a reality. Let's aim higher.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 12:22 AM on May 6, 2020 [10 favorites]


We've already got a soft secession, with the states having to work together to do all the vital shit the feds are supposed to do but just aren't doing.

This is a return to old ways, not anything new. The popular understanding of federal vs. state power has shifted back and forth several times in the past two hundred years. Do I like it? No. But new it ain't. We've always had obstinate know-nothings. We've always had states working together to solve problems, even during my life.

What we have now is Twitter and trolls telling us everything is terrible and making it seem (in some ways) worse than it is. Their entire goal is to make things seem hopeless and our problems insurmountable so that we all give up.
posted by wierdo at 4:01 AM on May 6, 2020 [3 favorites]


I didn't read the whole article, in spite of having earlier mentioned here on the blue that I could see a lot of similarities between the USA and the USSR, back during the Cold War. It seemed naive and unreflected to me. Maybe when you are part of one of those countries (in his case both) you are somewhat blind to both the similarities and the differences and what they signify.
First of all, the USA has always been overwhelmingly richer and stronger than the USSR ever was. That doesn't mean the USA can't collapse, but it does mean that an eventual collapse of the USA won't be very similar to a USSR collapse. While the author claims that Russia is still very powerful, it was never able to stop the USSR and Warsaw Pact members from doing their own thing. Right now, the USA is trying to colonize Greenland, and Denmark and the EU will be powerless if there is a US military involvement.
Second, as others have pointed out, the USSR was never one nation in the way the USA is. And that has a lot to do with the first point. The USSR did have projects in the poorer states, but since they didn't really have the money for it, those projects couldn't inspire a sense of togetherness or community. There was never a TVA in the USSR.
The third aspect is that of the USA being a colonial, immigrant society and how the national identity has grown out of that (with all the problems that entails). The USSR was "Mother Russia and its vassals", and surprise! Non of the vassals felt Russian or that Russia was their mother. sammyo has this.
Fourth, but not at all least, USSR was invaded by libertarian robbers the minute the Communist regime fell, and there was nothing to stop them. In the USA, those robbers are already there, but there is also a (weak) system of rules and regulations to limit their activities.

One of the aspects in which the USA and the USSR were similar during the 1990's were that the people would not accept taxation. This has of course only worsened. If your central government is so illegitimate and corrupt that people don't want to contribute to the common good, you can't run a modern state. This is one of the things that may or may not change with the coronavirus.

Empires are similar, but different. The American Empire has broken down during Trump's presidency, in the sense that it was mainly built on alliances rather than colonies and vassals, and those alliances have broken all but in name. There are still a UN, and a NATO, but they don't support the American Empire like they did. They were beginning to break long before Trump arrived, but he pushed them over the brink.

I've been reading a lot about the fall of Rome for work this past year, and something that stuck out was that Rome has never completely gone away. It's been through a lot of iterations and there have been seriously bad times, but Rome today is the capital of a state that is basically what Rome was just before the Empire, and which was before the coronavirus the 7th largest economy in the world, with a corrupt and disfunctional and bankrupt government. In a similar way, I think the USA will not completely go away. It may never again be as important and glamorous as it was in 1960, and there may be times where the federal government is practically non-existent. But it will be there.
posted by mumimor at 4:05 AM on May 6, 2020 [8 favorites]


The question is: what percentage of Americans see Trump as the champion of their tribe, whom they will rally behind no matter what, dismissing cognitively dissonant evidence as “fake news” and rationalising any gaps with Soros/Gates/Qanon conspiracy theories? Is it 27% (the “crazification factor”)? 45% (Trump's apparent floor of support)? Or a tiny number?
posted by acb at 4:48 AM on May 6, 2020


Protesters show up at state capitols with guns all the time though.

yes but past presidents haven't said "oh good they're liberating their states!" (paraphase)

that's the difference.
posted by affectionateborg at 5:01 AM on May 6, 2020 [4 favorites]


From the outside this also seems like a very scary development.
posted by Harald74 at 5:20 AM on May 6, 2020 [3 favorites]


I remember chats with smart non-americans around 2016 where I assured them if Trump tried to have a third term, no one, not the SC, congress or the military would allow that unless the full process of a new amendment were ratified by 3/4's of the states and that just would not be happening.

