Thursday, March 28, AD 2024 8:30am

Of Blue Islands and Red Seas

 

 

Walter Schaub was hilariously once head of the Office of Government Ethics for the Federal government.  His lies about what conservatives believe, and his wishing we would disappear, are taken as Gospel truth these days on the port side of our politics.  I begin to think that our chances of Civil War II are rapidly rising.  If we do have a national divorce, I do not think it will be state by state, but rather county by county, and Blue America will consist of an archipelago of blue islands in a red sea.  Even in an ostensibly Blue state like Illinois, the rural areas are deepest red.  Attempts by blue cities to control rural areas would be met by a guerrilla war which would make similar incidents during Civil War 1.0 look tame in comparison.  Our military, at least that portion which sided with Blue America, would soon be recalling romps with the Taliban as the good old days.  The body count would likely run into the tens of millions.

May God save us from that ghastly fate, but demonization of one’s fellow citizens, at least when those fellow citizens are well armed, is almost always a precursor to war, or worse than war.  I wish I had more pleasant musings for a long weekend, but we no longer live in pleasant times.  When people constantly tell you that they hate you and yours, sooner or later you have to take them seriously.

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Brian
Brian
Sunday, September 5, AD 2021 9:54am

The prediction of a Second Civil War seriously discounts the depth of dysfunction of our national elites. Guys like this are in the end stages of a full-on psychological breakdown, the likes of which is affecting at least a quarter of the US population, if not up to fifty percent.

Anyone who has worked in Corporate America and is not a sociopath will tell you that the entire edifice of our economy is based on rent-seeking. The moment the USD and the regulatory system that supports it collapses, these people will have nothing.

What are all of the lawyers, health care bureaucrats, HR idiots, CRT educators etc. etc. going to fight with in a Second Civil War? Power point presentations?

Look at the total psychological collapse over the (almost) nothingburger of Covid. What do you think these people are actually going to do in a scenario of legit collapse?

The collapse might be coming sooner than anyone thinks. Hospital systems are openly suicidal right now with the mandates. I won’t shed a tear for any of them when they belly up. After the last 18 months, they deserve everything they have coming to them. Maybe they can do a Tik Toc dance when it happens.

The collapse is going to look a lot more like the end of Communism than a Second Civil War. There’s reason to be “optimistic” because even the most “pessimistic” people underestimate the dysfunction of the corporate and government elite.

Frank
Frank
Sunday, September 5, AD 2021 10:41am

An exercise just for fun:
My late Contracts professor used to use the line, “If I [you] were Czar of the Universe…” to set up discussion of how things ought to be on a given issue. So…if I were Czar of the Universe, I would decree that henceforth the USA would be reconstructed as two nations: the United City-States of America, consisting of every county in the current USA of, say, 500,000 or more demonstrably living citizens. I haven’t done any research to validate that number as correlating with habitual Democrat election victories, but that’s the idea. I’ll refer to them as “Blue counties.” (Not sure how to solve the problem of the ultra-lefty City of St. Louis, which is not a part of St. Louis County, Missouri, and has a population that has completely collapsed in the last fifty years.) Counties adjacent to blue counties could opt in to join the UCSA. The rest of the country would remain the United States of America. Each of the nations would retain all publicly owned property and infrastructure located in its territory, including military bases. Persons residing in the new entities would have a set time, perhaps a year, in which to relocate to the other and/or resign from public employment, including military and first responders. Otherwise their employment and citizenship will automatically pass to the new political entity over the territory where they reside.

Should this or something similar be established, it would be most interesting to watch the results over a period of ten or twenty years. I’m not sure what those results would be, although I have a guess, but I am reasonably sure they would be nothing like what leftist fools such as Shaub think they would be. Based on things I have seen online that were posted by lefties (or leftist troll bots, hard to tell sometimes), many of them actually believe the Red counties could not survive without the Blues. Hmm. Got farms in those blue counties, do you?
I know this idea is rough and full of questions and probably full of holes, and is almost certainly impossible to achieve short of that civil war we don’t want (but the left does, inarguably at this point). But it’s an idea to talk about, anyway. Please don’t call me naive or foolish or delusional. I know I am all of those things and more, as the past fifteen years or so have taught me the hard way.

