Akennas

(Readers:

Like a big, mossy snapping turtle, I have been a lurker for years on other blogs and websites.  Finally, as I approach my 50errumpth birthday, it seems time to stick my neck out and start offering.  Especially with the warped accelleration of the presidential campaign (President Bush has over 22 months left, for Pete's sake!), it seems I can't hang around much longer if I wish to contribute.  But since I like to listen as much as contribute, I will tend to throw out items for consideration, then sit back and see what comes back my way.)

2 March 2007:  It is my opinion that the United States is closer to dissolution than any time since 1860.  The Red State/Blue State dichotomy is more than just a political metaphor:  it is a political/religious/ideological schism.  I have been reading some publications about the lead up to the American Civil War, and the choice of words by the antebellum partisans looks strikingly like what you will read in the various blogs.  These people view their American adversaries as a greater threat than, say, Al Qaida or Putin's Russia.  The vitriol goes beyond disagreement - it contains undiluted hatred.  The desire to separate from each other seems real, and their take on identical subjects are not shaded, they are polar opposites.  I can easily imagine real bloodshed between armed camps.  Is it time to separate peacefully (as the Czech Republic and Slovakia did) before we separate violently (as Yugoslavia did and Iraq threatens to do)?

Taken to its logical conclusion, I could see in such an American "Velvet Divorce" a tripartite division of the states AND Canada:  1) Blue New England, New York and Rust Belt states joining with the Canadian Maritime provinces and Ontario to form a secular, liberal Atlantic Union; 2) the three West Coast states joining with British Columbia to form an equally secular, liberal Pacific Union; 3) the remaining states combining with the remaining western Canadian provinces to retain the title of the United States of America and its traditional Judeo-Christian conservatism.  Quebec would get its long-cherished wish and become the independent Republique du Quebec.

At first, I found the idea appalling, but the more I think of it, the more it makes sense, and seems to offer a reasonable way to ease divisions, tensions, gridlock and surpressed aspirations.  Why should anyone be coerced to permanent accommodation to beliefs that are untenable?  The Civil War was over a practice, slavery, viewed as a great evil by a large number of Americans but viewed as a constitutionally-protected right by an equally determined minority.  It was resolved at a dreadful cost, but the Union was refined and strengthened.  As (I think) Shelby Foote wrote, we stopped saying "the United States are" and started saying "the United States is".  I see nothing in the current conflict that rises to the level of the evil inherent in slavery; it is more of a drifting or growing apart.

Am I on a radical but plausible line of thought?  Or would such a partition be more like India and Pakistan than Czechslovakia?

[The ball is now in your court for comment.  Thank you for reading.]