Sorry to break the bad news to you, but a third term of Trump presidency is definitely constitutional and in my view not unlikely. It just won’t be Donald at the helm. I’m sure he’d still have a nice office in the White House and be on TV a lot though.
posted by soy bean at 5:54 AM on May 6, 2020


~Protesters show up at state capitols with guns all the time though.
~Yes but past presidents haven't said "oh good they're liberating their states!"
~From the outside this also seems like a very scary development.


I have to admit, I'm kind of afraid of what might happen if Trump loses in November.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:56 AM on May 6, 2020 [2 favorites]


It just won’t be Donald at the helm.

I was thinking that, some months after his reelection, after the strain gets to him, he'd hand the reins over to Donald Jr. FOXNews would announce the coronation as a fait accompli, and the NYT would both-sides with a “some constitutional scholars have expressed doubt about the legality of the transition, however...”
posted by acb at 6:22 AM on May 6, 2020 [1 favorite]


I just spent a fascinating couple of minutes reading up on Andrew Jackson, partly to respond to the notion of "Past presidents haven't encouraged the protesters". I've long mentally compared Jackson with Trump in the sense that both were populist presidents, making direct appeal to the voters, and both had sex scandals, and both were racist dipshits.

So Jackson might indeed have supported protesters directly - but not over this notion. On the other hand, Jackson was in favor of strengthening the union - there was once a conflict over a series of tariffs in the early 1800s designed to encourage American manufacturing; however, South Carolina had a tough time exporting its cotton on the world market as a result, and had a hard time buying any other goods, and lobbied hard for the right to waive the tariffs in their state (and they threatened to secede, kinda). Jackson actually supported the tariffs, even though he sympathized with South Carolina, on the grounds that one state having it different than the others would weaken the Union.

Jackson was also in favor of expanding the voter base, and also tried to eliminate the electoral college.

I still have a hunch that if Twitter had been a thing in the 1820s, and if there were armed protesters turning up wanting to kill the electoral college, Jackson would have been all "go for it, dudes!"
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:29 AM on May 6, 2020 [2 favorites]


I have to admit, I'm kind of afraid of what might happen if Trump loses in November.

We keep having older candidates, what happens when (not if see what i did there) Biden wins, but has a covid-19 or other mortality issue and dies before he can take the oath of office? Can the veep take office before becoming veep?
posted by sammyo at 8:06 AM on May 6, 2020


Can the veep take office before becoming veep?

Yes, because the veep was elected to be a replacement.
posted by Brian B. at 9:12 AM on May 6, 2020 [2 favorites]


Metro Atlanta and Salt Lake City are more liberal than eastern Oregon or downstate Illinois. Some states just have enough Democratic strongholds to outweigh the Republican hinterlands. Any clever scheme to split the US into smaller pieces is unlikely to solve this problem.

Without gerrymandering the House, locking down the number of representatives no matter how population changes, and the thumb-on-the-scales influence of the Senate in the Electoral College, a vocal dissident minority has limited influence.

Without a national media stranglehold by companies determined to play "both sides" instead of "the majority, which (at least in theory) wants everyone to thrive*, and a minority, which wants to punish 'wrong' people even if it hurts a whole bunch of 'right' people," it'd be a lot easier to establish policies that actually do implement the "rising tide" theories.

The problem isn't "there are close-minded bigots all over the US, and splitting by state won't get rid of them." The problem is, the current system tries very hard to give them an equal voice, even though they're outnumbered by both headcount and economic contributions.

Splitting the country is a damned excessive way to get rid of that problem, but when all the checks-and-balances stop working, it can look like the only option.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 11:11 AM on May 6, 2020 [9 favorites]


Protesters show up at state capitols with guns all the time though.

No they are not. This is just not true. It is exceptionally rare. Not storming INSIDE the capitol buildings because that is illegal in most states. There are only a handful of states where you can legally enter a government building open carrying a firearm.