Pinky
Pinky
Sunday, September 5, AD 2021 11:55am

Most of those counties on the map would be purplish, if that were an option.

There’s no logistical or political way that, say three counties in Illinois would join with downtown Detroit, much less there being a nation of two lines, each one running down a coast 3000 miles away. Granted, it’d be funny watching them eating only almonds and wine while we dined on steak and wheat every day. But I don’t see how it could happen.

I see two possible scenarios. One, a gradual shift to regional cooperation zones of 3-10 states, with a rump federal government. Two, an Article V convention gone awry, resulting in a process for state departure. Probably the map would look pretty similar either way. I don’t think any state wants to break up its rural, suburban, and urban areas.

I’ll say one thing, though. If you had an Idaho to Ohio to Oklahoma split, the map of population centers would look dramatically different in 50 years. You could see Indianapolis and Omaha beating out Philadelphia and San Francisco.

Pinky
Pinky
Sunday, September 5, AD 2021 11:57am

Oops – that’s two possible peaceful split-up scenarios, and I’d bet against a violent split-up.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Sunday, September 5, AD 2021 12:54pm

See C. Northcote Parkinson’s definition of ‘injelitance’.

Shaub is a gross political partisan, as can be seen in these tweets. He was without a doubt promoted within the ranks of the Office of Government Ethics and achieved the top position because he was ‘sound’, not because he was capable. That’s the sort of thing the Democratic Party does as a matter of course. Shaub has spent 18 of the last 24 years in the employ of federal agencies.

He currently works for a pseudo-nonpartisan lawfare outfit called the “Campaign Legal Center”, a very lushly financed organization. (Note, googoo groups like the League of Women Voters and Common Cause support the Democrats’ project to institutionalize vote fraud and so does the ‘Campaign Legal Center’). The other two years of his legal career were spent with this firm (https://www.shawbransford.com/).

The IRS 990 form does not specify just who is providing the Campaign Legal Center’s $14 million budget, though disclosure rules apply to 501 (c)(3). The director of the Campaign Legal Center supposedly worked for John McCain’s campaigns, just like Steve Schmidt and Nicolle Wallace.

All the pieces of the puzzle fit together.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Sunday, September 5, AD 2021 12:57pm

Anyone who has worked in Corporate America and is not a sociopath will tell you that the entire edifice of our economy is based on rent-seeking.

That’s a silly statement.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Sunday, September 5, AD 2021 1:02pm

Shaub’s statement is remarkably crude and stupid. I see what comes over our Facebook wall and I listen to my relatives. The asininity is bog standard among Democrats in the professional-managerial class. I’m not sure it will generate a civil war, but the mentality is a vector in generating institutional decay. Not seeing a way out. I thought my contemporaries would prove more sensible than the previous generation in running institutions. Couldn’t have been more wrong. And we have every reason to believe that the Millennials will be worse when their turn at the wheel arrives 25 years hence.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Sunday, September 5, AD 2021 2:27pm

Art, What will be left in 25 years?

Thank God. It was good while it lasted.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Sunday, September 5, AD 2021 4:33pm

Art, What will be left in 25 years?

No clue. We have to hit bottom some time.

Pinky
Pinky
Monday, September 6, AD 2021 1:00pm

It seems to me that the sane or conservative side is finally finding its voice after several years. Opposition to covid restrictions, abortion, trans nonsense, and voting abuse are all good signs. The turning point seemed to be opposition to CRT. This is all happening without leadership, too, which is the best sign of all. There’s a lot of effort necessary, but we’re in a better position than we have been in a while.

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