When it is done it is startling and brings widespread condemnation from federal authorities and the president. The president has never openly encouraged it. And why that isn't a notable and immediate difference to you, well, I'm simply at loss as to how you can be so blasé about it.
posted by Everyone Expects The Spanish Influenza at 2:35 PM on May 6, 2020 [4 favorites]


I still have a hunch that if Twitter had been a thing in the 1820s, and if there were armed protesters turning up wanting to kill the electoral college, Jackson would have been all "go for it, dudes!"

Turning back the progressive clock to the 1820's, like that's supposed to be evidence of some cycle is not reassuring and exactly what we want to avoid at al costs. We don't have another 200 years to claw back progressive gains.
posted by Everyone Expects The Spanish Influenza at 2:42 PM on May 6, 2020


The first question that comes to mind whenever this !!THE US IS FALLING!! stuff comes up is, what does whoever is saying it think about the 60s and 70s? In both the 1800s and 1900s.

We have data on what it takes to cause secession. We are nowhere near that point. We aren't close to the 1960s-70s, or even the 1990s. We are definitely, 100%, nowhere near the 1850-1870 period. How many open lynchings have been held recently? We haven't even had a single courthouse burning. If we want to talk about presidents who think they're kings, well, the worst Trump has bragged about is assault, not murder. We haven't even hit peak imperialist presidency.

I'm not making light of either then or now. Things are bad now. Things were much, much worse then. US politics is a sucky mess, with some new and very alarming features. But the US has hung together through much worse. America is not going to start disintegrating.

Some portions of American political leadership have decided to pull through this crisis by blaming someone else and picking WW3. That's what I'm concerned about. I'm grateful that most media are keeping the focus on domestic politics and not falling for the Trump's and the Republican's China-focused war mongering.

Don't be worried about the US falling apart. Be worried about who will win this current struggle and who their targets will be.
posted by Ahniya at 3:13 PM on May 6, 2020 [3 favorites]


How many open lynchings have been held recently?

Do you mean, "aside from the incredible number of black men shot for the crime of being seen by a white man with a gun?"

How many mass shootings happened in the 1960s? In the 1850s?

The shape of public violence against marginalized communities has changed. Lynchings against individuals are more likely to be caught and prosecuted now - but both the courts and the general public have shown they're willing to tolerate an incredible amount of murder as long as it's aimed at a crowd, especially a crowd of students.

Violent incidents at courthouses are on the rise, although admittedly, arson and bombings are not - possibly because we have better forensics now, and they're no longer considered a low-risk way to lash out.

But March 2020 was the first March since 2002 without a school shooting.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 4:04 PM on May 6, 2020 [1 favorite]


School shootings are not political terrorist attacks, the way lynchings were. They're individual, largely uncoordinated mass killings. Lynchings were deliberate, coordinated campaigns of terrorist violence with the explicit aim of suppressing a specific group and denying them their rights. Both are horrific violence, but they're not the same.

Violence at a courthouse is not the same thing as armed & violent groups trying to fight or destroy the legal institution of the courthouse. We have some of those too, and that's probably what I'm most concerned about internally, but we don't have the same kind of corruption-or-destruction embedded within our legal institutions that existed within this country in living memory.

Police violence is a very serious problem, but it's nothing like the problem we had back when the mayor and police chief were both in the local KKK group and segregation was in full swing.

America is more violent in some ways where it wasn't before, and less violent in some ways than it used to be. But just having violence doesn't mean we're having political violence, and it doesn't mean the political structures are about to collapse.
posted by Ahniya at 4:25 PM on May 6, 2020


We have an actual global pandemic and the president is bragging about specifically not helping states where the governors didn't kiss his ass to his satisfaction. ("I say, ‘Mike, don’t call the governor in Washington, you’re wasting your time with him. Don’t call the woman in Michigan. If they don’t treat you right, I don’t call.”) Doctors are having to make ventilators out of stuff from Home Depot. Assuming the pandemic doesn't magically go away very soon, we can assume that the states will have to continue to do nation-y things in the absence of actual national leadership. If Trump gets in again, a true depression sets in and we're all still walking around wearing goddamned masks while it's blazing hot in December, I think a lot of states will have no option but to become their own little countries in all but name. This isn't some lefty fairy story, nobody's saying that we need to start stocking up for the coming revolution. But when the world is on fire and the federal response is, "I got mine, Jack," vast swaths of the country will be forced to essentially secede just to survive. We're already seeing it now.

I'd kind of like Newsom's "Nation-State" thing to take off, because I like how it calls Trump's bluff. If Trump's just going to use his power to exact revenge on anybody who didn't vote for him, there's no point pretending that the United States in actually United anymore.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 6:11 PM on May 6, 2020 [3 favorites]


I dont know, I've been to a lot of Cascadia meetings in both WA and OR and I can confirm that no one at those meetings thinks it's a white supremacist group. All they ever talk about is protecting watersheds, forested lands, and native species. There's usually some discussion of how a consensus-based governance could work and how social services and safety nets could be set up and how public services and infrastructure could be funded and provided. If anyone has read The Fifth Sacred Thing by Starhawk, its basically the model they're following. If fiction isnt your jam, she details the governance structure is more detail in The Empowerment Manual. I purely hate the New Age movement but this is one aspect I actually think might be useful.
posted by ananci at 6:24 PM on May 6, 2020 [4 favorites]


We are definitely, 100%, nowhere near the 1850-1870 period.

Right. No where near. Because the POTENTIAL for catastrophic failure is way worse.

There was no looming Climate Crisis set turn civilization inside out in 1850 with a world population over 7 billion.

Nuclear weapons didn’t exist from 1850-1870. One man couldn’t order the execution of hundreds of millions of people in minutes with the turn of a key in 1870.

One company of men armed with modern infantry small arms weapons and communications equipment could easily decimate an entire 1850’s battalion.

Unlike 1870 one man armed with modern small arms can kill 50 people and wound 500 Las Vegas concert goers in minutes from the safe confines of a hotel suite.

The amount of fire power in the hands of average Americans in 2020 is orders of magnitude more destructive than those possessed in 1850.

So. What you don’t seem to fully appreciate here is, sure we have all this technology and these systems in place and much better experts, but if they fail the cascading series or potential consequences are infinitely worse than anything even conceivable in 1850.

So we should be doing everything we can to ensure we get a Democrat elected.
posted by Everyone Expects The Spanish Influenza at 7:52 PM on May 6, 2020 [4 favorites]


Turning back the progressive clock to the 1820's, like that's supposed to be evidence of some cycle is not reassuring and exactly what we want to avoid at al costs.

But....that's....that's not what I was doing. I was remarking on the earlier claim that "no president has ever publicly encouraged protesters the way that Trump is doing" by saying (or, at least, trying to say) that "If Twitter existed in 1820 I bet Jackson WOULD have done exactly that".

It was a comment on presidential reactions to protesters, not a comment on suggesting that the world entire regress 200 years.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:12 PM on May 6, 2020 [3 favorites]


I trust the social scientists when they say that "no, secession never happens in a country unless indicators A, B and C cross specific thresholds X, Y and Z". However, my gut feeling is that today the rate of change is much higher than, say, in the 1860 or even the 1960. Those numbers can change figuratively in the blink of an eye due to the, well, everything *gestures vaguely in the direction of Twitter, Facebook and Fox News*

Much the same way as WWI started due to some "damned foolish thing in the Balkans" I heave the fear that the US is going to boil over due to something that does not seem all that consequential at first glance. In the autumn you'll have your elections, with one party playing up the fear and anger for all it's worth, maybe combined with a second wave of COVID-19 as the experts predict. If the summer weather was unusually harsh (like it always is these days) a tired and pissed populace might latch on to some grievance or other and bring everything to a head.

The next administration is going to have their work cut out for them, whoever they'll be and whether they'll try and calm the waters or ride the bull.
posted by Harald74 at 10:51 PM on May 6, 2020 [2 favorites]


BTW, I was thinking about the federal seizures of PPE shipments, and all the ways that situation can go wrong. Let's say in the autumn COVID-19 ramps up again, the US is still woefully understocked on PPE (because preparing is for sissies) and we get PPE seizures round 2. A truck is stopped at a truck depot, but it has an escort from local LE. The feds and locals have a tense standoff, or maybe the feds barge and startle the locals. Anyway a shot rings out and somebody is on the floor dead. And now it's up to the President to skilfully defuse the situation...
posted by Harald74 at 11:01 PM on May 6, 2020 [7 favorites]


I get that Orlov argues that collapse is a prerequisite to dissolution, but he's adorably Russian in so many ways, and that's just another way. I like a lot of what he's written, because he writes really messy, the-arrow-of-time-points-inexorably-towards-dystopia, nobody's-id-is-contained near-time rapture fiction that makes Left Behind look like a happy bedtime story. Yes, Dmitry, we get it... people ate their dead family members in the Ukrainian famine, and nobody gets over that. Soviets were more prepared because Hitler and cannibalism. Got it.

But if we push aside the more crazyface parts of his arguments, he isn't totally out to lunch. For one thing, we've already broken up as a country. Collapse is not a prerequisite to dissolution. For that matter, formal dissolution is not even a prerequisite to practical dissolution.

I live in Nancy Pelosi's district, here in San Francisco, as I have for about 25 years. This afternoon at 5pm, the Dystopia Hotline rang to announce that Nancy was convening a teleconference roundtable right then (seriously, no other warning), and everyone who got the call should dial in. So, heck, I'm game. I dial in.

Her CoS is on the line lining up live call-in questions to the most powerful legislator on Earth in front of God and everybody. So obviously I stayed, because surely this is going to turn into dinner and a show. Now, apparently her CoS has no fear whatsoever, because the first caller he puts through is a restauranteur who took SBA Payroll Protection and is afraid he's going to end up outside the loan covenant because he has to pay rent instead of paychecks in overly-expensive SF. But his question wasn't, "What are you going to do about additional aid?" He was clearly way too far past screwed to care about that. Instead he asked, "How are we going to make California more economically resilient going forward?" You gotta love San Franciscans, y'all... there's a virus at the door, payrolls all over the state are in crisis, and we want to talk macroeconomics.

There's a pause. This concall was clearly intended to be a here's-the-unemployment-office-hotline call, and the Speaker of the House has just been asked how we're going to reconstruct the state bigger and better even though it isn't even done burning yet.

Nancy immediately launches into the difference between California and other states, and how we need distinctly different legal carveouts than the other states. Not once did she swing past anything that could be confused for, "We're still one America." 100% of her answer was, "California is going to get what it needs, one way or another." No hint that our delegation plans to work Congress and trade and make nice and come together. No Obama Hope. No more-unites-us-than-divides-us.

And then, somewhere in the middle of her answer to the second caller's question, she misspoke. Twice. I've been listening to this woman give public remarks for two and a half decades--she wasn't playing games. It was clearly a slip of the tongue as--twice--she said, "President Newsom." She didn't even notice it the first time. But the second time, she laughed and said, "Of course, I meant Governor Newsom. The Governor."

But of course, she didn't mean governor. Right now, Newsom is effectively the President of California, Oregon and Washington. She knows it. We know it. She slipped and said what we already knew. The Speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States, second in the line of succession for the Presidency, let slip: in her mind, too, we're already running a separate country over here.

As our beliefs begin to crystalize around what it means that a significant subset of the US population (and economy) is already rolling down the downslope towards de-identification from the United States, it's going to become a race between A) openly acknowledging the mindset shift so we can deal with it peacefully and B) something bad happening that galvanizes the population to have a non-peaceable reaction. That's not sedition--it's just what happens when a big group forms a "we" and identifies their adversary "they."

So yeah, nothing at all to do with nuts flourishing guns in the faces of state troopers in Lansing. Not anymore. Because that's "they" and rapidly becoming someone else's problem in the minds of "we." Heaven help us if a "they" shoots a "we" though. Before that happens, I think we need to start talking, because shared, silent belief precedes social upheaval. I'm not excited to find out what happens if that blister of shared, silent belief pops suddenly.
posted by kochbeck at 1:33 AM on May 7, 2020 [26 favorites]


Thanks for posting that, kochbeck, both for your thoughts about Orlov, who I didn't know before this post, and for your report from California. Both are most interesting.
posted by mumimor at 2:56 AM on May 7, 2020 [2 favorites]


secession never happens in a country unless indicators A, B and C cross specific thresholds X, Y and Z

If it was a simple formula like that I think my Crusader Kings 2 experience has us covered - Donald Trump is Emperor of the United States of America, which rank is called "President" in the American culture. He has fifty duke-level "Governors" as direct vassals, but with his nil Diplomacy stat and his spouse's not much better, he is way over his vassal limit and suffering severe penalties. So what Trump is forced to do here is create king-level "Senior Governor" titles for the Northeast Multi-State Council, the Western States Pact, the Midwestern Alliance, and Texas.
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 10:12 PM on May 7, 2020



BTW, I was thinking about the federal seizures of PPE shipments, and all the ways that situation can go wrong. Let's say in the autumn COVID-19 ramps up again, the US is still woefully understocked on PPE (because preparing is for sissies) and we get PPE seizures round 2. A truck is stopped at a truck depot, but it has an escort from local LE. The feds and locals have a tense standoff, or maybe the feds barge and startle the locals.


Local LE have a lot of camaraderie with the other local first responders, and by camaraderie I mean high rates of marriage between cops and EMTs et cetera. Once PPE is in the hands of a local escort, any attempt to seize for FEMA WILL result in gunfire, which is why FEMA has repeatedly assured people that they have only seized shipments that were in the hands of sellers, NOT in the hands of buyers. Someone at FEMA knows this. And another item for "when this is all over," that someone may deserve a Nobel for averting another "shot heard round the world."
posted by ocschwar at 6:49 AM on May 8, 2020


Multiple small functional nations operating in sync mostly for national defense is the way the US was founded and organized. It's right in the name. It's neither a uniformly negative outcome, nor unprecedented. It also won't mean the dissolution of the union, destruction of the uniform commercial code, etc.

Like I said upthread, the real danger is not that the balance of power shifts back towards the states. The real danger is that crazies maintain control of a strongly unified country and aim us at someone.

The Democratic party is frantically trying to fill their empty national-level bench with governors and other high-profile local politicians, Newsom and Cuomo are obvious candidates for 2024 presidential runs, a Democratic powerhouse is dropping hints to pave their way. That's all I'd read into Pelosi's 'slip'.
posted by Ahniya at 11:31 PM on May 11, 2020 [1 favorite]


I don’t see any declaration of a ‘break up’ coming at all. But this serf-y/Lord-y phase does seem to going in to overdrive.
posted by Harry Caul at 7:57 AM on May 13, 2020


But of course, she didn't mean governor. Right now, Newsom is effectively the President of California, Oregon and Washington. She knows it. We know it. She slipped and said what we already knew. The Speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States, second in the line of succession for the Presidency, let slip: in her mind, too, we're already running a separate country over here.

I can kind of sympathize with that perspective, though - because when the actual President is an ignorant buffoon who is doing fuck-all aside from trying to boost his own PR ratings in an impotent bid for parental approval, it falls to the governors of each state to step in and try to lead effectively for their own constituents.

Newsom is effectively the President of California, Oregon and Washington, but that's largely because the role of President was effectively empty and someone needed to step up.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:05 AM on May 13, 2020 [1 favorite]


Gov. Cuomo: "Sometimes I would like to take the State of New York and secede and just not have to deal with the Federal Government." He is joking of course, just a funny little jape for a press conference, ha.
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 2:50 PM on May 25, 2020


Well, I hate to say this, but this posting seems a tad bit more prescient now.
posted by FJT at 10:42 AM on June 1, 2020


No, This Isn’t as Bad as 1968 (So Far)

The dual assassinations of Martin Luther King on April 4 and Robert Kennedy on June 6 rocked the country. Riots in a hundred cities after King’s death led to 1,000 buildings burned in Washington, D.C., alone. In Chicago, 11 people were killed in 48 hours; hundreds of buildings were destroyed; and nearly 20,000 police and National Guard were sent in.

posted by philip-random at 11:46 PM on June 4, 2020 [1 favorite]


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